[TheMilkman01]

Alright, so I'll admit: I made this post prematurely. After watching the parodies that were added in the last day I was pleasantly surprised and genuinely enjoyed some. I understand that some people really do love making parodies and have fun making them -– I'm not denying that. I generally have a blast as well. I'm making this response to essentially clear up my point: I'm not against parodies in FIRST, I'm criticizing the way FIRST implemented it. There was so much room for improvement from FIRST since last year's contest, to supply more helpful resources, to promote better, and to generally improve the experience. It seems to me that FIRST didn't promote it as much, in fact, they gave less time to complete the parody (I believe last year's due date was after Thanksgiving), and left most of the responsibility to the teams. Granted, FIRST has every right to do that. I just disagree, and at the end of my original post, left some ideas to throw around about how improvements could be made, and highly encourage everyone to consider that too. FIRST media is so much more than parodies, and if we do every year in the future, it will get stale. Even if contests were every other year, with parodies being one year, and another different contest the next, then back to parodies, I believe that would be a better model to implement than having yet another parody contest next year.

All this being said, I support every single team or individual who submitted these past two years. It's not easy, I'm proud of you all for getting involved, and I'm sure we all gained some invaluable experience in the process. No one who participated should regret that decision.