The Streamy Awards From the Perspective of a Web Virgin

Michael Moccio ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Editor-in-Chief

As someone who’s never subscribed to a Youtube Channel, it was almost impossible to know what to expect when tuning into the Streamy Awards with the Emertainment Monthly staff. The big takeaway: the content producers that live on the web have a wealth of talent the general populace should tune into more. The Streamy Awards was just a ball of fun, showcasing the best and brightest talent in online video and celebrate their accomplishments.

Grace Helbig and Tyler Oakley hosted the show and set the tone off quickly by thanking parents for being bad at their jobs, since children spend more time watching YouTubers than hanging out with their family. Which is—honestly—so true! It’s that kind of truthful, irreverent humor that made this show so enjoyable. From the announcers to the talent, everyone was consistently so on point with making the audience laugh.

The acceptance speeches stood out the most. From PrankvsPrank’s funny gag when Jeana hit Jesse over the head with a bottle for interrupting during their acceptance speech, to Lily Singh making a shout out about diversity, to the positive messages from King Bach, everyone had something meaningful to contribute.

Even more pleasing was how diverse the Streamy Awards show was compared to other award shows. Whether or not that’s indicative of the voting members who decide the nominees, who knows? It’s more possible that diverse creators are more prevalent on the web because they haven’t been given a chance to break into the mainstream part of the media industry.

Other award shows could learn so much from the Streamy Awards in how to make things more fun. People who haven’t tuned into web, this is a call to start. The lack of recognition shouldn’t be surprising, though, since web has always been a frontier of innovation, mostly untapped. Thinking about the comic book industry, web comic creators have always been pushing the margin of creativity and what’s possible. It’s only been recently that the mainstream industry has taken note and started to take advantage of the talent in the field.

Hopefully, that’s a trend other industries will follow and the web will be an entry point for more diverse creators to reach mainstream audiences.