Chris Rock once remarked that the world had truly gone crazy when Eminem became the best rapper, Tiger Woods the best golfer and Yao Ming the tallest player in the NBA.
It's similarly befuddling that, on Wednesday in Las Vegas, a hackers' 'Oscars' ceremony took place at the Black Hat USA computer security conference. The awards were founded in 2007 and are dubbed the Pwnies, pronounced 'ponies' (pwned is hacker slang for being controlled, or 'owned', by a hacker).
They recognise the great and the good of a year of hacking as well as the 'epic fails', usually committed by corporations with a cack-handed approach to cybersecurity.
The Pwnies come at a time when hackers, once shadowy and secretive, have come out of the basement and revel in their feats, daring and, lest we forget, crimes.
Global corporations and entire governments are left quaking in their cyberboots at the prospect of another assault on their servers, databases and websites.
It's a rather absurd turn of events and arguably the equivalent of Wall Street honouring its denizens with awards for 'best act of swindling the public purse' or 'best toxic asset repackaged as a top-rated investment'.