You know what is funny this hadn't even occurred to me, though of course it makes a lot of sense. I choose the alien eyeball as my profile picture in no small part because my thought processes are very often alien, as in they are totally outside of the "obvious" interpretation. Often this actually is a good thing (in creative endeavors) but in this case I think your logic is both solid and more appropriate to the situation. Obviously @bycoleman agrees :) I think part of why I didn't even see this as a possibility was your interpretation meant the original rules were incomplete. There was no provision for what to do if one of the winning resteem count spots was a user who did not follow @bycoleman. He has updated the post with these rules now :) I am actually glad you are in the #25 spot, it was not my intention to actually claim a prize spot when I activated a few of my alt accounts and followed/resteemed - I was just trying to show @bycoleman why a contest of this nature was kind of a fool's errand on Steem blockchain :)

Cheers - Carl