The outcome of an online competition organised by Poulet restaurant has irked a number of its contestants.

Poulet, a French casual dining restaurant chain with nine branches in Singapore, had organised a Facebook photo contest to commemorate Valentine’s Day this year.

To win, participants had to take a photo of themselves dining at Poulet and upload the photo onto Facebook. The entry which garners the most number of Facebook Likes wins a pair of return tickets to Paris.

Last week, Poulet announced a Eugene Seah to be the winner.

However, this result did not go down well with other participants.

Their gripe? Despite regularly tracking Poulet's Facebook page during the entire duration of the contest, contestants had never seen Eugene Seah's photo.

That's not the strangest part because it turns out that Eugene Seah did indeed have a photo.

But that failed to placate contestants as they found evidence leading them to believe that the majority of Eugene Seah’s nearly 1,200 "Likes" were inauthentic. [Writer's note: From my understanding, there are two identical photos - one posted up by Poulet (which can be found on their Facebook that has garnered 574 Likes), and another one posted up by Eugene Seah (which had 1,200 or so Likes but has since been taken down).]

Regardless, the main gripe is that many of the "Likes" are from users who lacked a profile picture, leading one to question the legitimacy of these Facebook accounts.

In addition, many of the people who "Liked" Eugene Seah's photos had a very small number of friends, which leads one to suspect if these accounts were specially set up to Like posts for similar contests.

For example, one of the Likes for Eugene Seah's contest entry came from a Myra Wooten, who had a grand total of one friend.

Another baffling feature of these users was that they were not even friends with Eugene Seah. It seems odd that a Facebook user who is not even one’s friend will bother to like one's photo for a contest.

Oh look, even Ray Mysterio Liked the photo.

Angry contestants have since demanded that Poulet investigate the source of Eugene Seah's "Likes".

Poulet responded by saying that the winner was picked based only on the most number of Likes, "regardless of how it [sic] is obtained".

Note: The writer did not participate in the photo contest.

Top photo from Poulet Facebook

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