Online trolls have voted in force for Taylor Swift to perform at an American deaf school as part of online competition featuring the country music star.
A web competition was recently launched for Swift to perform a show at any school in the USA, with the school with the most votes getting the Love Story songbird rocking up on campus. Fans get to submit a vote for their favourite school once they ‘like’ Swift on Facebook.
The Guardian reports 4Chan and Reddit users heard about the campaign and encouraged their powerful digital hordes to vote in favour of Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Alston, Massachusetts.
And vote they did, with more than 49,000 people voting for the Boston-based school as of Friday afternoon.
Horce Mann headmaster Jeremiah Ford welcomed the opportunity for Swift to come to the school if they win, saying they could accommodate accordingly for a performance.
“There are accommodations that make music come alive for deaf people,” headmaster Jeremiah Ford told boston.com. “They have different abilities. They’re not disabled. They’re not impaired.”
“It might have been done with malintent, and shame on them, but what a great opportunity for us,” Ford said.
Even if the school doesn’t get the top prize, they’ll still get a $10,000 grant from the contest sponsors to bump up their music department – if they finish in the top five.
Voting runs through to September 23.
