Chris Hardwick’s show on Comedy Central reintroduced the world to two USC students’ original video.
Fourth-year advertising student Stephen Simmons and third-year anthropology student Scott McFall, along with their friend, made the video five years ago and were surprised to find that it was back in the spotlight. Simmons did not watch the show regularly, but had at the time been listening to podcasts made by Hardwick.
“I’ve just been in a constant state of listening to his voice and listening to him talk to celebrities talk about things,” Simmons said. “It was just weird. This guy that I’d had in my ear talking about all this other stuff suddenly talking about our weird dubstep video, and then calling us 'kind of amazing.'”
Simmons then contacted McFall and informed him of the fact that their video was on television. McFall then sent links to the video to his parents.
“My mom’s words were, ‘This video will never die,'” McFall said.
The video, titled "A Capella Dubstep," has Simmons laying out a steady tone to serve as a bass, and then McFall enters with loud noises and strange faces to create a parody on dubstep.
“We were always in on the joke. It was always supposed to be bad,” McFall said.
Simmons explained that the concept for the video came out of the increasing popularity of both dubstep and a cappella at the time it was made and a desire to poke fun at both of them. Simmons and McFall recall making the video and having difficulty making it through a take without bursting into laughter.
The video appeared during a segment named "AHHH! Cappella," where the show pulls up videos of bad or strange a cappella videos on YouTube.
“I can just see that process of, 'OK, Chris Hardwick show, I wanna do this segment called "AHHH! Cappella." We need to find bad a cappella things,'" Simmons said. "Someone typed in, probably like, 'a cappella weird' or 'a cappella bad,' and then that came up and they were like, ‘Golden.'"
The two would not consider themselves comedians, but they are glad to once again make people laugh with their video. Both students thought Hardwick's use of their video was comedic. They enjoyed jokes about the bowl cut Simmons was sporting, especially the one about "calling their mom the b-word for not buying bagel bites."
“I called my mom that afternoon," Simmons said about the joke. "The first thing she said when she picked up was, ‘I hope you know that I will always buy you bagel bites,’ and I was like, 'Thank you, Mom. Thank you.'”
Simmons then admitted to purchasing his own bagel bites for the first time to commemorate the joke and realized he had no idea what all the hype for them was about.
“Between pizza rolls and bagel bites, [pizza rolls] is the one to do,” Simmons said. “The message we want to convey is, 'Don’t buy bagel bites, and bowl cuts are still in.'”
Simmons still makes videos in his spare time for his own channel, "Seven."