Why does Gamespot continue to put on these "Vote for your favourite Video Game Hero/Villain/Weapon/Obscure Reference to Popular Culture" things? It's like roachbait for millions of eight-year-olds to come out and say stupid stuff like "d00d! This guy isn't a real game character, he doesn't belong in this lineup!" "OMG! If U vote for this character, U R not a hardcore 1337 g4m3r!" (Actual quotes, referring mostly to characters that had their origins in media that wasn't a video game. Darth Vader, the Joker, etc. As if being "hardcore" meant forsaking all other forms of media.)
Maybe that's the point. Maybe the editors and columnists at GS are bored and need a laugh now and then at the expense of a panoramic, pre-pubescent pissing contest. (I know, "panoramic" is stretching it, no pun intended, but I needed to seal the alliteration with a word meaning "vast".) Maybe the server drive that holds membership info is bursting at the seams, and a flame-war stoked from behind the scenes is what they need to serve a healthy heaping of permabans and trim the FAT32 (ha!). Lord knows if admins aren't actually reading the posts, or they'd have learned their lesson after the first "Vote for your fave" thingy.

Gamespot like other guttertrash like Destructoid and Kotaku rely on website hits so they constantly put out things they know will get people clicking.

But... But the tears of raging fanboys are so sweet...

They...sustain me.

These polls are just part of the picture; GameSpot also has a very popular forum section called System Wars, which as the name indicates is all about fanboys arguing about every little detail (frequently resulting in amusing reading material). As you can imagine, System Wars helps to continually nurture the fanboyism that then overflows into the polls.

Gordon Freeman for life yo.

Boobies?
I'm guessing boobies.
(and this was even before BioWare started letting you sleep with companions, as far as I recall... so double for anyone from after that point)

This is why I like the less known game reviewers, like Angry Joe and Spoony, Daniel Floyd and The Game Overthinker. Give me something substantial over people who think that playing Halo makes you a 'hardcore gamer'.

It's good to know we have some members of the Angry Joe Army here. I really like Joe and Noah. They give good reviews and they're gamers just like us, so we can connect with them.

Not only that, but they go back to the old school method of reviewing as entertainment: the reviewer or critic should be putting on a performance, something lively and entertaining so that the review itself becomes a form of entertainment, as well as being informative.

Unfortunately, the Giant Bomb community isn't much better, which really upset me, because it is clearly the best video game journalism site out there. I feel like I have to scream at the idiots who post comments there. There's some crazy elitist attitude where anyone who joins Giant Bomb that wasn't a former GameSpot member is a traitor and must be kicked off the site by loudly complaining about the person doing their job like they're supposed to. "Look at this loser re-posting a press release! How is this news?" I feel like I'm a little more qualified to speak on the subject, since I am a Journalism/Broadcast student.
Some moron went to the Epic Mickey Cinematic Trailer and posted "Oh my God, I can't believe you guys are losing your minds on a kids game. We're not 12 any more, grow up!" This same person started a forum topic about the right way to smoke weed (which he was "qualified" to do because he's "42", and criticized others for "smoking weak shit". Thankfully a good citizen stopped by his forum post and chewed the child out.
Sometimes I want to punch these children.

Er...yeah, an old witch with a robe, sure it was the boobies :p

I hear you. That's exactly the reason why I stay away from people that game at my University. I'd be scared to admit that Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite franchises because I'd be literally laughed at loud and then I'd hear endlessly how games have ended with Baldur's Gate 2 or some other nonsense.
Still, I think GameFAQs is leading in the "Most Retarded Community Ever" category.

I beg to differ. GameFAQs at least has the decency to post something intelligible every now and then. Instead, the coveted title should go to Youtube. Any community where Justin Bieber fans hang out is unlikely to sustain any semblance of simian intelligence, at least where his fan messages are concerned.