As my last post on money, envy, and New Yorkers noted, I worry that the creeping culture of celebrity and consumerism is slowly winding its tentacles around the Valley.

There’s no greater sign of this than the trend towards personality-driven feuds between bloggers, which, despite a patina of respectability, are no different in principle than the latest Paris Hilton-Lindsay Lohan “firecrotch” bitchslap.

And like said celebrity feuds, I can’t help but wonder if these contretemps are staged by the combatants’ flacks, just to attract more ink.

For example, take the extended fracas between Web 2.0 kingmaker Mike Arrington and gossip impresario Nick Denton. After Denton’s gossip rag Valleywag shifted its coverage from its original staple of “Executive Wife Hot Or Not” to Web 2.0 coverage, the virtual tabloid has been beating Arrington like a drum, with a seemingly endless series of scathing posts.

Not to be outdone, Arrington fired back on TechCrunch by writing about Denton’s inability to outdo his own alleged Nemesis, Jason Calacanis.

Personally, I’m pretty sure all of these conflicts are part of a master plan to suck in coverage. And sadly, it seems to be working, as this post demonstrates.

But, I finally have a smoking gun–visual proof of Arrington and Denton’s true relationship!* Take a look for yourself:

I do like happy endings.

* Obviously, this is not actually a real video…but it could be!