If you are wondering what has happened to some of us and why we have been behaving so abominably, you are not the only one. Fact is some of us have surprised even ourselves with this show of volatile, provocative, wicked and incensing commenting during Episode 5.

MathurSaab was the first one to post on his chosen topic and was therefore unprepared for these 'attacks', if I may call them so. But by the time Hemaniji posted her blog, even Boycott's Moom could have told what was afoot. Also since SG21 and Hemaniji led the others for most part of the Contest, it was only logical that they should have borne the major brunt of 'attacks'.

We wouldn't even dream of attacking @jmathur's post which triggered such a meaningful debate on Review reading/rating on MS. Both @viratbond and @jains24 wrote fantastic blogs which I'm sure would be bookmarked by anyone having even a passing interest in Fashion. And I had to drag a 20 tonne boulder on my heart before I could coax myself to make the 'balderdash' comment on @SG21. If you guys are missing the MIB photo from his profile pic, you know whom to blame.

At one point we were so worried that we expected someone would walk out of the Contest any moment. Deepak compounded our worries by saying I’d been too cruel in a few of my comments.

Why did we do it ?

Well we didn't want BigMate to be just another Contest where there was goody goody participation and endless bouts of backscratching. We wanted to bring in some adversity too. In wake of the rampant attacks by fake ids/'bona fide' members posing at fake ids on many of our Reviews/posts, we felt simulating a similar environ would introduce bit of a tension in an otherwise “overfriendly” atmosphere.

Oh did I say overfriendly ? Please take that with bucketful of salt. If preliminary votes are any indication this overfriendliness is too deceptive.

We tried our best to limit ourselves to attacking the topic/post and avoiding any personal attacks but we cant ignore the possibility of having transgressed the line somewhere. Also we realise our definition of “the bounds of propriety” may not match that of the contestants.

Therefore friends on behalf of @deepak27, @astrofreak1234 and myself, I offer my sincerest apologies to all contestants (and the reader) for all acts of provocation and cruelty inflicted by our comments and assure you that the comments were not intentional. And though we took a big liberty, we hope to be excused for the same.

The biggest satisfaction however, was in watching all our contestants tackle adversity in most exemplary a fashion. Personally, I don’t believe in differentiating between 99.99 and 99.97. Both are equally good or bad far as I’m concerned. For me all finalists will deserve the title of ‘Bigmate’. However this being a Contest we must go the whole hog. Over to you @deepak27 for Results of Episode 5.