Tag: Try Guys | A Banana Peeled

This past week, there was a huge scandal in the Try Guys community. For the uninitiated, the Try Guys are four guys (Eugene Lee Yang, Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfield, and Ned Fulmer) who got together at BuzzFeed to try things. That’s their brand, and I really enjoyed their BuzzFeed videos, even if they did edge into cringe territory. Which they did. Even back then. Let me put it this way. I really liked Eugene and put up with the other guys. Ned was my second favorite, and I tolerated the other two. I supported them when they first created their own company, but I did not like the direction in which they were going.

I remember a video in which they were working at a coffee shop in Australia. This was just after they left BuzzFeed. They were drawing dicks in the lattes, and that’s when the luster wore off for me. I’m sure the owners of the coffee shop knew what they were signing up for, but the regular employees (one of whom showed them how to make the lattes) didn’t necessarily have a say in the whole matter. They probably were thrilled to be a part of it, but would they be able to say they were uncomfortable if they weren’t ok with it? Probably not.

As a friend said, sometimes, having a big HR is the right way to do things (BuzzFeed). But, yes, they were being held in check by BuzzFeed, which, again, is a good thing. I get that they are content creators, which is much different than working for an office or construction or retail. But still. When I was acting back in my twenties at Theater Mu (regional Asian American theater company), a friend and I were making very ribald jokes to each other. Someone else came up and told us to rein it in because others may have an issue with it. I bristled at the time, but she was right. We should have been more cognizant of our surroundings. That’s what happens when you’re in theater, though. You forget that there are still standards to which you need to adhere because, hell, we’ve seen each other naked. And, yes, there are people fucking around all over the place.

That video left a bad taste in my mouth. Plus, Keith and Zach decided that they needed to be more exaggerated versions of themselves, which meant more yelling and grimacing. They became less authentic and more like caricatures, and I could barely watch them at times. To be honest, I was only watching for Eugene. I was a Patreon for the a while, but quietly unsubscribed when I had reached my limit. This was probably less than a year into their solo venture.

They pulled their significant others into more of their videos, and the Try Wives have their own podcast. More on that in a bit.

During my dive into the Buzzfeed rabbit hole, I stumbled across a video of something called ‘The Try Guys’. It was a series of videos by four guys who worked at Buzzfeed doing daring, funny, and sometimes crazy things. I was immediately hooked and watched all the videos of them I could find. The zest with which they threw themselves into activities in which they had no experience was fascinating to me because I’m terrible at doing things I haven’t done before, especially if I have no interest in it. I’m always hyper-conscious about how I look as I’m doing it, convinced that I must look like a total loser. I have a hard time getting out of my own head, and there’s no way I could do some of the shit they tried (such as spending a night in the wilderness by themselves. And, not as a group, but each individually). I know part of that is that they’re men so they have more leeway than I as a woman would (for societal reasons and because of self-imposed limits based on societal expectations), but it wasn’t just that. More on that in a moment.

Let’s get the elephant out of the way. One of the reasons I liked the videos so much was because there’s a very hot Asian guy as one of the four. Eugene Lee Yang. He is insanely hot (though he doesn’t think so because like me, he grew up yellow in a white world, believing that he was ugly. He’s Korean, and he has the same dual-country shame that I do–both his cultures thought he was ugly just as both my cultures did, too), and unfortunately for me, gay. And too young. It’s just like me to go for the person I can’t have. Story of my life. Beyond his hotness, though, the fact that there was an Asian guy being prominent in this series (and often being the best at the activity) really warmed my heart. You often see white people (duh) and more and more black people with an occasional Latinx person thrown it, but it’s still rare to see an Asian person be prominently figured. He’s not a sidekick, which is refreshing.

I have to say, though, that while Eugene is my favorite for many reasons, the one I admire the most is Zach Kornfeld. Why? Because he’s the one who often has the least aptitude going into an activity, and yet, he does it to the best of his ability. Yes, he gripes and complains, but way less than I would if thrown into these activities. He’s like the C student who studies all week to get that C instead of being able to pull an all-nighter and get an A. Yes, the latter receives the better grade, but the former is actually the harder worker. (Yes, Eugene is like the latter, but the difference is that he works just as hard as the others, but his natural aptitude is higher in general.) Zach often mentions his little breakable body that isn’t made to do physical activities, plus he has an auto-immune disease that makes many things painful.

Side note: Both Zach and Keith (Habersberger) are lactose-intolerant, and yet, neither shies away from eating cheese by the bucketful on the show if need be. As a fellow lactose-intolerant person, I shudder whenever I see it. I also wonder if Eugene is lactose-intolerant because the vast majority of Asian people are, but that’s neither here nor there.

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This para (social) normal life