Globalvision Season 11

The 11th season of the Globalvision Song Contest (also stylized as GV11 or Globalvision XI) that strated on 18 of March 2019, earlier than planned due to the successful comeback of the game to GagaDaily, after the Tapatalk mess during season 9. For the first time ever over 30 countries took part in the contest, at one point the number of participants was 39, but with the withdrawals before the song reveal and with disqualifications for not sending the votes on time, the number got lowered to 35 participants, which became the record for the highest number of countries participating in the contest.

This season marked the debut of 4 countries, Austria, Morocco, Vietnam and Indonesia, and also many GagaDaily users made their debut thanks to the fight between Varys and Dutch to see which one could bring more people to the game with their promo skills. Many of the new users took back countries that participated in the past, bringing back 11 countries. Other 3 withdrew, with one of them withdrawing before the finale.

The finale started on April 16th, around month after the season started, with the United Kingdom winning for a second time in a row but this time by the hands of @blackstar who won with Alice Chater and her song "Hourglass".

Theme
At the end of season 10, many participants and the host were already hyped for the next season, so one of the conversations was the theme of the next one. As the host wasn't sure yet for what it would be, he decided to make a poll where participants could send their ideas for the next theme. The chosen theme was jewels. As seen in the images below, the style of the name of each country was shaped in a crystallic way with different colors depending on the day they were announced. The votes of each country were distributed inside a diamond shaped structure, with images of each artist that were receiving points inside rhombuses with the number of points attached on one of the corners.



Returning artists
Two artists came back to the contest during this season. One of them was Eleni Foureira, who was rumoured to come back since the end of season 9. She last appeared on season 6, representing Greece with "To Kati Pou Exeis" and ended ***

The other artist that returned in season 11 was Kumi Koda, who represented Japan in season 1

Final
The final took place on April 16th, around 8PM CEST. Two countries were disqualified after choosing their entries and being drawn, India and Denmark, that were ment to participate at 18 and at 31 respectively. India would have made its official debut if it wasn't disqualified, but sadly the country didn't send their votes on time, same as Denmark.

Uniqueness Award
For the full list of recepients of the award, see Uniqueness Award It was awarded during the final results, right after the reveal of the lower spots of the final ranking, to Papi Hans with his song "Keks" that represented Bulgaria and ended 33rd in the final ranking. It received around 50% of the votes for this award. As this was the 4th Uniqueness Award to be presented, Papi Hans became the first male to win this award, as the ones for the 1st to the 7th season were voted after season 11 ended.

Other participants
@GAGASEXUAL debuted in season 10 and was mentioned at the beginning of the season in the participant list but he didn't send a song for this season. Also @Maic and @bazaar withdrew after participating in season 10, but no official statement was posted in the thread.

@freakumdresss and @TheShameMonster did also appear in the first list of participants, with the second one having submited a song, but in the end both didn't appear in the final draw.

@benKo was rumored to come back after withdrawing in season 10, but he only appeared in the thread for a while during the finale.

@nicolasrumet was meant to debut with Egypt a country that had never participated before, but he cancelled his participation before sending a song.

Kim Petras
One of the most controversial artists from this season was Kim Petras, just when it was announced that she was representing Germany in the contest, many users shared their disappointment with her appearence citing her popularity among GagaDaily users as a potential advantage for her to gain points. On the other side, the number of streams that Kim Petras' song had right when she was announced as a participant didn't break the 50 million streams rule, she even didn't have that number of streams in all her YouTube videos combined. Even that she remained able to participate, this controversy lead to a few feuds during the whole game, even during the finale many users sent sad reactions everytime Germany got points during the final ceremony. Her song "Heart To Break" ended 4th in the final despite the hate shown towards it.

Eleni Foureira
Maybe less controversial as the Kim Petras topic, but also Eleni Foureira generated some controversy when she was announced as the greek representant. This was her third participation in the game and many users where already anticipating that moment, but after two seasons and her memorable participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, she gained popularity and many participants already knew her and even the song she was competing with, "Tómame", that finally ended in 5th position.

