Move aside, student barbers: Third-year communication major Steve Balboa has taken entrepreneurship to the next level by offering colonoscopies from his oceanside apartment on the 66 block of Del Playa Drive. Much like his haircutting counterparts, Balboa has capitalized on a college-based market that has a lot of demand and virtually no supply, thanks to America’s atrocious, privatized healthcare system. Thanks to this savvy market move, Balboa has looked at over 45 students’ large intestines so far in 2024.

Balboa markets himself from his Instagram account, @poked.by.steve, where he posts edits of him performing on his clients accompanied to drill music. His rates are reasonable: $50 for a routine examination and $100 to have it done with anesthetic, which is not hospital-grade but rather “a big-ass dose of ket.” As a self-taught practitioner, Balboa is occasionally the target of skepticism, but he has the numbers to support his deft skills with a tube: He has only had seven “accidental perforations” this year, a remarkable 84% success rate.

“Even though doctors don’t recommend getting colonoscopies until you’re 45, fuck that. Pull up to the crib and get one done anyway,” Balboa told Nexustentialism. “Colorectal cancer is not a laughing matter.”

Fourth-year linguistics major Elvin Priestly didn’t necessarily have “getting a tube-mounted camera shoved up his rectum on a balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean” on his college bucket list, but then again, colon cancer wasn’t on it either. “Thanks to Steve, I was able to identify the tumor before it became critical. I’ve got a follow-up appointment with him to get it removed in a few weeks,” he said.

Other members of the community, though, have less-than-glowing reviews of the services that Balboa provided. 

“He ripped his bong a bunch of times during my colonoscopy,” second-year undeclared student Jenny Sampson told us. “That caused him to fuck up really badly, and now I have a gastrointestinal rupture with diffuse peritonitis.” The chances of surviving her condition are 60%.

At least one Gaucho — we suspect there are multiple — sought out Balboa for a different reason. Third-year economics major Jake Daniels got his colonoscopy with no anesthetic “because I wanted to feel something,” he said in an interview with Nexustentialism, after hobbling into the room. “And boy did I.”

Since his colonoscopies have been such a success with students, Balboa plans to move into a base of clients that actually needs them at their age: professors. “I talked to my comm prof about it,” he said. “For some reason, he wasn’t really into it, maybe ‘cause I told him he has to be cool with my homie Coop DJing during the procedure, but he’ll come around.”

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow just scheduled his vasectomy for outside of 7/11.