Unterganger of the Month

The Unterganger of the Month (UotM) award is a title first given by Benad361 to the month's top Unterganger (decided on by a variety of categories). There's also a similar Parody of the Month (PotM) award presented by Soalric Parker. UoTM announcement videos and threads were temporarily part of the Unterganger Awards (UA). However, as of April 2013, that policy was discontinued by both Benad361 and DictatorAntics.

As of July 2014, Benad361 has resigned from the UoTM (which he founded) and opened an election, with the aim of choosing a new management team. Voting took place on the Downfall Parodies Forum. It was decided that Ako675 should be the new General Manager, Soalric Parker Deputy Manager and JennieParker87 Emergency Manager. However, in November 2014, the UoTM award was included in the Unterganger Awards, thus JennieParker87 became the new General Manager. The UoTM title is still a separate category though, and winners still earn a medal. Winners are presented in the same result video as the UA, and nominations are made in the UA thread.

History
The first nomination round was opened for October 2010, around the time of the DMCA takedowns. The aim of the award was to reward untergangers who had made excellent contributions to the meme during the month, who deserved some promotion and recognition.

Benad361 resurrected the series on January 31, 2012 after it initially fell away in late 2011 due to a lack of viewer interest and a lack of zeal on his part. The new rules are that it will be on the last day of every month and nominees must send videos to be reviewed. Three nominations are allowed; one for each Unterganger. If a video out of the three is the most impressive, then the user who created said video will win the contest.

Following the Unterganger Awards (UA) inception in October 2012, the UotM was initially planned to be announced under the UA. The plan proved problematic in terms of coordination, and the first UA award series was announced without either the UotM or PotM, leaving both to be announced separately by their own main judges. From January 2013, the UoTM operated under the UA, as a semi-autonomous award system (as did the PoTM). However, this policy was largely reversed in April 2013.

After the system became somewhat stagnant, Benad361 revamped the award systems of both the UA and UoTM in January 2014, due to his return to parody work. He later opened an election during July 2014, making his resignation from the UoTM official. An election took place on the Downfall Parodies Forum to choose a new leadership team. Ako675 took over the contest briefly, only to discover he didn't have enough time for it after all. So, he asked JennieParker87 to take over and run it alongside the UA.

Rules
Since November 2014, the only rules are; a voter can nominate up to three Untergangers, and self-nominations are not allowed. Apart from this, anyone can be nominated, for various reasons. The reasons can be anything from making good parodies during the month in question, or contributing to the community in some other way. If cheating is discovered, such as vote rigging, the person will be banned from the contest. The old rule that a person can be inducted as a judge if he/she wins three times, is no longer used.

Previously the contest had several key rules, many of which have constantly evolved/evolve over time, or been created as a result of activity within the Unterganger community itself. In June 2012, several key categories for winning an award were established by Benad361:
 * FX (As in, how effective and impressive the FX in your parody are)


 * Storyline (Is it a creative and humorous storyline?)


 * Innovation (Creativity - in other words, is your parody something new or unexpected, or has it challenged the status quo somewhat?


 * Popular support (The number of people who vote for you, self-nominations don't count).

A few past disruptive events such as the sockpuppetry scandal (see below) and a steady increase in narcissistic self-promotions/nominations in the voting forum resulted in the introduction of several new rules to curb this behaviour. They are as follows:


 * Topic-derailing is banned. Benad conceded that a little humorous off-topic discussion was permissible, but too much of it was a hindrance. Three strikes would be given to repeated-offenders - if they used up these strikes, they would no-longer be able to participate in the contest.


 * No self-nominations. - Three untergangers can be nominated by each voter. Previously each voter could nominate up to five, including themselves. This however resulted in too many nominations made per-voter, making the contest more difficult to efficiently judge and increasing the amount of self-promotion attempts.

It was later announced in July that anyone winning the award three times in a row/three times would automatically be elevated to the judging panel.

Nomination process
Nominations take place in the Downfall Parodies Forum, in the special section reserved for A minimum of five nominations is required in total for the judging process. Nominations would include at least one parody made by the unterganger being nominated, typically (but not necessarily) parodies made during said month. The judges (Benad361 and TheSilverUniverse) will then go through the nominations and announce the winner with a parody video, usually on the last day of the month.

More than five people tend to submit due to the popularity of the contest. As a result, Benad361 often has to go through the meticulous process of choosing five best parody nominations out of all the submissions.

Up until June 2012, untergangers could nominate their own parodies, but since the May 2012 sockpuppeting scandal, self-nominees swelled in number to the point of rendering the UOTM into a narcissistic self-promotion opportunity. As of the 3rd July 2012, self-nominations are no longer allowed, and, in light of the intense debate following Hanif837's ban from the contest, flame wars on the nomination thread will be penalized.

A re-vamped Unterganger of the Month is expected to be launched by Benad361 within days, as of July 4th 2014.

Sockpuppetry scandal
Attempts have been made in the recent past to fool the system. A user named Hanif837 created many accounts and posted nominations for his channel from them on the nomination thread for May's contest in an attempt to make it look as if his "friends" had nominated him, and not just himself. However the suspicions of other untergangers (including Benad361, Johnnomonster and mfaizsyahmi) were raised when it was noticed that the accounts were almost 600 members apart and all with the same level of poor spelling and grammar, leading to the foiling of the attempted antic/s. Mfaizsyahmi later released a parody showing the events on the forum which led to the exposure of the attempt. The culprit made another few futile attempts (it is known that he is 12 and seems a somewhat slow learner) resulting in Hitler Rants Parodies himself slapping him with a ban.

According to Evilrobottolhurst, he may have used as many as five different accounts in his futile (and somewhat pathetic) attempt to get himself nominated. HRP put the total at as high as ten accounts. The tiresome fakery continued and resulted in an IP ban being requested by Benad361.

As of the 18th May 2012, Hanif837 is officially barred from participating in, or being nominated for, any future Unterganger of the Month award until he is 13 (the minimum age) and mature enough to behave properly on the forum. He then, to the incredulous exasperation of the community, tried to nominate himself again on the June thread (although with no fake accounts this time) despite having released a somewhat pathetic apology beforehand).

As a result of these actions, he is greatly looked down upon by the Unterganger community. However Master Studios tried to rehabilitate Hanif (to the extent that he actually tried to nominate him in the contest for June) and acted as something of an apologist for his actions. This resulted in a somewhat polarized debate that monopolized much of June's thread, to Benad361's displeasure.

This in turn led him to announce (via the June announcement video) a set of new rules, such as a ban on self-nominations and three strikes given to topic derailers. If any unterganger should use up their three strikes given as warming, then they will no longer be able to participate in the contest.