JOPLIN, Mo. — At the time, it’s unlikely anyone recognized the moment for what it was -- a game changer. After all, a cover by a little-known band from Austin, Texas, climbing to No. 12 on the Alternative Songs chart is hardly notable.

But even if it it didn’t dominate radio in the summer of 2000, Dynamite Hack’s novelty cover of Eazy-E’s 1987 single “Boyz-N-the-Hood” hit at exactly the right time, in the middle of Napster’s heyday, at the dawn of Internet 2.0.

In their own humble way, the members of Dynamite Hack were trailblazers whose idea to turn a groundbreaking rap single into a smirking acoustic pop song would, in the hands of other artists, multiply into a million Facebook shares and e-mailed links from your cool aunt.

In the music video for Dynamite Hack’s version of “Boyz-N- the-Hood,” the band, dressed in aggressively preppy attire, play for a party full of jubilant white people in a mansion before hitting the links for a rowdy round of golf.

The humor, the theoretical existence of which I’ll grant for the sake of description, is clearly supposed to come from the cognitive dissonance of clean-cut white guys surrounded by symbols of wealth singing a gangsta rap song about life in an impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood.

There had been novelty rap songs before that had fun with similar expectations, but Dynamite Hack was the first to presage the modern deluge of white people performing “serious” and/or “hilarious” acoustic versions of popular urban radio songs.

I remember as a teenager downloading the song on Napster, where Dynamite Hack would often be mislabeled as The Gourds -- whose bluegrass version of Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” gained popularity because of the ease of file sharing -- or the Barenaked Ladies.

The fact that no one could remember their names goes to the heart of what makes these covers so perfect for the one-and-done social media age.

Their tired conceit falls well short of clever, but if performed with enough competence, this inherent glibness becomes a virtue.

In a social economy built on “likes,” what better commodity to waste three minutes of your time than a song whose appeal is roughly analogous to a video where a cat does something surprisingly un-cat like?

I have no doubt that if YouTube had been around at the time, Dynamite Hack’s version of “Boyz-n-the-Hood” would’ve gone viral.

“Hey, get a load of this cat sitting on this guy’s head like a hat! Hey, check out this white guy playing acoustic guitar and singing, ‘About to go and damn near went blind/Young n****z in the path throwin’ up gang signs!’”

Even so, after Dymanite Hack, other artists quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Ben Folds recorded a cover of Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t S***,” reinterpreting it as a somber piano ballad with all the salty language intact.

“Bitches Ain’t S***” quickly became a live staple for Folds, and while misogyny is certainly one of rap’s most persistent and egregious problems, I don’t think smug white privilege is the corrective. Regardless, the song sold enough digital downloads that it landed on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Folds’ highest-charting solo hit.

Now the trend has reached its peak with Karmin, a boy-and-girl duo who looked like they stepped out of a chewing gum commercial and became famous last year by releasing a series of videos where they studiously performed hits such as Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” Chris Brown’s “Look at Me” and Lil Wayne’s “6 Foot 7 Foot,” racking up millions of views. They’ve in turn earned a record deal and will be the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” tomorrow.

If “adorkable” was a musical genre, Karmin would be its flagship band. Amy Heidemann handles the rapping and sings most of the hooks, sometimes while strumming an acoustic guitar, while her fiance Nick Noonan plays piano.

Heidemann sounds like an alternate universe Eliza Dolittle who, already in possession of perfect diction, went to Henry Higgins to learn how to say all the words of modern rap verses quickly and precisely. (Her tendency to mug, I’m assuming, is inborn.)

The duo’s performances have all the personality of a high school show choir’s breakout stars. But, credit where credit is due, while YouTube is lousy with white kids doing similar covers, Karmin rose to the top.

I suspect most of these people, Karmin included, genuinely admire the originals, but the effect is kind of like if the Rolling Stones had, instead of wanting to emulate their rhythm and blues idols, simply covered Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry songs in the style of Perry Como.

I’m perplexed that there’s not only an audience for this, but one that seems to prefer these covers over the originals.

It’s like only reading the cheap novelizations of comic books or liking graffiti art if its reproduced in the style of a Thomas Kinkade watercolor. Who knew there was an audience that wants the raw language and slang of hip-hop but performed by “Glee”-style singers and the Free Credit Report Band?

Well, Dynamite Hack did. But considering the first time I saw the Free Credit Report Band I wondered if they actually might be Dynamite Hack -- they weren’t -- the shelf-life for any particular purveyor of this kind of thing isn’t long.

Unless Karmin proves to have longevity. If they do, I hope they respect their elders by performing a cover of Dynamite Hack’s cover of “Boyz-n-the-Hood.”