Ad Age reports (via) that Silverman might take over CollegeHumor at the behest of Barry Diller, who bankrolls both CollegeHumor and Silverman's new online venture. Van Veen, meanwhile. is transitioning out of CollegeHumor and into his own Diller-funded media startup, Notional, which sounds a lot like Silverman's Electus (both have something to do with online video production).

We're told Silverman and Van Veen have been working very closely together and talking to each other every day. Perhaps a grander merger is in the works that would combine Electus, Notional and CollegeHumor into one venture. Silverman may have been ousted from old media, but he could still be lord of the new media flies. Especially within a venture that actually celebrates a refusal to mature, an inability to grow emotionally and a proclivity for partying to excess. Those are Ben Silverman's specialties, right there.

(Pics: via Getty, Webbyist)

Remember in The September Issue how Shaffer made a big deal about how she didn't want to work at a fashion magazine? Well, now she's not working in fashion, nor is she working at a magazine. Actually, the frat boys at College Humor are about as far from the socialites of Vogue as Shaffer could get. Maybe this is just a phase, like the time when we painted our nails all black and decided to become a vegetarian. It must be, because the Columbia Graduate was looking for a job in theater, but that mustn't have pissed mommy off enough. Hope fetching Van Veen's coffee is worth it!

Diller will play sugar daddy to Notional; the IAC chairman will fold it into his ConnectedVentrues division, alongside CollegeHumor.com. The video content will be similar — cheap to make, zeitgeisty — but on television proper rather than the Web. Read: Potentially more lucrative. Reports PaidContent:

The focus will be unscripted programming, broader than comedy aimed at young males that they have been known for, and will include all genres.

Van Veen will report directy to Diller. The elder mogul has run Paramount, Fox and USA Broadcasting and no doubt relishes the chance to bestow his knowledge on an adoring young acolyte. One imagines Diller might become something of a father to Van Veen. Or perhaps more like a stepfather.

(Pic: Van Veen, by Nick Gray)

If you haven't already read Carr's piece, and we highly suggest that you do, here's the gist of it: One night last week, Carr went out to two parties in the city. One was the New York Observer's farewell to longtime editor Peter Kaplan, the other was an Internet Week-themed event hosted by Guest of a Guest and College Humor. What Carr reported on in his story were basically his thoughts and feelings as he experienced them stepping into these two seemingly diametrically opposed parts of the modern media world on the same night.

The two parties and the people who inhabited them could not have been more different existing within the same ecosystem. The Observer party for Kaplan was held at a swanky Fifth Avenue locale in Midtown, the Century Club, that's long been a favorite haunt of big name New York City writers and journalists. The other party, the Guest of a Guest/College Humor party, was held on the rooftop of a chic hotel, the Hotel on Rivington, on the Lower East Side.

At the Observer party, Carr made note of the "aura of elegy" that seemed to be hanging in the room over the course of the night. At the Guest of a Guest/College Humor party, Carr noted that there was "no elegy on the roof deck of the hotel, only thumping techno, a hot tub and hordes of young people staring at the lights of Midtown in the distance."

Again, two opposite worlds existing within the same ecosystem feeding off the same food sources, one which appears to be dying slowly with each passing day, the other growing and thriving rather vibrantly.

We highlight David Carr's column today not for any reason other than it struck us as a simple but poignant portrait of the state of media today. We felt sort of moved by it, and we can easily see it being something that will be read in the future as a sort of stick in the historical water showing exactly where the tide of the media world was at this moment in time. It was, we think, an incredibly accurate and somewhat moving snapshot.

With all of that said, we have to add that reading Carr's piece made us feel a bit sad. As we write this, we're surrounded by remnants of the old media world. Strewn all about the floor around us are copies of the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Daily News, not to mention the latest copies of Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker, as well as a couple of recently purchased books. We love all of these things, we love the way they feel to the touch and the way we feel inside when we touch them, and each day we try to wrap our brains around life without them, but we just can't seem to do it. On the flip side, we're completely ingrained into the tapestry of the internet, the very beast most often credited for the ongoing decimation of the old media world, so we obviously have a huge stake in the survival of the new media world as well.

In short, we're torn over all of this. We wish we were smart enough to come up with a solution that would allow both worlds to coexist and thrive, but we just can't seem to do it, nor does anyone else seem to have a viable answer at this point. We also realize that things die and that these things dying is hard to accept and is often the cause of tremendous grief, even though the death of these things usually means that some other things will be granted lives. Regardless of how hard it is to accept the possible outcomes, it will certainly be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the future.

The one thing we are sure of is this—-That David Carr, though we don't always agree with him, is one of the best around at chronicling what is taking place right now within the modern media ecosystem.

