Rick Sanchez To Host Twitter Writing Awards. Also There Are Twitter Writing Awards. Please Kill Us.

Rick Sanchez, who talks on the teevee for CNN while getting material from his Twitter followers, has been tapped to host an awards show February 11th in Brooklyn called The Shorty Awards. Before you think this is a sexist award from hip-hoppers to their flyest video ho’s, it’s not. It’s an actual writing award for people who Twitter. Wait for it… wait for it…THERE it is. The sound of literacy dying.

“You can pack a lot of punch,” said Greg Galant, [of Sawhorse Media] who is overseeing the awards. “Each of the 10 Commandments is under 140. Ben Franklin’s aphorism are under 140. Fifty short ‘Twits’ can be worth more than a 500-word story hours after the event.” 

So true. Rick let all his fans know last night by–what else?–Twittering them. So, even though voting is closed they can still check out the list of the nominees and RSVP for the event at the Shorty Awards website. Turns out there are 26 user generated (of course) categories including topics like “Advertising,” (Peggy Olson from Mad Men is nominated), “Business”, “Food”, “Humor” and just about anything you can possibly imagine people Twittering incessantly about in annoying 140-word bites. Including a category called “Weird” where one of the nominee’s last Tweets was, “er’body say “MOLDY DICK.” Rick is totally getting paid by Twitter for this, right?