YouTube Video Awards Coming March 25th
by
on March 20, 2007,
Prior to the 25th of this month, you would only have been able to create a video, upload it to YouTube, and hope you released a lucky charmer to a farm of remote servers. Only a few of the site’s submissions are gems, and even fewer are “Lazy Sunday” popular. That’s okay. Even if you’ve got a needle-in-a-haystack probability of becoming a 320-by-240 celebrity, it’s cool. Most don’t care. But for those who do, YouTube’s got something special for you. Maybe.
March 25th (in case you didn’t catch the notice at the start of this post) marks the day YouTube’s finest directors of all things comedic, dramatic, and stupidic get to shine. Alone. Or in front of throngs of supporters. Just kidding. About both scenarios, actually.
This coming Sunday is the day the top choices of YouTube’s masses for the best user-generated videos of 2006 will be announced. Sorry, NBC, the SNL sketch isn’t up for a trophy.
Can you feel the communal anxiety building? No? I could've sworn…. Anyway, there’ll be acceptance speeches aplenty; most are guaranteed to be fraudulent. Lots of OMGs, too. Some will record their tear-filled message of thanks in basements the world over. Some will do it like Brie. In bedrooms, that is, fully stocked with stuffed animals, down covers picked out by Mom, furniture picked out by Dad. Except that winners, losers, and teasers won’t spout sweet nothings into the lens. They’ve got 10 minutes to cut to the chase, and heck, what’s 10 minutes? That makes absolutely no time for a ramble whatsoever.
Chen and Hurley and the millions of other YouTubers have considered, pondered, and deliberated, and they’ve come up with seven categories in which to file the best of the best for ’06: Most Creative, Most Inspirational, Best Series, Best Comedy, Musician of the Year, Best Commentary, and Most Adorable Video Ever.
Like in all other annals of life, YouTube’s “best” isn’t the best. Rather, YouTube’s best means Youtube’s most popular, as judged by the users, watchers, fans, haters. Still, it’ll be interesting to see who gets a trophy. (Prediction: The mantelpiece is a combo of the company’s trademark outline of a television topped with rabbit ears – and that’s no euphemism.) Pardon for the brief sidetrack here, but I wonder how much my favorite news outlet, The New York Times, and all other major outlets devote to the event.
Overall, the YouTube Video Awards will be a pleasant – and surely plenty predictable – respite from the hubbub about Google, its $1.65bn investment, Viacom, and the fate of media on the whole in the age of Web 2.0. Perhaps Sunday will be marked with a cheeky copyright infringement-tinged tribute to “The Last Year In YouTube”? I hope so. We sure don’t get enough to chuckle over when it comes to Web video, do we?
