This Is the Beginning of the End...

...isn't it? Whenever a new medium decides to celebrate itself with its own awards show, it's trotting down the jolly road to self-satisfied middle age.

I mean, isn't YouTube already its own self-ratifying awards system? You can immediately access a constantly updated list of the most-watched videos at the site, and the videos are already rated by the users. I suppose you could come up with an equation to multiply number of views times number of stars awarded -- quantity times quality -- but someone could write up the code for that in a few hours, slap it up on the site, and spare us the whole red carpet. Otherwise, we're in for a whole lot of this:

Sigh. If you do want to check out the first YouTube Awards nominees, be my guest. I guess such is the way of all media revolutions. Everybody starts out wanting to be Leon Trotsky; everybody ends up wanting to be Jack Valenti.