To be honest Joe's "won" anyway, let's face it his single wouldn't have sold anywhere near as many copies if it wasn't for RATM breathing down the back of his neck the whole way.

If it was a guaranteed number 1 for him already, then he wouldn't have got as much publicity* and some of his fans wouldn't have bought his CD to help him get to number 1.

(*He's been front page of most of the papers all week, I reckon that could have easily added 10,000 copies for him.)

So I do wonder, how did the promoters react? Kinda like: "So... now we are at number one and, well... better close off your ears" or anything?

And how does "casual UK" react? The people who weren't in on the joke e.g. the grandma's and teenboppers? That must be good for a laugh or two.

By the way... I love the power that the internet now has - this is about as awesome as the rickrolling of a whole stadium during a baseball event. Here's to next year the UK gets a truelly deserving top song!

When did everybody start hating The X Factor, exactly?

About 4 years ago.

20 million watched the X factor final, about 100k people bought RATM in protest against x factor (sold 500k or so but then some people bought about 20 copies)

So I would say the vast majority like x factor

Thats amazingly awesome.

No they didn't. UK chart rules are that if someone is found downloading or buying multiple copies of the same song then those sales are disqualified. If someone bought 5+ copies of RATM, then the copies should have been disqualified. I bought 2 and that was pushing it.

And if you want to talk ratios 20,000,000 watched the X-factor final and 450,000 copies of the climb sold, that's a ratio of (people watching to singles sold) 44.4 to 1.

RATM on the other hand had a group of 1,000,000 people and 500,000 singles sold. Let's say (rather generously) that each person in the group bought 5 copies so that those 500,000 are brought down to 100,000 people who have downloaded, that still gives a ratio of 10:1.

44.4:1 compared to 10:1*. These figures show that RATM fans are much more dedicated to their cause, RATM fans want the music industry to change, a lot of them are quite passionate about their music.

Meh, I don't care. 

(*And these figures are distorted imo because I believe the singles per person for RATM are maybe 2 or perhaps 3 at best.)

Nice math! but alas wasted on me, none of it proves people hate the X factor, yeah I was talking about the show not joe. I'm a prime example.

your music's shite, it keeps me up all night

Then it wasn't wasted on you in that case. What I did was show that as a group RATM fans are over four times more passionate about their music than X factor viewers, if choose to see it reflected in sales figures.

The notion that they are more passionate about their music justifies this campaign to get Killing In The name to number one, to me anyway.

This whole campaign came about through RATM fans feeling as though they have been neglected by the music industry in favour of the "X factor" and "Britain's got talent" style music. What they have done this week is show that they still pack a lot of punch as an audience and they should still be respected (and not neglected) as a result.