Reality Error
Awards Guide
Awards are separate competitions, distinct from ordinary reactions. The current annual configuration uses four official categories and three-candidate matchups. This guide does not promise dates, edition availability or future formats.
The four categories
- Genius Awards: spectacularly self-defeating individual behaviour.
- Murphy Awards: epic bad luck suffered by the protagonist.
- System Fails Awards: absurd failures of institutions, organisations, procedures, technology and AI.
- Chaos Awards: collective misunderstandings, escalations and surreal chain reactions.
Qualification
Stories are compared in matchups that stay open for 15 minutes. Each matchup presents three candidates; voters assign gold, silver and bronze. The phase closes only after matchups expire. Standings use the Bradley–Terry model, not a simple raw vote count.
Nominations and finals
Eligible candidates are selected from the qualification standings: up to 12 nominations are possible per category, with a configured minimum of 3 only when eligibility requirements and sufficient results allow it. Finals group up to 8 candidates and advance 3 candidates per group. Later rounds use the same podium vote and ranking logic.
Ties and results
When a competitive tie cannot be distinguished from the next candidate, advancement may stop instead of applying an arbitrary tiebreaker. A result with fewer than 10 distinct voters is held for review and is not automatically proclaimed an official result.
Technical limits
The current configuration limits each account to 3 concurrent matchups, with at least 60 minutes between exposures and a maximum of 100 exposures per day. The system also enforces one vote per account per matchup. Thresholds belong to the edition configuration and may change before a new competition.