He’s been listening to a song on repeat recently. It was stuff like that.īen: Erik wasn’t usually the prank call antagonist though.Įrik: I guess I'm too timid to do those kinds of things and that kind of stuff.Īmory: But one night, Erik and his buddies are at his house, and he’s up.īen: And he has this idea.
So that was like our original prank call was to call in and say, you know, “go Soviet Union.” Uh, my brother did a call where he was complaining about a pair of khakis that he bought at Kohl's. They'd call in and, you know, like a bunch of girls would cheer together, you know, they'd say, go, you know, go USA.Įrik: There's this school, this consolidated school district called the Unionville Sebring area, and it was called the USA. And there was this call-in show called the postgame show.Įrik: Every Friday night, after all the games, people would just call in and just be like, "my son Trevor did great tonight, you know, thank you, Trevor." And then and then they'd say, "thank you for your call." Like, just nobody said anything. And so we all just kind of grew up in that mindset. I don't know, we were just like a bunch of obviously kids in late teens and stuff just hanging out and coming up with funny things to say and do and stuff like that.Īmory: One of those funny things to say or do, for Erik and his friends at least, was to make prank calls.Įrik: I mean, it was kind of the classic, you know, I hate the jocks thing. When Erik was a bored college kid in Michigan.Įrik: I'm living at home with my parents and I all my friends were like grades below me by that point. I just claim that I have documented evidence of me doing it as a prank, you know, months before it became a thing, which which to me felt like a obviously a bizarre coincidence.īen: A bizarre coincidence. That’s all he’s saying.Įrik: I didn't claim to create it. But Erik has a story, and he has a record of what happened, and the timing is intriguing. There are other theories of how this slice of the internet came about and who invented it. And Erik was there at the beginning.Īmory: We think. And when we say primordial, we mean like, without this thing… the idea of things going viral online would be fundamentally different. He should maybe be famous because he may have had a role in creating something that is one of the primordial parts of the viral internet as we know it. And, you know, like like I just like extremes ultimately.īen: But none of this–which is great!–is why Erik should maybe be famous. And Erik is kind of a special guy.Įrik: I have these songs that are, you know, I feel like pretty heartfelt about like really stupid topics. His creative output on youtube is impressive in its own special way. My internet persona is Hot Dad, and I make what I describe as emotional comedy music.Īmory Sivertson: Not famous. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.īen Brock Johnson: Erik should be famous. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity.
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