Vladimir Putin

kremlin.ru

Thank you to everyone who participated in our second official poll! To those of you who didn’t participate… I have nothing more to say to you. Please stop reading this and look out the window so those us of who care about polls and democracy and freedom can have a private conversation.

Our second official poll provided an answer to one of the great unsolved math problems that has plagued mathematicians since the dawn of math:

Does Power + Russian + Shirtless, Muscley Photographs = Hotness?

I don’t know why mathematicians didn’t just solve this problem with a poll, like we did. I mean, how hard is it to conduct a scientific poll? (I assume that “scientific poll” means a poll that is taken by scientists. I also assume that you guys are all scientists.)

How hot is Putin? Currently, he’s #18 on our list. Should he be ranked higher? Or lower?

The winner: Lower (50%)

Over 5,000 of you think that Putin’s hotness is overrated. That, or one of you owns over 5,000 computers. Either way—congratulations!

Even with all of his power and Russianness and shirtlessness, the majority opinion is that Putin resembles (as one voter put it) “a fox whose face is being pushed through cling film.” I think I see your point, but what the hell is “cling film”?


First runner-up: Higher (42%)

4,000 voters thought that Putin’s hotness was underrated. To tell you the truth, I am totally with you. It’s just a shame that the answers to math problems are determined by popular opinion polls.


Second runner-up: No Change (7%)

I am glad that a tiny percentage of you think that we are doing a just-fine job of ranking world leaders in order of hotness. As one of you guessed, we did in fact determine the rankings by pulling names out of a hat. It isn’t super-scientific, but we were wearing lab coats at the time, which I think helped.


Third runner-up: Other (1%)

The joke is on you, “Other,” because I am too lazy to count your votes. Also, how is “Kate sucks” a coherent answer to the question? I’m talking to you, Mom. (My mom likes to heckle me.)


Many of you expressed the opinion that Putin shouldn’t even be on our list because he’s not a head of state. Clearly you did not realize that, in spite of its misleading name, this website is actually a ranking of the hottest presidents of Russia. That’s right. What do you have to say now?

(Knowing you, you’ll probably say “Where is Boris Yeltsin?” and “Why is Barack Obama on there?” So I’m just going to ask you to keep your comments to yourself.)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: In accordance with the wishes of the poll, we will be taking Putin down a few notches in our upcoming revamp of The List. So now you have something to look forward to! Unless you are Vladimir Putin.)