Former BuzzFeed Creators Reflect on Their Viral Video Success

fighting for my life to make this show work. I don't want to do this. And I got in trouble for sleeping at the office. I kind of get like emotional looking at this. I'm not going to lie. We have fun. We're having fun. Hi, I'm Zach Evans. And I'm Ryan Bgara. And we are going to be watching our most viral videos. Oh, and there's so many. I feel like you're going to have more views than me, but who's counting?

Me. Who's counting? You're counting. The world's counting. I'm counting. You're counting. Should have got into ghosts. Oh my god. Oh. Oh, hey. Can you not when you're sweaty? Thank you, Brent. H I love Brent. I love Brent so much. I still have that blanket. That's sad. I know. I love you so much. I'd do this series if it was just us watching Brent videos. I would do it all day.

Oh my. Oh, I remember that hat. I unfortunately do too. I don't even remember this. I have no your black mamba shirt. Like, dude, so on brand. Yeah, dude. I've got a full Laker gear on. I have no recommend. Probably why I put on a King shirt. 2014. Wow. I had three other roommates at this time. I was like, we need to just Did they see this video? And did they kind of like have like a I had to kick them out to shoot it. You know, I was like, "Hey guys, I need the apartment.

If you guys get out of the apartment, I have to all over you on the internet." Brent and I were the interns on the weird couples videos. That's what this came from. Shout out Kevin McShane. And honestly, I learned so much from Kevin on those shoots because he ran those sets like a pro. Behind the scenes right now, we have a slate. Zack Ryan React. I did not know that. One scene one, whatever. Can that be the cold open? He was the first person had the slate. He had the color chart to make sure I remember that we can do that. And like Brent and I

were the two interns that wanted overtime and so we would do those shoots. So that's where this came from. We're like, "Why don't we just do our own version of this as roommates?" I actually now starting to remember this shoot because I remember walking in with my little gel kit. Yeah. You remember? I used to walk around with my little gel kit because I fancied myself as a cinematographer.

He was the camera guy. I was the camera guy. I just have to give so much credit to Kevin McShane. And yeah, he put me in a few of those videos and it helped, you know, it helped. In this video, too, I'm pretty sure you were like, I forgot there was another person in this. Ryan, can you just step in? Can you do this? And I was like, "Take off my like light meter." Yeah. I would be so stoked when I would be running sound because I knew all I was going to do is just sit in a chair, put headphones on, and just kind of like just monitor that toggle. Like, please don't get Honestly, not even really like,

but you never wanted to mess that up. How do you mess it up? You press the button. People messed it up. It didn't matter to me if like the sound was a little spotty in that video. I'm just going to say, okay, little spotty. Is it just me or does that guy look like Ian from Smos? Talking about Brent. Dude, Brent loves Smosh, too. I'm in this. Yes. Okay. I don't remember this at all.

There's definitely a hair in the salad. It's probably his gorgeous hair. I ate school lunch every day pretty much. I'm wearing the same hat, by the way. Yeah, school lunch was kind of like a quint thing for me. Pizza. It's like that separation. That looks like Desjouro. That doesn't look like a school pizza flavor.

They all have that taste to them. Are they made differently? Yeah. I mean, if I was a kid, I'd probably eat this. That's some pretty That's the insight. You something. That's when we knew that he was a star. Like, when you want that real deep insight, that's when you call the old Burguza and he'll tell you, I'd eat that in a taste test. Everyone should revolt against It's kind of fun that Quint's in a school lunch video. Yeah, that is fun.

You would expect the gravy to droop off of it. This is fancy. The gravy looks like nut. I'm going to be honest. This food looks like I'm really glad I'm not eating this right now cuz being on this white table with the white psych behind us, it makes me feel like we're about to eat something gross. Are we about to eat something? I hope not. Those taste test days are over, baby. I'm not eating. No more bull testicles for me.

You weren't in that video, by the way. You just did it. I could smell it. This has 17 million views. 17 million. I'll tell you what, if I uploaded this exact same video with the same title, adults try public school lunches, it would get 1,000 views. It was just a different time. I remember when we did Americans try McDonald's for the first time. And that was like I remember that when I started that series where Chinese people try Panda Express for the first time.

Oh yeah. And then Mexican people try. That was me. You learn a lot from doing a different type of video than like what you're normally used for. I kind of liked that about BuzzFeed. It was a crash course. Honestly, Buzzfeed was like college. It was like grad school for the internet. 100%. People felt like we were still on a college campus. I feel like we went to college together.

