For those that don’t know the Try Guys, they are a group of four friends that came together to create a YouTube channel. Their names are Eugene Lee Yang, Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, and Zach Kornfeld. The four guys all started out on a YouTube channel called BuzzFeedVideo under the umbrella company of Buzzfeed. During their time working at Buzzfeed, they started a series together in which they would try a bunch of random things together. Some of these videos included “The Try Guys Try American Ninja Warrior” and “The Try Guys Imitate Each Other”. For four years (2014-2018) they continued with Buzzfeed until eventually they all decided to leave due to discrepancies in the company. After they left Buzzfeed they created their new YouTube channel, The Try Guys, under the company they also created called “2nd Try LLC”. They converted one of their members’ old houses (Ned’s house) into an office for them and their small crew. Since then they have grown to have a crew of over 15 people and have renovated that same home to be a fully functional office space for them and their crew. They currently have about 7.3 million subscribers and are also very successful when it comes to their merch.
Eugene (Purple), Zach (Green), Ned (Red), and Keith (Blue) started the first leg of their tour, Legends of the Internet, in June of 2019 where they went to 20 U.S. cities. This leg of the tour lasted until July of 2019 starting in LA, California where they currently reside and ending in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A couple months past the first leg they started their second, and final, leg of the tour starting in September of 2019 and ending in October of 2019 where they went to Australia, Singapore, two more U.S. cities, and Canada. The opening segment started with a neon triceratops (their logo) timer, pictured below. When the timer reached zero, each guy came out onto the stage and, once they were all on stage, they started a performance together (video linked below picture). Each Try Guy then had a segment to themselves and throughout the rest of the performance had many segments together.
Depending on the show you attended, after the opening sequence started the independent segments. Keith’s segment included him telling the story of him trying to have pizza with Tim Meadows and he ended up singing a song about it with the other three Try Guys performing backup for him. He tweeted at Meadows asking to have pizza with him, was ignored and then created a song in which he stated that he wanted to have pizza with DJ Khaled instead. He then asked the audience, after his song, to tweet out and create a hashtag (#pizzawithkeith) to get DJ Khaled to notice him. Eugene, being a gay icon himself and who had the best segment in my opinion, performed a lengthy drag show, linked below. During this drag show he imitated and lip-synced to songs performed by many gay icons. Ned spoke and sang about meeting his wife, Ariel, and their relationship as well as the birth of his now two year old son Wes. If you’ve watched any Try Guy video, you would know that Ned constantly talks about his wife and child, it’s kind of his schtick. Zach performed as well and spoke about the autoimmune disease he has lived with for years on end. His performance was a little bit more on the serious side however, Zach turned his serious disease into a comedic performance. Each performance was incredibly well put together and really made you see the world from the Try Guys points of view. We were able to see their lives but still be entertained in the process.
Along with the individual segments there were group performances in which each Try Guy interacted with each other and the audience. Some of these group performances included a reading/acting out “fanfiction” about the four guys as well as a review of their entire YouTube career (this was usually the ending sequence). The most audience interactive performance was during the “fanfiction” segment. Each venue was asked to give any word to the guys because they weren’t allowed to say certain words. For example Philly, when asked, told them to use the word “hoagie” to replace any inappropriate words in the fiction. What followed was a hilarious sketch in which the Try Guys acted the given scene out while blurting out the word hoagie in almost every sentence. Everyone had their own experience and enjoyed different parts of the show. It was a wonderful program to attend because it was personalized to your venue. It also allowed the audience to have more of a say on what was done at their show which is also shown in a lot of the Try Guys videos.
The Try Guys pride themselves on their connection with their audience. They use polls on their social media for the audience to give feedback. They even had an entire series on their YouTube channel where they allowed viewers to send pictures and videos of their dogs. What came of this was a bachelor-esque series where Keith rated the viewers dogs for a chance to win a prize. The guys try their hardest to be as in touch with their viewers as they can and while it is harder to do this with over 7 million people, they still find ways to continue that connectivity.
Throughout the entire show you were completely engrossed and you couldn’t look away from the stage (not that you’d want to). The Try Guys and their tour crew really tried to make the experience as entertaining and interactive as possible. They allowed the audience to make decisions, they walked around, and Keith even threw fried chicken into the crowd. There’s no doubt that if you attended a show you would have loved it. It was definitely a night to remember and even though I personally decided not to take any photos or videos, I’ll always think of that night as an iconic show. Now the Try Guys never explicitly said that they didn’t want people recording, so if you do ever come across pieces of the show on YouTube, it is okay to let it slide. The reason I decided not to record was because I wanted to be more in the moment and see what was happening then and there. I will however watch the fan recorded videos, and I did to write this review, and use those videos as something to look back on.
