About

Everything is Terrible! is a video blog that archives and curates a large collection of edited VHS tape recordings from the 1980s and 1990s. The blog hosts a wide range of analog video footage from infomercials and educational programs to public service announcements and various clips taken from TV shows and films released in the late 20th century.

History

In an interview with NPR^[8], Everything Is Terrible co-founder Dimitri Simakis revealed that he started the project with several classmates from Ohio University in early 2000. During the cold winter months, the group would meet to play the most absurd VHS tapes they could find from video stores, garage sales and flea markets. On December 8th, 2007, Simakis and friends launched the website EverythingIsTerrible.com^[1] while living in Chicago, Illinois. The first post featured a video containing YouTube poop edited clips from the 1990 horror film It.

DVD Releases

On June 20th, 2009, a compilation of VHS clips was released in a DVD titled Everything is Terrible!: The Movie. On July 20th, 2010, a second compilation DVD titled 2Everything2Terrible2: Tokyo Drift (shown left) was released. On February 13th, 2011, the blog released the movie Doggie Woggiez Poochie Woochiez (shown right), which was composed entirely of video clips featuring dogs.

Jerry Maguire Tapes

On January 9th, 2010, Everything Is Terrible^[22] published a blog post titled "Give Us Your Jerrys (And Other Tapes)", which asked readers to send over any VHS copies of the 1996 romantic comedy film Jerry Maguire. On January 15th, 2012, Everything is Terrible uploaded a similar message to the video art community Vimeo, asking viewers to send the VHS tapes of the film to their Chicago-based post office box.

Festival

The first Everything is Terrible Festival was held from August 28th to August 29th in 2010, hosted by comedian Rob Schrab and featuring guest star appearances from other filmmaking and archivist collectives like TV Carnage, Waverly Films, Black Magic Roller Coaster. The second festival was held from June 30th to July 4th in 2011 and was hosted by the American metal singer-songwriter Andrew W.K.

Traffic

As of May 10th, 2012, Everything Is Terrible has an Alexa^[5] rank of 420,886, a Compete^[6] rank of 146,941 and a Quantcast^[7] rank of 918,116. The Everything is Terrible Facebook page has received 10,803 likes and the Twitter^[3] account has accumulated 3,428 followers.

Reception

On December 29th, 2008, the Internet humor blog Rump Roast^[21] published a post titled "Everything is Terrible", which called the site "hilarious" and featured several embedded videos. On July 8th, 2009, the film and music blog A.V. Club^[20] published an article about the site, which questioned whether repurposing old footage could be considered art or should even be deemed ethically sound. On April 27th, the Chicago Tribune^[13] published an article titled "Everything is Terrible blogs tales of terrible tapes", reporting that the site was largely unnoticed before posting a rejuvenation-mask infomercial (shown left) in May of 2009. On April 19th, 2010, the tech blog Wired^[16] published an article titled "Screen: Video Scavengers Spin Cultural Slang Into Comedy Gold", which lauded the site's infomercial montage titled "Infomercial Hell" (shown right).

The site has a page on the pop culture reference site TV Tropes^[4], which described the videos posted on the website as "so bad it's good."

Notable Examples

Maryjean Ballner

On August 19th, 2009, Everything Is Terrible^[9] published a video titled "Your Cat Wants a Massage?" (shown left), which featured footage from a cat massage instructional video by author Maryjean Ballner.^[10] On December 9th, Ballner appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, during which she performed a live demonstration of cat massage (shown right). In less than three years, the original cat massage video received over 2,300,000 views.

Search Interest

External References