Like that's how I feel. I literally am like, "Oh yeah, that was my boy and my frat." Yeah. Cuz after we would clock out, it's like, "All right, it's time to go to the bars in Hollywood." Yep. It was fun. Dave Wayne, shout out. Free promo. That's right. You're welcome. It's cool again, by the way. Wow. I remember that Justin. There's a gift from this, right? Yeah. That Justin jacket. That jacket. You know why I remember that jacket? Because you put it on and did the Justin impression walking around the office where you slouched your

Yeah. And his young and reckless hat. Hey Liz and Da. Wow. This is the crew. Speaking of DEA, going to catch a stray here. Anytime you were in a DEA taste test video or any kind of video, she was going to do you dirty. She was going to make Especially you though. She would take the most embarrassing clip or bite that you said and like make it like the centerpiece of the video. She took a sick pleasure in it. Curly. Claudia. Wow. This is literally like scrolling through Facebook and seeing all the people from college.

I could see myself cutting open one of these biscuits, putting it in there. Great. Great tact. That's why they had us both here together. Yeah. They're like, we got to between the two of us, we'll make one sentence. Yeah. Has Curly ever had a bad fit in his life? No. He's been from the jump. It's just immaculate. Oh, this is the gift. Us doing the What would happen if Wow. Snap your fingers.

Fluffy taffy. Yeah. Oh, it's a moon pop. Those suck. Sorry if that offends my The whole South is like screw you. I don't like it. War is on steroids. I'm housing this thing. I like it. Look it. Cuz we would get free lunch certain days, but the day that you wouldn't have free lunch, that's when you try to You get into that taste test, like a pizza taste test. I'm in. I'm going to have my lunch on camera. I don't even care. You don't have to cut me out of the video. A hack that we used to do, really, this was the Justin Tan special, is you get like $300 to produce your

video and Justin would be like, "What's the cheapest we can make this video?" And then we can go to lunch. I remember and he'd always we'd always go to lunch. We used to go to Ke and we did have a lot of meals. I don't remember the videos I'm in, but I remember the ones that I produced that got a lot of views because we were really gunning for views to keep our job. Literally, I remember the hits cuz it wasn't like, "Oh, this feels good." It was like, "I get to work here still."

Yeah. Thank God. Like we had to do a taste test for everybody and I remember being like I don't want to do this. I did the people eat dog food in almost out of defiance pitching it as a joke and they're like yeah you go for it and we did have a deal with Pyina and they were mad about it. I hope I didn't mess it up cuz I love the what were they puppyhood? Those videos are so yeah I think pion's doing fine. Your dog food video is not going to be the missile that takes down the towers. So I think you'll be fine. That is we took a DNA. I remember when you guys were doing this, the 23 and me.

So, I'm half Japanese, 38 Mexican, and 1/8 Filipino. I am half Japanese, half Italian. I remember when this Yeah, I remember when this was a thing. Like trying Oh, yeah. Macy, the test friends were like, "We need more try. Come on." We were like the Bizarro Island of Misfit Toys try. Back in the day, they would separate you into kind of little pods, I would call them, right? I think they were called pods for Yeah. You were in like a scripted pod. I was on the unscripted pod. And it get we had different focuses that we shifted through throughout the years. Like one year it was BuzzFeed IRL which was more

kind of like a docu series pod. So we did a show called Real Mature. And I was really I remember I was really going hard on that. That was a time and then we also did Test Friends which was as Zach said they were like we need more Try Guys and they turned to us. Give me Try Guys. Yeah. And we were like we'll try. We got the test friends. So we did that and we tried health and fitness trends. But Buzzfeed Unsolved came out of the docu series pod. I was supposed to be doing docu series and then I got that inkling to do unsolved and so I had to do the docu series stuff in the daytime and then unsolved stuff after hours. I think the third Unsolved episode, the Alisa

Lamb video went crazy. I remember seeing when you were doing Unsolved, especially when you did those early ones with Brent and thinking, "Oh, Ryan Bgara is like in his lane right now." because it's like you did do a bunch of different things and like seeing you be able to operate where you could be funny and super into something and showing your personality. I thought the same thing about seeing you guys doing all your trailers and everything. Buzzfeed was nice cuz it let you bounce around till you found something that really, you know, could showcase what you could do. Test Friends

was so much fun because it was five people. It was me, Shane, which is funny cuz it's Shane and I there. Um, and then Jen, Macy, and Dea. The thing that was fun about the team was because there was four producers as on camera people. Macy was the only person who was like a non-producer. She was a social media coordinator, so she didn't know how to make videos, but all four of us did. So, what we did was we would just rotate between whose responsibility it was to produce that test video. The work life balance was probably the best it's ever been for me, just because it was so dispersed in terms of workload. And we all got along great. There's never any kind of beef or strife among any of the

people I work with across my time at BuzzFeed. So, no, I feel like these are like top people. Macy is the best. Jen's the best. Shane's the best. A's the best. You're You know, they needed another guy. Yeah, they did. And I answered the call. I came there to be like, "Hey, we're shooting a video." That's I remember when Shane came onto the scene. He was like the internal and I fre I'm trying to remember his first couple videos, but I remember seeing him being like, "Ooh, this is a guy that's got a distinct style and he's weird in the best way." So funny and like uniquely him.

