The Try Guys, Legends of the Internet, Aren't Afraid To Fail

By Elizabeth de Luna


The Try Guys have had one hell of each year. In the past 12 months, the quartet — Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld, and Eugene Lee Yang — have gained six million YouTube subscribers, gone on a national tour, began a podcast, and written a no. 1 New York Times best-selling book. This success is especially remarkable given that, at this time last year, they had just made one of the riskiest personalized and financial gambles of their careers: leaving BuzzFeed, where they first met and crafted the Try Guys brand, to form their own independent production agency. Over their four years with BuzzFeed, they’d earned an online fanbase of millions with videos committed to an eas mission — to try anything, from fast food to fatherhood to facials, without consideration of how often they failed or how silly they looked. Without BuzzFeed beyond them, would they lose it all?


Spoiler alert: They didn’t. Case in point, their biggest struggle right after beginning 2nd Try Productions turned out to be pretty boring. “We certainly didn't know anything about building a firm health insurance policy,” jokes Fulmer. He’s full of energy, sitting with Habersberger and Yang in an empty green room at New York’s Beacon Theatre. It’s Kornfeld’s 29th birthday, so he is elsewhere celebrating what Yang lovingly calls his “Big Boy Birthday Brunch.” In a number of hours, they’ll take the stage to perform a show correctly aligned with their ethos of championing the act of trying. They’ll throw chicken tenders into a crowd of their fans (called Tryceratops), lip sync to Hannah Montana, and typically relish poking fun at themselves with wild enthusiasm. It’s an exhilarating next step in a journey they mention started five years prior with a couple of pairs of Victoria’s Secret lingerie.


As soon as the guys joined BuzzFeed’s fledgling video department around January 2014, they were segment of what they estimate were the opening 20 video producers at the organization. That September, Kornfeld and Habersberger were tasked with creating content for Facebook’s new video product. Immediately after discovering that females were the greatest sharers on the platform they thought, "Let's make a video about an argument girls have and visualize what occurs as soon as boys test it," says Habersberger. They landed on a concept — "Guys Try On Ladies’ Underwear" — and started trawling the office floor for co-workers prepared to strip down.


At that time, the expected output frequency of two videos per week necessitated the internal casting of BuzzFeed personnel. “You’d just grab somebody and mention ‘Hey, can you come eat this food for 20 minutes with me?’” Says Habersberger. However convincing male coworkers to bare it all, physically and emotionally, for a growing online audience proved more complicated than asking them to taste test snacks. "We were the only four people that were prepared to do it,” says Fulmer, before rapidly correcting himself, "Actually, I didn't even wish to do it!" To persuade him, Habersberger recalls appealing to Fulmer’s improv and sketch comedy background. Yang rounded out their skeleton crew “not because he's so sexy, which he is,” says Habersberger coyly, raising his eyebrows to emphasize the point, however because he was really good at finding a poignant argument to conclude videos."


The resulting two-minute clip of the guys marveling at their figures in thongs and boyshorts while simultaneously commiserating out loud with the girls in their lives was a viral success. At 22 million views, “Guys Try On Girls Underwear For The opening Time” is still one of the 50 most-viewed videos of the more than 6,200 that BuzzFeed has uploaded to their main channel since 2012. Following this beginning success, the guys squeezed into pleather and lace ensembles to be sexy firefighters, ladybugs, and nuns for a Halloween video that highlighted the hypersexualization of women’s costumes. And then, in November, The world wide web delivered a gift: Kim Kardashian’s iconic photoshoot for Paper Magazine, in which she gleefully exposes her oiled-up rear end. The guys filmed all night, rubbing baby oil on each other and posing with their butts out in earnest attempts to redesign the shot and capitalize on a viral moment that felt custom-made for their messaging.


Any time the video blew up the next day, it was clear that their game-for-anything attitudes and budding friendship forged over late nights and near-nudity were regularly resonating with millions. “I think the audience could feel that we went into every video with zero judgment of each other and of ourselves. We were the only ones prepared to stand in front of our colleagues in very thin underwear and talk about our bodies. And I think that’s where The Try Guys philosophy came from,” Yang says.


