Everything is Terrible Take Seattle

What do you call what you do? Internet archeology? When you try to explain EIT to people, what do you say?

It is never easy to explain. I always say that we do collage art.

It's like comedic anthropology in some ways.

Yeah, for sure.

Is there a sweet spot for videos, timewise? I heard one of your crew say it was from the mid to late 80s to the early 90s. It seems like there's kind of a cultural fascination with that period and particularly with that video aesthetic. I'm thinking of things like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which is basically a a pastiche of watching hours of bad local TV from that period.

Yeah, Tim and Eric are obviously big fans of the same things as us.
We all have different answers for the "sweet spot" question. Late 80s to early 90s is usually my answer.

One of my big complaints with how people view what we do is that they think it's something that's past, and that we've all grown up as a culture. I always try to stop people and point out that we're still doing the things we're pointing out. I don't think we've evolved that much.

There's a lot of unspoken pathos in the videos. Like, a lot of time, you can tell that the scripts and goals are so bad that there's no way for the actor's boredom to show through. And other times, the actors are so intertwined with the material that they're wearing their sincerity on their sleeves. I know you're looking for comedy when you screen your videos, but do you ever find yourself with any unexpected reactions?

I feel compassion and understanding and just bad for everyone involved. Most of the time, it's not just one mistake, or one person's mistake. It's a cultural mistake. You're dealing with people who are so deep in there's no turning back - people who can't see the edge of the forest at all.

There are things that are so amazing, that we've found and haven't posted. And we don't really talk about the reasons - usually they're too bad, or too wonderful. I have five tapes that I have in a pile that I won't post, because they're too amazing.

These are things that don't fit the tone of the website?

I think so. One of our biggest problems is convincing people that we're not mean, that we're actually really excited about these videos. I think we're pretty nice guys, which is lost on people sometimes. I feel like we're always treading line where we're talking about these videos, and saying what we want to say about our culture, but not in a way that's hurtful.

So you're laughing at the media, but not maliciously?

Well, I feel malicious towards our media and our culture, but towards the individuals, I feel nothing but compassion, and it's hard to balance that sometimes.

I've seen VHS culture compared to vinyl culture, but that comparison only holds up in that both are aficionados of a dead or dying format. I seems like the defining feature of things that never migrated to DVD is that it's just bad. What makes a movie capital T Terrible as opposed to "bad"?

Well, I guess it's the difference between mediocre and terrible. Mediocrity's everywhere - and we find so much mediocre stuff - and then we find things that we find horribly funny and horribly entertaining, things that are terrible, they're so bad.

What are the audience responses when you do the live shows?

It's interesting. It's always been the case with the live shows, that you get reactions to the things you don't expect. People seem really happy and seem to have a good time. It's not a bunch of angry people who are pale and sit behind their computers 9 hours a day! A lot of people are horrified by some of the stuff, though, which is also good.

Check out some of their curated videos at Central Cinema tonight at 7:00 p.m., and be sure to follow their blog.