With the dual promises of high-profile live performances and no host to openly revile, last night’s MTV Video Music Awards scored the highest ratings and biggest audience of anything in MTV history. Some 12.4 million viewers tuned in last night to see Lady Gaga act like a weird Italian guy and Beyoncé cradle her uterus, which not only overshadows everything else that’s ever aired on MTV—even that one special where they roasted and ate Martha Quinn live, and Tabitha Soren draped herself in the entrails to “absorb her essence”—it also makes it the biggest non-sports cable telecast of the year so far. Which is a lot of qualifiers, but still. Of course, these record-high ratings shouldn’t be much of a surprise, given how many people apparently tuned into the VMAs just so they could crack sarcastic jokes about it on Twitter.