About

Weber Cooks is a local cooking show that originally aired on Weber State News^[1], a student-run television station out of Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. The show is hosted by Steven Reed and is intended to instruct college students on creating simple meals with a microwave.

Origin

The videos were uploaded to YouTube sometime prior to October 31st, 2012, when a GIF animated excerpt of an episode showing Reed preparing chili and cheese nacho dip was posted to Tumblr.^[4] Though the original linked version has since been taken down, a duplicate version reuploaded on November 28th, 2012 earned more than 280,000 views in less than a week.

Spread

On November 4th, 2012, the same chili and cheese nacho dip episode^[2], as well as a new Rice-A-Roni episode^[3], were submitted to the /r/NotTimandEric subreddit, which prompted a discussion on the resemblance between Weber Cooks and Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s comedic skits,^[5] such as Reed’s unkempt appearance, awkward pauses and heavy breathing.

Reed's videos gained a wider audience after the internet culture blog Nothing To Do With Arbroath^[6] shared a LiveLeak^[7]version of the chili cheese nacho dip video on November 27th, 2012. The same day, several Weber Cooks episodes were posted on Gawker^[8], Laughing Squid^[9], Screen Crush^[10] and Los Angeles Magazine.^[11] Over the next several days, the chili cheese dip video was featured on Reddit^[15], Viral Viral Videos^[12], I Am Bored^[13] and MSN Now.^[14]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References