The winners of the 13th annual Webby Awards — 13th? God, I feel old — were announced today, with Sarah Silverman, Seth MacFarlane, Jimmy Fallon, and Trent Reznor all picking up "special achievement" awards. Thank God for the Internet, otherwise all these people with their own TV shows and platinum-selling albums would not have a voice.
I’m kidding. Sort of. The Webbies hand out, like, 9,000 awards a year, and many go to very deserving websites — the fantastic Big Picture was definitely the new must-visit site this year, for example, and I was completely obsessed with Children’s Hospital. But "Webby winner" is a pretty diffuse honor, given that there are categories for best insurance website and best "environmental and experience marketing" alongside best long-form comedy series or best use of typography. I get why there are so many categories — because entrants pay a fee be considered, and the Webby Awards are a business, like most everything else — but prestige and rarity tend to go hand in hand.
I don’t know, PopWatchers, do we need (well, "need") a more rigorous award for Internet content? Or are popularity and respect their own reward in the great digital age?
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Could they pick a worse picture of Seth MacFarlane. He looks like a complete douchebag! lol
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(I know what some of you are thinking…STOP IT!
http://tvdonewright.com/2009/05/05/tv-tonight-tuesday-may-5th-2009/
Funny EW would post a blog on this subject, because those of us longtime readers can recall a time when EW rated and graded websites. Kimberly Last’s James Bond tribute site (OHMSS, which is flipping awesome) used to post her EW review (you guys gave her an A).
So why did EW stop? You’d think the proliferation of websites in the last few years would have given EW’s top writers MORE reason to review sites and keep us out of the crap, but aside from some HULU and Funny or Die.com pimping on Popwatch, you’d swear EW doesn’t think websites are part of American pop culture.
Where are the reviews of blogs and the “This month’s unintentionally funny site”? There’s a gadjillion sites online for us to waste valuable time with, and most of us don’t know where to start.
Where’s the EW article that makes note of how I can watch every Happy Tree Friends episode for free? Or the one that tells me where to score old NES video games for free?