WEEKLY WHINE

Roll the red carpet away

There now follows a ranking of the least required award ceremonies. Criteria included how little we would miss it if it suddenly went out of business and stopped happening.

1. Webbys: Remember when Al Gore first invented the Internet? Some of the sites you visited had GIF images in the corner: “Winner: The Webby Awards 1999”? Well, those things that you barely cared about back then still exist. And yes, they still charge for nominations.
2. Teen Choice: The Kids Choice Awards are held annually and issue awards to things that youngsters like. Great. All well and good. Now imagine the same thing, but with awards to things that teenagers like. Actual categories that exist include “Choice Movie Hissy Fit”, “Choice Breakup Song”, and “Choice Vampire”. What is more, the whole thing is a sham. Winners are notified before voting actually closes, giving rise to the hashtag “#TeensDontHaveaChoiceAwards”.
3. Clios: Awards for the best advertisements might sound ridiculous and sketchy. And in 1991, they certainly were.
4. ESPYs: Unlike most other award ceremonies, ESPY awards are nowhere near the most prestigious thing that can be won in the relevant line of work. Athletic excellence is determined on the field of play, not by online voting.
5. Screen Actors Guild Awards: Have you ever watched the People’s Choice awards and said to yourself, “These are pretty good, but what if only people who have already been on television or in films could vote”? Have we got the award ceremony for you!
6. Youtube Music Awards: Yes, the world has been begging for an award that was like the MTV Video Music Awards, only more ephemeral.
7. MTV Video Music Awards: Want to see celebrities pick and/or stage fights with one another over awards that have no significance in the larger scheme of things? Well, this is the place.
8. People’s Choice: There is already a way to determine which albums, films, and television programmes are most popular: sales and ratings.
9. VGX Awards: Formerly known as the Spike Video Game Awards, this ceremony seems to care little about the actual awards. Instead, it simply shows demos of video games that have not even been released yet.
10. Billboard Awards: This ceremony issues awards called “Top Digital Song” and “Top Social Artist”, but inexplicably, it fails to issue any awards called “Top Analog Song” or “Top Antisocial Artist”. These egregious errors need to be corrected before we can begin to take this ceremony seriously.
11. Golden Globes: Want to win an Oscar, but your film is a piece of shit? No problem! Fly a few Hollywood Foreign Press Association members to your casino, and watch the Golden Globes roll in!
12. BBC Sports Personality of the Year: This is perhaps the only award that has been won in consecutive years by a cricketer, a horse rider, and a boxer.
13. UEFA Best Player in Europe Award: Before 2007, the Ballon d’Or could be awarded only to footballers on European clubs. It has since been opened up to any player anywhere in the world, but all winners since then have played for clubs in Italy, England, or Spain. Regardless, UEFA still felt the need to create an award to honour the best player in Europe.
14. DICE Awards: Formerly known as the Interactive Achievement Awards, these awards claim to honour the best video games, but in reality, they have failed to do so ever since the Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year category ended.
15. Adult Video News Awards: There are more than a hundred categories of AVN awards [including “Clever Title of the Year” and “Best Non-Sex Performance”], but this is still insufficient. There are simply far too many fetishes to go around: giantess, inflation, and vore are amongst those that are woefully underserved. We’d list some more examples, but then you’d just go and search for them, and you do not want to do that. Seriously. Nina is still sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth, muttering to herself, “How could that all fit in there?”.
16. Emmys: The Emmys lost all credibility in 2008, when Grand Slam failed to win the Outstanding Game/​Audience Participation Show award.
17. Grammys: The Grammys lost all credibility in 1990, when the Masters of Traditional Missouri Fiddling’s Now That’s a Good Tune failed to win the Best Album Notes award.
18. Tonys: Sure, it was probably a good idea at the time. But now, the Tonys give so many awards to musical adaptations of films that they might as well rename themselves the Stage Oscars. The Lion King, Hairspray, and Billy Elliot are just a few recent Best Musical winners.
19. Oscars: The Oscars lost all credibility in 1979, when It’s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House failed to win the Best Animated Short Film award.