In case there were any question that geek chic is the defining style statement of today, we now have an awards show to celebrate it. It’s called the Webby Awards and it took place last Thursday night, smack in the middle of San Francisco’s old establishment stronghold. That’s right, Nob Hill. Residents in the tony neighborhood were shut out of their local park last night as 3,000 techy hipsters took over the square; dancing, drinking, and partying late into the night all in celebration of that irreverent, jumbled, and now eternally hip, medium – the Web.
Looking for a Miracle
I was lucky enough to be able to finagle a ticket to the event, which, in its fourth and most explosive year, is almost as hard to get into as the Kremlin. For three ticketless months I had vacillated between dismissing the event as an overly promoted suck-fest and just really wanting to be a part of the celebrity-strewn glitz of it all. So when I finally managed to snag a ticket, a mere two days before the event, I donned the proscribed glittery evening dress and waited to see what wackiness would ensue.
In case you don’t know, the Webbys has a lot of celebrity judges. A lot. We’re talking David Bowie, Francis Ford Coppola, Robin Williams, Parker Posey, Patrick Stewart, Kevin Smith, Laurie Anderson, Liz Smith (who I believe is responsible for the Webbys being referred to, ad nauseum, as the "Oscars of the Internet."), Max Azaria, Matt Groening, Sandra Bernhard, Deepak Chopra, Julia Child, Courtney Love, Aimee Mann, and Chuck D. So I was hoping for the chance to rub elbows with some big names, especially Parker Posey, who is on my list of celebrities I’m allowed to sleep with if the opportunity presents itself. And, well, I rubbed elbows with Dr. Dean Edell, a health commentator on a local news station. I’m not sure if he counts or not.
Tina Brown, the former editor-in-chief of "The New Yorker," and current EIC of the drecky magazine "Talk," was at the VIP party before the show, and I considered introducing myself, but became very shy at the last minute. I also considered congratulating the emcee, Scottish actor Alan Cumming, after the show, but again was afflicted with last-minute shyness. "I’m not very star-struck," an attendee coolly told me as I tried to muster the courage to approach Mr. Cumming.
Well, I am.
In Five Words or Less
The show itself was at least a half-hour too long (and it still clocked in at under two hours), and was truly saved only by Mr. Cumming’s charming glibness. The interesting thing about an awards ceremony for Web sites (in 27 categories no less) is that there is little chance, despite a well-publicized nomination process, that any member of the audience has actually seen all of the nominated sites. At the Oscars or Grammies, everyone there has at least a passing familiarity with each work nominated. Not so the Webbys. At times it was exceedingly difficult to wring any applause from the audience. Of course, there were five nominees in each category. That’s 135 separate bouts of applause. No audience should have to work so hard.
As in previous years, the real juice of the show came from the winners and the style in which they delivered their Webby-mandated five word acceptance speeches. The representative from Merriam-Webster Word Central, dragged a dictionary onstage and proceeded to spout off the five longest words she could find in it. The folks from Sports site winner ESPN rollerbladed to the stage. The winner for best personal site, John Halcyon Styn danced onto the stage in a floor length white fur coat and harangued the audience to "Feel the Love!"
And what awards show is complete without someone gushing in a foreign accent? The Webbys had this covered too – thanks to Mahir Cagri, the self-anointed Turkish lover boy whose site I Kiss You!!!! has enjoyed a really freakish popularity.
Tiffany Shlain, the founder and promoter of the Webbys, was in fine form, wearing a dress lined with neon-esque lights and flitting about the after party like a high school prom queen. And Shlain really was the prom queen of the evening, even though her overachievements (she was valedictorian of her UC Berkeley class), her self styling (at 29, after four years devoted entirely to the Webbys, she will tell you that her background is as an independent filmmaker) as a new media artist, and even as a sculptor (would that we could all fill the time so well) are the stuff that makes the regular kids just hate her.
There’s no getting around the fact that she has done a spectacular job making her awards show the one to beat. And in the process she has helped to elevate the Web and Web designers far into the symbiotic worlds of hype and glitz. Plus, even though us Web folk tend to be cynical types, we like a good party, and the Webby Awards is certainly that.
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on May 12, 2000
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