Based on what I am seeing, the selection is a fraud no matter what. The Argo voting clearly being manipulated by outside sources such as accounts created specifically for voting for that ship…
at this point, theArgo is going to win on sheer fraud…
I don't think the Argo is winning just for the memes/lulz.
Where were the fake accounts to vote against the Argo?? There is nothing stopping the supposedly better/more popular ship from winning against the Argo, except that seemingly no one cares to spend their entire afternoon creating accounts just to do that. It's just not worth it. The vast majority of players would be working against themselves anyways.
The whole premise of Best ship Evaaaaa' is false, cos objectively it does not (currently) exist. You cannot just look at a spreadsheet and say "this is the best ship thus it must win". A Warden is not a better ship than an Argo just like a 600i is not a better ship than Scythe. All have their uses where they shine, and that includes PRICE. This is supposed to be a popularity contest, but somehow so far every winning ship was a 300+ dollar ship, something that the vast majority of the player base does NOT own. So they got literally nothing out of this contest so far.
With the Argo, it's affordable, you can way more easily grind it out in game, or pay the 44 (for me with VAT) USD for it and own it. It's not a 600usd Carrack. It's something "for the people", who might actually buy one, like I did.
And this takes me to my second point: marketing. How many Argos for the 40ish dollars will sell versus how many 600i-s or MSR-s would have sold for the hundreds of dollars? Especially with both of em already had their runs in the sales, and being fuckin expensive, I'd guess most people who wanted to buy them already own them. So CiG did the thing that is most beneficial to them, and made the cheap option win it's rounds (so far) to pump up hype and thus sales.
So to conclude yes, you might be correct, cos Ship Showdown might have been 100% fake every time anyways.