A ten-year retrospective of the Try Guys, from BuzzFeed to streaming

In 2014, BuzzFeed was the viral video mastodon in production 80 videos per month on YouTube to satisfy social media algorithms. Video producers, who had the skills to create content on their own, had to produce six videos a month to keep their jobs, finding new ways to keep audiences engaged to upload more content every day.

Keith Habersberger, a tall, eccentric theater major, and Zach Kornfeld, a zany neurotic with an eye for editing, had just started working at BuzzFeed and were brainstorming what might succeed in the era of Facebook’s “pivot to video.” It was a time when Facebook executives were arguing that video views were the way to grow in media, and were using incorrect and misleading viewer data as a selling point.

Eventually, they decided to try on women’s underwear for a video. Most of their colleagues wanted nothing to do with this public humiliation, except for two of them: the stoic Eugene Lee Yang and Guy’s wife (who later had an extramarital affair with an employee) Ned Fulmer.

“We couldn’t find anyone but the handful of guys in the video to do it,” Kornfeld told Mashable in an interview about the band’s 10-year journey. “I remember thinking it was such an obvious viral hit that no one wanted to do it. It seemed too easy.”

The video was a huge success (22.5 million views to date), so the band decided to stick with it. They thought it would last maybe three videos, Kornfeld recalls, because they figured that would be all they could “extract” from the band.

But a decade later, the Try Guys are still going strong (albeit down to two original members), evolving into their own masterful group. YouTube channel with eight million subscribers. From live broadcasts to their own short-form shows Food network series, the group has surviving sharksalgorithmic changes and even cancellation.

A bustling start for the Try Guys

The Try Guys almost didn’t survive their early years, though. Their bosses at BuzzFeed were opposed to the idea of ​​forming a quartet, because having four producers on a single video would reduce the amount of content they could produce. But the group felt there was a clear chemistry between them and knew that an audience could connect with a cast of recurring faces. So while they continued to produce the products the company needed, they worked on Try Guys videos on the side.

“As an employee, your value is directly tied to the number of viral videos you’ve made and how successful they are,” Habersberger said. “There was a cult-like atmosphere where you were celebrated if you had a really amazing video.”

Many of these videos in BuzzFeed’s early years featured blurred or blocked nudity (which made it allowed on YouTube), trying stripping has laser hair removal. Although most of the obscene content was blocked during editing (except for one pissing contest where Kornfeld’s penis was accidentally shown without his consent — although he managed to joke about it about it years later), but it helped attract a largely female audience that still exists today. The content they created “was an antidote to the male gaze, or at least the idea of ​​toxic masculinity,” Kornfeld said. Their “vulnerability” without their clothes allowed them to share a new side of themselves that had rarely been seen by men in the media.

One of their most successful videos featured them showing off their bodies to recreate Kim Kardashian’s Butt Filled 2014 Paper The magazine cover went live within 24 hours of the photo being posted. Habersberger filmed the video after hours and edited it overnight. They said they were never “paid for the overtime” but “did it because we knew it would work.”

“We saw a whole set of narratives that were underexploited, underexplored, and we could use our experience and our identity to be a code for the audience to explore this part of the narrative that was very primed to be seen and shared,” Kornfeld explained.

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As the videos started to perform better (and their bosses started to accept the format), branding opportunities started to flow in. Paid partnerships gave them bigger budgets to crush cars And pretend to be adrift at seaincreasing production value and teaching members about the more traditional side of media (though they didn’t get any extra money). “We went from making $300 to $600 a video, to suddenly being $20,000 or more, which allowed us to do something really cool,” Habersberger said.

After spending four years making money for a company off their content, the guys knew it was time to create something of their own. In 2018, the group negotiated a deal with BuzzFeed where they were able to keep their intellectual property and the name “Try Guys” while BuzzFeed continued to get clicks on their old videos. At the time, former BuzzFeed employees shared their negative experiences in “Why I left BuzzFeed” videos, so having a mutually positive start was best for everyone’s brand.

“We felt there were other ways to grow this brand than what BuzzFeed was allowing us to do,” Habersberger said. “We thought we could do tours, we could do better merchandise, we could do other experiences, but that wasn’t BuzzFeed’s agenda at the time.”

Diversify and manage controversy

When they launched, they wanted to “offer a variety of programming,” Kornfeld said, “exploring different avenues of our own creation” on a relatively limited budget. One of the first videos they shot for the new channel was “Frank competition” a reality show in which Kornfeld would ask different grocery stores to make him a custom cake. Initially, Kornfeld was certain “it was a flop and a failure,” but after spending time with an editor, it became one of his “favorite pieces of chaos.”

Now freed from the constraints of standard content creation where they simply “try” things out, they shared their struggles with paternity, medical problemsAnd start their own businessRepeatable formats like Keith Eats the Menu, where Habersberger tries every dish in a restaurant, and Which Try Guy Knows the Other Guy Best, have allowed them to distribute content cheaply and quickly.

In 2022, when the channel was booming with its Food Network show Road trip without a recipe Just as it was about to premiere, a scandal shook the group to its foundations. Fans on Reddit discovered that Fulmerwhose main characteristic was to talk about his wife in videos, had an affair with a producer. Fulmer, who had a stake in the company, was bought out and dismissed. The three remaining members released a tense statement on their channel that went so viral Saturday night live I usurped it.

Asked about that Try Guys era, Habersberger and Kornfeld jokingly played a game of rock, paper, scissors to see who would answer.

“Our first goal was to do what was right for our team, for our colleagues and for the public,” Kornfeld said. “We remain very proud of how we overcame this difficult situation… Such upheaval gave us the courage to take risks and imagine a better future for ourselves.”

“We spent a year trying to figure out what we needed to do,” Habersberger added. “It was an unfortunate event that happened, but it was probably a necessary change for this company to last as long as possible.”

Out of that controversy came what they describe as the “fuck it” era, where the three remaining members created the content they wanted. They had been “playing the algorithm game for 10 years” and wanted to “focus on the audience we had already built and try to create things for those people,” Habersberger said. That meant doing a livestream version of Romeo and Juliet and rent a movie theater for Kornfeld screens short film. It wasn’t the best “business decision,” they both admit, but it was what they wanted to do. It showed them that YouTube’s ad-based, revenue-reliant model just wasn’t viable for them.

Guys of the day

After two years of controversy and poor business decisions, the Try Guys knew they had to evolve to save their growing company and retain their team of writers, producers and other employees. “Our audience was interested in deep connection,” Kornfeld said. “That’s just not what YouTube was designed for.”

That’s why in May 2024, the Try Guys announced that the channel would be undergoing a rebranding. 2nd Try is a subscription service that expands the group to other members and views. Viewers can spend $5 a month or $50 for the year to get early access to ad-free, uncensored videos from the troupe’s catalog. Some viewers found the move controversialespecially since the previous weeks, other BuzzFeed alumni Watcher has announced its own streaming service which also ended with a sofa excuses. At the same time, Yang announced that he was going to leave the group.

Former BuzzFeed colleagues like Kwesi James and internet darlings like baker Jonny Manganello are among a rotating roster of faces bringing new blood to the network. The group is venturing into new territory, as if creating its own own comic strip And trying drugs on camera.

Going from graduates forced to make six videos a week to cultural icons didn’t happen overnight. Their decade of work and experimentation is impressive and leaves a future wide open to possibilities.

“I think we had to go through that valley to see what was wrong with what we were doing, and then imagine a better future,” Kornfeld said.