Supercut.
noun \ˈsü-pər-kət\ — A fast-paced montage of short video clips that obsessively isolates a single element from its source, usually a word, phrase, or cliche from film and TV. Supercut.org collects every known example of the video remix meme.
“Supercuts” are obsessive-compulsive montages of video clips, meticulously isolating every instance of a single item, usually cliches, phrases, and other tropes.
I coined the term in a blog entry on Waxy.org in April 2008, and the name stuck. Since then, the term’s appeared on This American Life, the New York Times, Wired, Time, and many more.
How we got here
Supercut.org is a site dedicated to documenting the cultural phenomenon in a clean, browsable index that anyone can contribute to.
Supercut.org was originally created by Andy Baio and Michael Bell-Smith in 24 hours, as part of Rhizome’s Seven on Seven event in May 2011. Building on top of Andy’s collection, Michael suggested building a randomized supercut composed entirely of supercuts. The result was the SuperSupercut, permanently archived on this site.
Andy redesigned Supercut.org in November 2011, to collect the growing archive of all known supercuts. Mostly, he was just tired of updating his blog entry.
