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Jenna Marbles in Please Subscribe

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*Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera and Friends Create a YouTube Channel
*Our Profile of YouTube Star Jenna Marbles
*Our YouTube Issue

Some people like to have only egg whites in their omelet," declares a tomboyish young woman as she weaves around a sparsely appointed L.A. apartment kitchen, her words intermittently slurred by inebriation. "That's a good way to make an omelet shitty." After a few non sequiturs laced with tongue-in-cheek cooking tips, she blurts out: "You ever feel like your cat is judging you?"

If it sounds random, well, it is. But this Web series starring Hannah Hart, better known by her YouTube handle My Drunk Kitchen, has earned a half-million subscribers and a staggering 45 million views.

Then there's the baby-faced Venice resident with a smattering of facial hair. He plays a Brazilian, soccer-inspired song on empty soda cans, simultaneously managing to bang out multiple rhythms and riff on both a bass guitar and a couple of wooden guitars.

He is Joe Penna, better known as Mystery Guitar Man, and he has 2.3 million subscribers and more than 300 million total views.

He, too, is pretty random.

Still from Michael Lucid's Dirty Girls

In high school, Michael Lucid was an artsy, friendly kid who floated around from one campus clique to the next. "I was more approachable and kids felt comfortable talking to me," he says of his time at Santa Monica's Crossroads School, where he graduated in 1996.

Because Lucid was likeable and trustworthy, his teenage peers granted him the kind of insider access into their lives that most filmmakers only dream about capturing on film. Filmmakers like Larry Clark (Kids, Wassup Rockers), Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen) and Penelope Spheeris (Decline of Western Civilization, Suburbia) all launched their careers by making films that depicted the harsh realities of American teenagers' lives, but Lucid had an advantage over all of these filmmakers: he was himself a high schooler when he shot his gritty, painfully intimate documentary Dirty Girls, which has now become an instant cult sensation ever since it was uploaded to Youtube this month.

Perhaps you've seen the 17-minute film in the roughly two weeks since it's resurfaced on the Internet, 17 years after it was initially shot by a 17-year-old during the course of just two school days. Maybe you've seen the still frame of two messy-haired young girls being interviewed in a high school auditorium -- an image that's become ubiquitous after having been reblogged thousands of times by fans on Tumblr.

Nanette Gonzales

Chris Hardwick hosts the Streamy Awards

The 3rd annual Streamy awards, honoring excellence in original online video, streamed live online (appropriately) Sunday night at the Hollywood Palladium. More than ever before, nominees ran the gamut of new and old media faces from YouTube vlogger Grace Helbig (DailyGrace), who won Personality of the Year and Best First Person Series, to Tom Hanks, whose web series Electric City won Best Animated Show.

Newsman Larry King and YouTube star Jenna Marbles summed up the diversity of artists nicely when they presented the first award together. "Here we are with the legendary icon of entertainment," began Marbles, gesturing to King, "And the sexiest person on the Internet," he added. Then, "You guess which is which." King has his own web series Larry King Now on Hulu. Comedian Chris Hardwick hosted the event, which featured performances by Vanilla Ice, Soulja Boy and Shontelle.

The "annual" in "3rd annual Streamys" isn't quite accurate...yet. The awards premiered in 2009, but in 2010 were thwarted by technical difficulties and unexpected butt-naked streakers. There were also creative conflicts behind the scenes and the IAWTV (International Academy for Web Television) split from the Streamys to create their own web awards show, which had their second annual awards last month.