Imagine someone created an award ceremony for every possible use of paper, with awards for the best supermarket tabloid, the most disingenuous autobiography by a former government official, the most comprehensive bibliography and the best folding for a paper airplane.

That’s what the Webby Awards are like, just substitute the Internet for paper. In a cavernous former bank branch on Wall Street, more than 100 winners in the 12th annual Webby awards trotted to the stage. They were honored in such categories as best home/welcome page, best insurance site and the ever-competitive best self-promotion/portfolio. (Yet another ceremony was held Monday night for Web video awards.)

The whole thing was conducted with the mix of ironic detachment and campy devotion to awards that you would expect from a group of downtown Web designers who check TMZ at every Red Bull break.

The Webby Awards were founded in 1996 by IDG’s now long-defunct The Web magazine and is currently owned by a group of private investors. It is a profit-making venture that charges as much as $475 to enter and earns more from tickets, sponsorships and program ads. At Slate, Jack Schafer dismisses the awards, writing “I’ve heard of mail-order diploma mills that are more exclusive than the Webbys.”

I might add the four-hour affair was singularly disconnected from any of the topics that seem to dominate the Internet world these days. For example, the concept of search was not mentioned. And Google, to pick one company that has been known to create interesting Web sites from time to time, was not represented among the nominees.

You might well call them the “WebOnePointOhsies.”

If the awards had been given in Palo Alto, I might imagine categories for best object to throw at someone on Facebook, best service to tell the world what you’re ordering for lunch, and, new this year, best defense against a trouble-making hedge fund.

I would be remiss in pointing out that some very worthy companies won awards for great work. The winner of the most awards was NYTimes.com (with eight awards), followed by the Onion (seven awards) and then Post Secret, National Geographic and Apple.com (four each).

Despite any griping, the ceremony was an affable affair, hosted by Seth Meyers of “Saturday Night Live,” who provided a quick-witted foil to the stream of earnest entrepreneurs, befuddled executives and assorted eccentrics modeling the latest innovations in thick black eyewear.

As the winners in each category assembled in a curtained-off waiting area, Mr. Meyers rattled off his nominees for runners-up such as, Pimpmygoldfish.com, Doesthismolelookfunny.org and Areyoumydad.gov.

The central gimmick of the program is that each winner must make an acceptance speech of exactly five words. (“If you use four words, the extra word does not roll over to next year,” Mr. Meyers said.)

Here are a few of the highlights. (The people accepting the awards were not named, but I know some of them. If you know any others, send them in.)

For Best Political Blog, Huffington Post (Arianna Huffington): “President Obama sounds good, right.”

For Law, the ABA Journal: “Had we lost, we’d sue.”

For Lifestyle, Epicurious: “The icing on the cake.”

For Pharmaceuticals, Estroven: “Hot flashes are cool, too.”

For Humor, I Can Has Cheezburger? (Ben Huh): “We haz too webbyz? Kthxbai!!1!”

For Mobile News, Mobile New York Times (Jim Roberts): “Please help us monetize this”

Of course, the winner of the Webby Person of the Year, Stephen T. Colbert, crystallized the spirit of the evening, the Internet industry and the national mood in his five words: “Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.”