Varys' fake ban
On March 26th, @Varys changed his profile picture to a "BANNED" text over a white background. That was noticed by the host and users start to worry about what was going on. @teenidle wanted to dramatize more the situation so he actually stated that he talked to other one through Tapatalk and confirmed that he was permabanned. Seconds later @Varys posted an image of a cell stating that he was taken by the iconic @Haroon but he managed to escape his prison. The main reason for this joke was that he wanted to pass in number of pages the Chart Thread which had a very close number by then.

Love stories, feuds and heavy offtopicness
As in every season, there are moments were participants get drunk or bored and start flirting with each other, but during this season this topic got more attention than usual due to the participation of many new users. Participants that had been in the game longer focused on the new ones and that generated "love stories" like the one between @loathereality and @Davian. Also this had led to many feuds, as some users where fighting for the attention of the same person, leading to fake break ups and betrayals. Meanwhile, the thread of the game gained huge numbers of pages, as for the first time it passed the 700 pages, but that also worried a few users as the game itself was less discussed and the season 9 ban was still haunting Globalvision.



@Thotiana and @Hannah Montana
Once again @TheAlpha come back to the game under a new username and account, even thought he was banned and GagaDaily rules prohibit the use of double accounts. This time he joined under the username @Thotiana and was part of the jury panel, but, around a week before the finale, one of the users realized that he was posting and editing his posts the same way @TheAlpha did during season 9 using his @Pantera account and that he made this new account just a few days after the season started. Unlike in season 9, this was immediatelly informed to the mods and he was banned a day later.

Sadly, a day after the finale, he came back with another account, @Hannah Montana (he took this name after users were comparing his undercover image to the one of Hannah Montana), but he didn't even try to keep his identity as secret, as instantly he mentioned the user that exposed him before threatening that he wouldn't stop until he saw the "game clooooose". Once again, mods where immediately informed and he was banned once again.

His "game clooooose" phrase became a meme afterwards as it reminded the name of the actress Glenn Close, so a few users started to use her image to joke about this incident.

Triple winner
One day before the final, the host announced that there was a triple tie at first place, something that never happened before, so he asked participants for a tie-break rule to decide the winner. A few suggestions came up, like awarding the favorite song by the participant vote, the one that received votes from more participants or the one that had more 12 points. In the end, it resulted that there was a miscalculation in the results and that the winner actually had 20 more points than the other tied songs that remained together in second place.



Varys' April fools prank
On April 1st many users received a fake warning point from the well-known mod @Haroon. The warning point had a note attached to it with this text: "Vote for change, vote for growth, vote for Summer Blues, vote for Belgium and save yourself from getting warning points if you don't. We are the Mod Team and we approve this message". Obviously, the person behind this prank was the belgian participant, @Varys, who was already known for making these kind of pranks (he faked his ban days before this). Many of the participants that received that warning point came for him on the thread for taking his promo to this level. At least no one took it seriously and it became an iconic funny moment during this season.

Face reveals and nickname changes
Around one week before the finale, some users changed their profile image or username. It caught attention from other participants leading to a chain of people changing their photos just for a moment to reveal their faces for the first time in the forum. That ended in an awkward moment led by @Thotiana, who revealed the real name of one of the participants, something everyone tried to avoid to respect our identities.

Drunk people
During the whole month that the season lasted, there have been moments when some of the participants, and the host himself, entered to the thread of the game while being drunk and posted many random or off-topic stuff. This became quite common so it lost it's surprise value as it had in season 3, when @loathereality, the winner of the season, was actually drunk while writing her winning speech.

50M streams rule taken down
Somewhere after the end of season 10, it was discussed to abolish the rule that banned all songs with over 50 million streams to participate in the game. The main reason for this change was that many countries have big power in terms of streams, so many local hits can easily pass that mark without even getting recognition abroad. A voting was held to decide the fate of the rule and days later it was announced that it would be abolished from season 11 onwards. That way the decision of the song or artist being too famous to compete in the game ends in the hands of the host only.