“We hope to change what it means to be masculine, and to be a guy that’s OK with being vulnerable,” Habersberger says. “We have hundreds of videos where we lose, all of us. We edit more of our failures in. We wish to show that failure is required. You don't learn anything from winning.” Fulmer adds, “We hope that as soon as we try something outdoors of our comfort zone, it inspires other people to try it. Doing that makes the world a smaller place.”


Back in 2014, BuzzFeed had not nevertheless developed a show around a recurring cast. A series called “The Creepy Guy” starred a solitary producer and ran from 2013-2015, nevertheless The Try Guys was the initial series to routinely feature the same sort of talent. It was also the opening to turn BuzzFeed producers into on-camera personalities, a motif that right now anchors BuzzFeed’s original programming. Fulmer became “known for his ass, famously,” says Yang, furthermore to his deep love for his spouse, Ariel, whom he’d say in just about every video. “Butt, spouse, child, house!” Says Yang, listing the most crucial things in Fulmer’s life. “Don't mention ‘butt wife,’” pleads Habersberger in feigned disgust. Yang, the only member of color plus a self-proclaimed Slytherin, acted as a foil for Fulmer and the bubbly, bespectacled Kornfeld and Habersberger.


From left to right: Ned Fulmer, Keith Habersberger, Eugene Lee Yang, and Zach Kornfeld


Any time their contracts with BuzzFeed ended in April 2018, they saw the potential to do more than what the constraints of the firm would let. “By that point, we were four years into our digital media careers. We knew a lot about the organization of YouTube,” says Fulmer. Plus, they had joined BuzzFeed as technical producers and had managed the method of making a video, begin from the beginning to the end, themselves. “It wasn't like we were losing this big corporate infrastructure where people were doing everything for so you just showed up on camera.” They fell back on those skills much less than two months later, any time the quartet released the initial video under their  2nd Try banner. Right now, 11 full-time personnel plus a network of 10 freelancers help them manage the release of two TV-quality videos a week on The Try Guys channel.


Their new independence gave them the freedom to share personalized stories alongside the goofy challenge videos that they were known for. Fulmer documented the birth of his son and the remodeling of his house (“Butt, spouse, child, house!”); Kornfeld introduced viewers to his longtime girlfriend and shared his struggle with ankylosing spondylitis, a painful inflammatory infection. And in June, exactly one year immediately after initial their independent channel, Yang released a moving coming out video. Far less than two months later, it has raised more than $110,000 for The Trevor Project and has become the third most-watched coming out video in YouTube’s history.


“The quantity of influence that we've been able to group up within the past five years of being online is so bizarre,” Yang marvels. “We've habitually discussed about established versus digital, nevertheless right now we're on the same island, baby! The audience that grew up with YouTube is currently directing where the industry is headed along with a lot of that is following what has been first presented online. Even before BuzzFeed, Asian-American faces and voices were so prevalent online as huge YouTubers. YouTube opened up the types of voices and option ways of viewing ourselves that would never have been greenlit by a Hollywood studio. We're in a very fortunate position, especially with our independent firm, to further that messaging.”


Statements like this keep the name of their live show, “The Try Guys: Legends of the Internet,” from feeling like hyperbole. The Try Guys have etched themselves into internet histories, both literal and metaphorical, by creating new possibilities for expression and belonging, online and off. That night, Yang closes the show with a statement of conviction that feels undeniably legendary. On an empty stage in front of 2,300 people he declares, “I am an overjoyed, gay person of color and I am going to not be intimidated into mediocrity or legislated into conformity!” Before being drowned out by the cheers of the crowd. He launches into powerful choreography set to a supercut of music and sound clips from the most influential gay icons of the last century, from Judy Garland to modern trailblazers like Queer Eye’s Fab Five and Troye Sivan. The efficiency, which earns them a raucous standing ovation, ends with a unapologetic image:  Yang twirls with abandon in a sequined rainbow catsuit as Carly Rae Jepsen's "Cut to the Feeling" blasts. Fulmer prances across the stage waving a huge rainbow flag. In back of them, Habersberger and Kornfeld dance freely in rainbow wigs.