How You Can Make Me Laugh.

I’ve always been of the mindset “do what you wanna do”, ever since I started my very first school. I could never understand why you would want to live your life doing things the way other people tell you to do.

This mindset got me into a lot of trouble as a kid; I was expelled from 9 different schools, refused to wear uniform, refused to hold a pencil properly. Refused to do anything unless it was my way. Now as an adult, this mindset gives me unbounded freedom: why would I let anyone tell me how to live my life?

Although all of our friends and family love that we’re travelling in our van (apart from my dad, who keeps asking when I’m gonna get a “real” job), there’s a certain pressure from society which channels you into a consumerist lifestyle to maintain the current system.

It’s like passing Go on a Monopoly board, jumping through hoops as they say: when you’ve finished school go to college, when you’ve finished college go to uni, get a degree, get a bit of paperwork that proves you can do the job you’re good at. Now to pay for that degree you’ll need to work for the next 20 years of your life, although there aren’t any jobs, and while you’re at it you may as well add another 20 years onto that because you’re going to need a mortgage for that house you’ll never be able to afford.

It was amongst this tide of pressure that we both put our feet down and said no, we won’t swim with all the other fish, we want to fight against the current. We don’t want to carry on racking up debt for the rest of our lives; we want to see the world.

But society needs debt to thrive, and by removing ourselves from that cycle we become antisocial; we don’t play a part in the system and that makes us outcasts. Radicals.

But more and more of us are waking up, realising there’s more to life and a different way to live. We’re part of a movement who decide to cut our ties, break the mould, and allow ourselves to be free. We reject debt, we reject the items you’re supposed to need in order to be considered successful, and we just do what makes us happy. Because 80 years is a very short time on this planet, but a very long time to not be happy.

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Nordic-Baltic Eight

Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s statistical map - our second look at the likes-dislikes ratio on this year’s Eurovision songs, and our first for almost a month! As with every year, the majority of songs tend to improve their likes-dislike ratio with time, and that is no different this year: on average, each song improved its likes-dislikes by 5.33% in the last month, with only a scant few songs gaining more dislikes than likes in the interim.

Last month, only 17 of the 43 nations had a ratio of likes to dislikes that was 85%-15% or better: this number has since swollen to 24. Where once there were 12 songs with a ratio of 1 dislike to every 3 likes or worse, there now is 10. Of the ten most “reacted on” videos, most songs have 85% likes or higher - no surprise given the huge quantity of likes given so far: this year’s songs have been given over half a million likes (514,157) compared with little over 0.1 million dislikes (114,094) - meaning that the average video picked up almost 12 thousand likes compared to around 2,600 dislikes. 

So, which countries have risen and fell the most in terms of their likes? The vast majority of countries have only seen a modest improvement of 2-3% in their likes-dislikes ratio, but one quarter saw drastic changes of 20% or more: Croatia’s percentage of likes rose proportionally by 21.4%; Romania’s by 25%, Slovenia’s by 49.2% and Georgia’s by a colossal 57.9%. What all this quartet have in common is a lukewarm (Romania) to largely negative reception when first released - especially the biggest growers, Slovenia and Georgia, who had been two of the fateful five who had 60% likes or less. 

What they also have in common is a late music video release - an interesting tactic to deflect a negative fanbase response which we see every year: a song’s national final performance garners a number of heated, negative responses over time; they release a official music video later in the season which almost inevitably attracts fewer people who hated the song. Spain, with a 7.8% proportional increase in likes and a national final performance video still attracting those who feel short-changed, arguably joins the four aforementioned countries having done the same. 

Below this quintet are an interesting group of 5 nations whose likes-dislikes ratio has improved proportionally by 5% or more. Some are hotly tipped by the bookies - France, Australia and Armenia - whilst some are less so: Ireland sees a 5.8% increase whilst Montenegro’s rise is of 6.8%, enough to finally crack 50% likes and to leave Lithuania as the only country now with more dislikes than likes.

On the other side of the table is Poland, whose likes-dislikes ratio has oddly not changed at all, and an unlucky five whose likes-dislikes ratio has worsened over the past month. For the UK and Belarus, both of which have a high proportion of likes, the loss is a subtle -0.2%, but Ukraine’s worsens by 0.9%, Greece’s by 1.4% and the biggest drop is that of San Marino, its dislikes increasing by 2.2%. 

A full data table can be found below! Last year, by the day before semi-finals, no song had more likes than dislikes, and only 10 songs had fewer than 70% likes. This year already only 6 songs are below that point - I wonder if we’ll see almost all songs with 70% likes or more by semi-finals or whether some songs will continue to keep accruing more dislikes than likes.