VMAs: Why Following on Twitter Was Far More Important Than Watching The Show

The VMAs made their Brooklyn debut last night, and in the midst of all the chaos and internet target practice over an absolutely irrelevant shitshow of cross-promotion for major-label releases, we realized something: entertainment guru Bob Lefsetz was right. “If it weren’t for Twitter, the show’s ratings would be so low they’d think about canceling it,” Lefsetz wrote in a post on Sunday. 

“You see now it’s no longer about the show itself, but the snark,” he continued. “The people on stage don’t realize they’re fodder for those playing the home game, making fun of everything happening on stage and off. Search Twitter, it’s not pretty. Even youngsters are sneering. And every oldster with a modicum of followers is live tweeting, which proves that the paradigm is done, once you’re afraid of being left out, once you’re leveraging your fan base for personal aggrandizement, we know the whole shebang is history.”

He’s absolutely right. When the following two moments are all anybody are talking about, there’s little room for argument otherwise. First you have the dainty mantis-flower that is Taylor Swift, gussied up like a grandmother, blowtorching her pure-driven innocent persona with the following camera-caught moment of eye-dagger vitriol for her ex in One Direction:

Then you’ve got Miley Cyrus twerking her silly little ass off, like one of the Animaniacs got ahold of some ecstasy and spent a week at an Atlanta strip club:

We were also supposed to be excited about N’Sync reuniting, Dannity Kane kind of reuniting (who?), and Lady Gaga doing… this:

But it’s just not happening. Nobody cares about Lady Gaga anymore, no matter how many different insane costume stunts she pulls. The music world has collectively called bullshit, because the spectacle eclipsed the quality. It’s become the norm, the standard at the VMAs – go big and flashy, get completely fucking ridiculous, or go home. Unless Kanye West performing in near-total darkness is your thing, that is…

In the end, Katy Perry’s show-closing performance under the Brooklyn Bridge didn’t move the needle. Kanye barely hit the radar, and Drake, well… he had other things on his mind, apparently.

At the end of it, next year when we look back on this year’s VMAs, only two things will stand out in our minds: Taylor Swift throwing shade and Miley twerking like an oversexed spring breaker who just discovered that she can do some exciting new stunts with her butt. The buzz-feeding spectacle is what matters at the VMAs, not the music, not the choreographed mess of gyration and canned excitement. Disagree? Try to remember any of the winners from 2009’s “I’ma Let You Finish” dramafest. No? How about any winners from last year?

Legacy!

You’re welcome, internet.

Miley Cyrus at the 2013  MTV Video Music Awards

Thanks to Mashable’s excellent VMAs gif collection for the visuals!