In One City, Two Soirees Ages Apart [New York Times]

The basically gay mogul was surrounded by a bunch of gurgling, drunken youngsters last night, so he acquitted himself the best way he knew how: by making light of his age during his little speech. Our brave commandant, Nick Denton, urged someone who was filming Diller's remarks to focus on his feet, stuffed lightly into loafers and doing some twinkly-toed tap-a-tap-a's. He's all business and old man gruff from the waist up, but downtown it's all a fabulous party.

We're not really sure why we're posting this other than it's funny that Nick successfully encouraged someone to film Barry Diller's feet for a minute or two.

Everyone else is robots. [Nick McGlynn]

CollegeHumor co-conspirator Jakob Lodwick eyes the talent. [Nick McGlynn]

"The humor went that way." [Kate Miltner]

Our fearless leader, Nick Denton. [Nick McGlynn]

The boys' shadowy benefactor, IAC honcho Barry Diller, makes Humor founder Ricky van Veen blush. Sadly, we don't have video of the way those feet move. [Nick McGlynn]

Julia Allison dances while former Gawker intern Neel Shah looks on. We're told Miss Julia complained that Gawker ruined her life and that she was wearing big snow boots (see below), having freshly arrived from Davos. [Kate Miltner]

Twins? [Nick McGlynn]

It goes there. [Nick McGlynn]

Dance, dance! They threw nickels at their feet! [Kate Miltner]

Julia and some other blogger girls. [Nick McGlynn]

Bespectacled partygoers. [Kate Miltner]

This is Noah. He took a picture of himself every day for six years. [Nick McGlynn]

These two bros were everywhere. [Nick McGlynn]

CollegeHumorist Amir Blumenfeld with a ladyfriend. [Nick McGlynn]

Barry Diller with young men. [Nick McGlynn]

Dreama Walker (Hazel from Gossip Girl) with her crew. [Nick McGlynn]

Julia attempts to get revenge on Chairman Denton for her ruining. Goodnight. [Nick Glynn]

• We first met Ricky and his gang of post-collegiate compatriots back in '04. They were running a website. Same one!
• Barry Diller's IAC bought a controlling stake in CollegeHumor in the summer of 2006. Worth like $20-30 million, not bad!
• They put out a couple books, and had parties.
• Ricky used to go out with the great "I stopped reading Gawker after she left" Jessica Coen. This led to some rather tawdry humor.
• Ricky drove a Prius.
• He likes to philosophize about gossip.
• He speculated somebody would murder a Gawker writer sooner or later. Hasn't happened yet, but that's probably because you have to walk up four flights of stairs to get to our new office.
• He, like, personally invented the Shocker!
• He played a small role in the invention of Julia Allison.

Overall, not that interesting, I have to admit. But hey, these guys are not even in college, but somehow managed to hustle a rich dude out of millions to prop up their website, which is a nice trick. They do make some funny videos, this one in particular. Here's a video promo for their MTV show, watch it, why don't you? And also the MTV show, you can watch that, I guess. Though in my personal experience, going "Behind the scenes" at a company that makes a wacky website is far less interesting than you might imagine.

CollegeHumor's clips are occasionally brilliant; they can earn their links through merit, not pageview payola. I'd hope they'd apply the same principle to us. We may be leaving money off the table, but something about this scheme's method of keeping score rubs me the wrong way. I'll hold onto the hope that this is CollegeHumor's most elaborate prank yet, and I've been taken in.

Update: The joke really is on me. CollegeHumor's Josh Abrahamson writes to inform me that through our publisher, Gawker Media, Valleywag's been participating in this program since last summer. I'm going to go take a bath now.

A 2008 study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds:

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area - posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.

So for now, guys, stick to the videos. Though we'll be coming for those next.

So we did only what had to be done. As the local outpost of a Valley institution, we took on CollegeHumor's best and beeriest where Facebook would not. We are pleased to announce, readers, that with our dazzling ping-pong ball throwing skills, Valleywag handily defeated CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen's minions. (In perhaps related news, some employees of our parent company, Gawker Media, participated in a larger beer-pong tournament against CollegeHumor and emerged much less victorious, but much more drunk.)

"We had a feast and all turned out well," reports CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen, who described the buffet as "pizzas, mozz sticks, and wings". Nobody tell Facebook's ex-Google chef Josef Desimone, though, as we have a sneaking opinion the mozzarella wasn't organic and locally sourced from within a 100-mile radius. (Photo by Ricky Van Veen)

Facebook's PR and Legal dept said they can't participate. I guess that's what its like working in corporate America as opposed to a fun Internet company.

Dear Facebook, Looking forward to Thursday. Your winning percentage will be even lower than your click-through rates. Love, CollegeHumor