Grumpy Cat beat out “Gangnam Style,” the Harlem Shake and goats that yell like humans to take the Meme of the Year award at the 17th Annual Webby Awards in New York City Tuesday night.
The awards ceremony celebrated the best of the web, social media and online video and featured awardees giving five word-long acceptance speeches.
In presenting Grumpy Cat as Meme of the Year, comedian and Webby Awards host Patton Oswalt joked about a cat winning the award for the second year in a row: “Given that last year’s meme winner was Nyan Cat, I think that it’s safe to say that the internet is run by shut-in cat ladies.”
Besides honoring the Meme of the Year, The Webby Awards honored Steve Wilhite with a Lifetime Achievement Award for inventing the GIF file format, which is a staple of memes and Tumblr today. In his acceptance speech, Wilhite emphasized the proper way of pronouncing GIF: “It’s pronounced ‘Jif’ not ‘Gif.'”
Other Special Achievement awardees at this year’s Webby Awards included Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti for their roles as executive producers of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” Canadian musician Grimes as Webby Artist of the Year, Frank Ocean as Webby Person of the Year, Jerry Seinfeld for Outstanding Comedic Performance and Obama for America 2012 for Webby Breakout of the Year.
The Webby Awards announced most of the awardees April 30 and here is the breakdown of winners in the Online Film & Video and Social categories:
Online Film & Video
Best Animation – “Dumb Ways To Die” PSA video.
Best Editing – PBS Idea Channel
Best Individual Performance – Funny or Die’s “Charlize Theron Gets Hacked”
Best Use of Interactive Video – UNIT9’s “The Trip”
Best Web Personality/Host – Mike Rugnetta of PBS Idea Channel
Best Writing – Stun Creative’s “Presidential Clippings”
Branded Entertainment Long Form – Pereira & O’Dell’s “The Beauty Inside”
Branded Entertainment Scripted – Deutsche Telekom AG’s “Move On”
Branded Entertainment Short Form – Red Bull Stratos
Branded Entertainment Unscripted – Google+ Stories: Virtual Photo Walks
Comedy: Individual Short or Episode – Funny or Die’s “The Wire: The Musical”
Comedy: Long Form or Series – “Burning Love”
Documentary: Individual Episode – “The Roper”
Documentary: Series – ESPN’s “30 for 30 Short Film Series”
Drama – Pereira & O’Dell’s “The Beauty Inside”
Entertainment (Channel) – Pitchfork.tv
Events & Live Webcasts – Red Bull Stratos
Experimental & Weird – “The Last Goodbye”
How-to & DIY – iVillage’s “My Best Idea”
How-to & DIY (Channel) – HGTV Remodels’ House Counselor
Music – Sigur Ros “Fjogur Piano”
News & Information (Channel) – HuffPost Live
News & Politics: Individual Episode – VICE Media’s “The Mexican Mormon War”
News & Politics: Series – Vice News
Public Service & Activism – “Shocking Animal Cruelty at Tyson Foods Supplier”
Public Service & Activism (Channel) – The Uncultured Project
Reality – “Hope Stories”
Sports – GE Pulse
Technology – “The Endgaget Show”
Travel & Adventure – “The Vagabond Project”
Variety – Amoeba Music’s “What’s In My Bag?”
Variety (Channel) – TED
Video Remixes/Mashups – PBS’s “Mister Rogers Remixed: Garden of Your Mind”
Viral – “Dumb Ways To Die”
Social
Celebrity/Fan – Gaga’s Workshop
Customer Service – McDonald’s Canada “Our Food. Your Questions.” Campaign
Education – TED
Entertainment – Metropole Tweetphony
Experimental & Innovation – Curators of Sweden
Native Advertising – Pepsi NEXT: The Extra Hour
News & Information – The New York Times
Overall Social Presence – NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover Social Media
Promotions & Contests – Old Spice Social Strategist
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