David Bowie Wins A Webby
The Webby awards are possibly the biggest award that a website can hope to win – apart from a Metro/Ask Best Of British Blogs Award, obviously, which are smaller and far less well-known but are better because we've won one of them.
But despite not being as good as any awards that we've won, the winners of the 11th annual Webby awards were revealed this week. The Webbys – or the 'Oscars of the Internet' as somebody probably called them once – handed out awards to the BBC, eBay, Flickr and David Bowie among others. We'd like to offer our hearty congratulations to all the Webby winners, while simultaneously consoling www.dirtypregnantschoolgirlslags.com, which was tragically shut out by the judging panel yet again.
The Webby awards have been around for 11 years – a fact that's slightly amazing when you consider that 11 years ago the internet only consisted of a bomb-making tutorial and a picture of Cindy Crawford in a bra that took 19 days to download. But since they've been around for so long, the Webbys have earnt themselves a much-envied position of authority. In fact, the Webbys are so well respected that they can even award Prince a Webby without anyone sniggering too much.
This year the Webby awards decided to show their appreciation to another rock star who adopted the internet before anyone else – David Bowie. David Bowie has been given the Lifetime Achievement Webby for starting up BowieNet in 1998 in order to charge fans to read second-rate Laughing Gnome jokes from a flickering screen, or something.
It's not known whether David Bowie will attend the Webby award ceremony in New York next month or whether he'll be too busy trying to beat his weird SpongeBob SquarePants addiction, but this is what the Webby website had to say about him:
The rock icon and Internet visionary will be honored for his legendary career that has pushed the boundaries of art and technology. From Ziggy Stardust to BowieNet, the seminal Internet service provider he launched in 1998 — where Mr. Bowie encouraged fans to do everything from contribute to song lyrics, download exclusive singles and even remix his own music — to BowieArt, an innovative Website that connects the next generation of visual artists with art collectors worldwide.
Other Webby winners include lonelygirl15, Flickr, The Onion and, um, Volvo. hecklerspray would be sad that we weren't able to add to our award tally with a Webby award, but we noticed that 'the eBay community' won a Webby. Since we once bought an ill-fitting second-hand shirt from a bloke in Doncaster through eBay once, that kind of makes us the winner too. We've won a Webby! We've finally won! In your face, other non-Webby winning websites!
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You people are freaking crazy. I love it.