Terra Naomi with her heartbreaking Say It's Possible won best music video here. That's a wonderful choice. The song has got a sustained ache to it, and the visual setup for the video — the singer at the guitar crowding the camera, before an unused keyboard — is painterly, in the tradition of the best YouTube bedroom guitar videos. (Unlike the funny OK Go guys on their treadmills; I like their pluck, but it's too MTV for YouTube.) With the look of a young Keith Richards, Terra Naomi is the only girl cool enough to make the cut in the YouTube awards.
The pity of these awards is ultimately that they might be some people's first contact with YouTube. That would be sad. My words of advice for people new to YouTube: Forget awards, and forget hip.
Instead, follow your pre-Internet interests to vintage film on YouTube, and that will lead you to video commentary, parodies and community. For starters, why not track down Ernest Hemingway with a man-size marlin, Shirley Verrett as Lady Macbeth, interviews with Sigmund Freud or color film from the Korean War?
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