About
“Hear What You Want” Parodies are video parodies of a series of commercials for Beats brand headphones in which various professional sports players use a pair of headphones to ignore being harassed by mobs of angry sports fans.
Origin
On November 24th, 2013, Beat by Dre released a commercial titled “Hear What You Want” in which professional basketball player Kevin Garnett dons a pair of Beats headphones to drown out the sound of fans of a rival team throwing taunts at him with the song “The Man” by Aloe Blacc playing in the background (shown below, left). On December 8th, the Beats by Dre YouTube channel uploaded a second “Hear What You Want” commercial, in which American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick uses a pair of Beats headphones to ignore insults by a mob of angry rivals (shown below, right).
Spread
On March 25th, 2014, the Comedy Central YouTube channel uploaded a “Hear What You Want” parody for the Internet comedy show Tosh.0, in which Daniel Tosh wears a pair of Beats headphones to ignore protestors while taking his girlfriend to an abortion clinic (shown below, left). Within two weeks, the video garnered upwards of 690,000 views and 550 comments. On April 3rd, Redditor freshestpr1nce submitted the parody to the /r/videos[1] subreddit, where it accumulated over 12,100 up votes and 990 comments in the first 24 hours.