• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, July 12, 2011

Oh, how typical is this? The winner of Break Media's six-week contest soliciting the best script for a Web video short is about (wait for it) the Web itself. Twenty/thirty-somethings in white button-downs visiting one another's cubicles. Check! Mostly average males, one gorgeous woman. Check! Fan-boy reference to cult fantasy writer (in this case H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos). Check! Oh, look at this latest Web thingie. Check!

It took a few decades for film to become obsessively self-referential, and aside from a brilliant detour early from Ernie Kovacs, TV only dabbles in it. But pretty much from the beginning, Web entertainment has tended to be made by a lot of guys in start-ups that often took as its subject a lot of young guys in startups. How many more cubicles can Web episodic programming stand? Is there a stage for rent in Silicon Valley where Web video producers get cut rates to film there? 

Ah but did you expect Cute-thulhu? The beast that lies dormant within the Internet waiting for too many people to get obsessed with cute animal Web sites is lurking and waiting to surface. In the winner of this contest hosted by Break Media and the screenwriters' community Scripped.com, Evan Kaufman's script for "The Cutest Website" stood out and got produced by Break in a version that launces today at the site. In an ironic twist on the epidemic of cute that has broken out on the Web in recent years (is this the price we pay for years of porn excess?), the demon of adorableness pops from the PC. With cute-as-a-button laser eyes it blasts the pasty-faced cubicle dwellers as they try to race from their maze.

There were more than 300 submissions for the contest, Break says. The panel of judges included actor/director Ed Burns, writer Steven de Souza and members of Break's development team. The company used the contest to underscore its content development efforts of late. It plans to make thousands of original video by the end of this year.

And okay, we admit we kinda liked "The Cutest Website," if only because of its comic excess, at least for one viewing. You don't see adorable cats in frog hats mashed up with H.P. Lovecraft too often, even online. If you are going to make another web comedy about a Web topic, then at least you can have a laser-eyed puppy decimate the place while you are at it.