Yeah. This is where Shane and I started working with each other because Shane and I sat next to each other for the entirety of our time at BuzzFeed for the most part. Were you guys like fellows at the same time? We were fellows. We were interns. We were mortal enemies as interns. Everyone was. It was doggy. You knew there was like an intern pool. I don't remember how many people became fellows. And then after the fellows, three would make it. That's why I'm tight with my crew. You guys were always one stage ahead of me. I was the intern that hung out with you guys cuz I was always helping you

guys with your videos and shooting them. And once again, you were the camera guy, so like we got to get him on our videos. And I was just stoked because like you said earlier, Justin would have great lunch. And did you guys go to the same high school, but we went to Arcadia High. You guys have always had like a brother dynamic. Yeah. I love Justin. Yeah. I love seeing this. I just saw Dea, too. Dea was at my Halloween party, too.

I'm sorry I couldn't make it. You know, I'm not That's fine. Your 150th wife. Deja and I always had like a sibling relationship. That was our lunch crew. This was such a happy time in our lives. Like I have no bad memories really. Especially as I get further removed from it and get older and you know have more responsibilities and stuff. I'm like, "Wow, this was the best job. You'll never work with this many amazing, talented, creative people." all these like young people were at the same place at the same time and we were just kind of given free reign to be creative and like I'm always going to be thankful

for that. It's so much fun. I talk about BuzzFeed all the time like in my current job so much about how the internet works today. We were discovering at that time with this being an iteration of the Try Guys. It was kind of like a badge of honor. Like if you made a frame and then if you saw someone else take that frame and do a different version of it, it was like, "Oh, that must have worked." And then all of a sudden now there's like 10 of those videos. It was like a sped up version of like the Hollywood studio system where like they're like oh this superhero movie worked really well let's make nine other superhero movies and the instant feedback

people are always like don't read the comments and I was like that was kind of a huge part of Buzzfeed. You remember looking through like share statements on Facebook and like seeing like this is so mean and you're like I did it I need something relatable. That is what virality means. People are sharing it with each other. I know that feels probably so like obvious now. Welcome to our master class. Yeah, I know. This turned into nuts and bolts really quick. Oh. Oh my gosh. This is 10 years ago and I'm still with my wife and we just had our first baby. It's such a cool like time capsule. This is like the first time I brought Morgan into a video and she's super funny by the way. You

don't know his wife is very funny. We just wrote a book together. A crazy and insane thing because I don't think we've ever really worked well together. Kind of like we're trying to do the same thing, whatever. And then I don't know, maybe it's just marriage, maybe it's maturity. She's now like my best collaborator. It's so crazy. I love the stuff you guys make, too. It's so cool. It's cool getting older, guys. This is also such a fun frame. Couples imitate each other.

It's I get quoted this video. I got dollars. I got bills. Look, I was in my Drake bag back then. Not anymore. Hey, Drake. Uh, but the fighting part, like that was kind of like an awkward talk afterwards. Oh. Oh, to sn face. Oh, to stank face. He goes, "Did you forgot?" Long. I think imitating your partner is a dangerous game to play cuz it's a lot like tickling somebody. There's a period where it's very funny, but if you go too far,

it's immediately call on the cops. I don't think anyone likes seeing themselves imitated. Even though we're just joking how I used to imitate Justin like But he's hilarious to imitate. He's hilarious to imitate. I don't think he loved it. And I always felt bad or I'd be like, "Hey, dude. Are we good?" so weird like being in the next stage of life and like still making each other laugh and still doing the same thing. I was imitating her with the baby like pretending I was her and like how do you feel about your kid being able to dial up YouTube.com and pull up any of your exploits?

It's one of those things you don't think about until all of a sudden you're in the delivery room and you're like hold on you're like I've made like 200 videos on YouTube. I know I've made some embarrassing ones too. Knowing kids they're probably like I don't care. It might be more so like maybe their friends one day might find this video. That's fine. That's my job to embarrass my kid. Yeah. More so they're going to be like YouTube on SWAT. Which is true. We both were on SWAT.

