If you spend your hours scouring YouTube for hilariously junky infomercials and campily outdated instructional tapes — the sort of clips that look like they were made with little money and zero self-awareness — you already know the site Everything Is Terrible! Launched in Chicago in 2007, Terrible! posts bizarre religious clips, sleazy music videos, and woefully executed children’s programming, all uncovered by a creative coalition of friends who scour thrift stores, Amazon, and eBay in search of pop-culture castoffs that would have otherwise been lost to history. “Even though the site’s called Everything is Terrible!, and we’re a little aware that we sound like assholes, we honestly really do love this stuff,” says co-founder Dimitri Simakis, a.k.a. “Ghoul School.” With Terrible! kicking off a nationwide screening tour this month — and releasing a new DVD compilation, available through their website — we asked Simakis to give us the backstory behind some of the site’s most beguiling discoveries.
