Make It Stop: The Webbys

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By Barrett Sheridan

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Imagine if you took the Oscars, which recognize "excellence in filmmaking," and decided instead to honor "excellence in anything shown on a screen of any kind." Welcome to the Webbys, a boundless and silly salute to the online universe. While other awards cling to their aristocratic exclusivity, the Webbys, like a good kindergarten teacher, hand out a gold star to just about anybody who asks—provided you cough up the $275 entrance fee, leading the tech-gossip site Valleywag to snark that the Webbys "milk the Internet's lust for self-promotion." Indeed, there's actually a category for "self-promotion," as well as one for "e-mail marketing" (a.k.a. "spam"). This year's 645 nominees (!) include Montreal's tourism site and the Shiba Inu Live Puppy Cam. Lucky winners on June 8 get a statuette that looks like a Slinky. Congrats, Grammys: the "worst awards show" category has a new winner.

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