Roll the clip. Was oblong and defied physics as we know it. It's what made us start our YouTube channel. He got shot on SWAT. I did. That's so cool. I got to die on screen. Um maybe I can help you out. I don't really carry cash on me or anything. That's amazing. Like bucket list. And in that moment, I bet you did a better job than Marian Kotiard in The Dark Knight Rises, which is still the funniest on-creen death I've ever seen.

Roll the clip. Oh man, 30 million. That's crazy. So, today we're driving to the Stay on Main Hotel or as it was formerly known, the Cecil Hotel as Hotel Cecil. This is still a case that is so bizarre. Brent in his Prius. Yeah, Brent. Brent just couldn't be bothered to be there. I love that. You look at his face. That's the funniest thing about these early episodes of Unsolved is that Brent only agreed to do it because we were friends and he was just trying to make me happy.

Yeah. He didn't want to do it. He did not. I've never met a person who did not want to be on camera more than Brent. And then who worked at BuzzFeed the longest. Yeah. He stopped doing the show because the show got too successful. He straight up told me to my face like, "I'm really sorry. I have to stop doing this because frankly I didn't think it was going to do this well and now that it is I can't do it anymore." And what's the name of the drummer who like left the Beatles right before Ringo joined and they got big? That's Brent.

It's Brent. Yeah, it's Brent. But Brent like was like, "No, he likes that decision." Yeah. Yeah. No, it was the right decision for him. I didn't even like fault him for it. I was like, "You know what? I'm glad you told me this early." Brent's a renegade, man. This video went nuts. I want to say it was like 7 million views in a couple days. This was the moment where it was like, "You're not little brother anymore." It's like, "Oh like he's

actually really good." I was like, "Oh, now we all work for him." But no, yeah, this video changed a lot. It allowed me creative freedom the rest of the time I was at BuzzFeed to make Unsolved into, you know, what it is and I'm really proud of it. So, this is really cool to look back on. It's one of those cool things like seeing like this, you know, try guys, any anybody who's had success and being able to remember the moment that it happened, like seeing it like form and shape and knowing like this wasn't called Unsolved. I remember being at lunch and

you saying like, "Oh yeah, it's going to be called Buzzfeed Unsolved and all that." Like there's something about and this is like the same thing as like going back to high school or seeing people from college. When you're around that those people in that environment, you instantly fall back into the roles that you were in. Like I was never the dude who was in front of the camera and I wasn't like sitting there being like I have my time but it was more just like this is really cool they're doing cool You found things that each other people did that you're like ooh I want to take an element of that and then myself and make a stew of it and everybody had a style and I was just

kind of walking around in a just be happy to be a part of it. Do you remember that wave when we all of a sudden had interns who were fans of BuzzFeed? That was so weird. Yeah. I did not know what BuzzFeed was until I literally opened the application. Yeah. Okay. Same. Because Shantel told me, "This is a place that they have a good internship. Maybe you could make a C cuz my thought was, I'll do this internship for a month and then I'll move on to lighting sets and stuff like that. This is just something to help me make this month a rent."

I had someone was the other day that was just like, "I loved you in middle school." And I'm like, "Shut up. Don't want to hear it." This was iconic, though. The words on the screen. Yeah, the words. Where did that come from? Our banter was so stupid that I knew it would be funnier if it was in print. Yeah, print is reserved for very profound statements that have like insight behind them, but if we're making like dick and ball jokes, that doesn't deserve that kind of treatment. So that's why it's funny to me. And also, it made it so

that people could screenshot it and inst you could see the whole bit play out. It was iconic. Like I remember seeing that and going like, "Oh, wow." Even when we did our version of Unsolved, the sports version, I remember when I had mine, I was like, "Let's go." So yeah, I am the third host of Unsolved. Right arm goes bang. He doesn't take his left arm here. That's a swim through move. It's a classic fundamental post move.

I think we had to take a break cuz that was the last one I think we did and we're like, "Oh, this is so fun." And then it was like, "Hey, like I actually this like affected my life." Scott Pard caught a stray in there. Scott Pard was so nice to me when I was a kid. Zack, thanks for letting us stay here. Big Lots. Big Lot set. a building that was called Big Lots because it used to be a Big Lots. Yeah. And we converted it into a studio. People things would go down in that Big Lot studio.

Yeah. In that bed. Just wake me up. All right. Wow. Okay, cool. I kind of get like emotional looking at this. I'm not going to lie. Like it this was truly the most fun. I shot this one. You did? This is the most fun I've ever had in my life probably. like being able to just go like I can't believe this is my job that I get to make scripted internet comedy with these two people who became like best friends in that moment and like we were such a unit. It was just it was the best and I was just happy to be there to shoot it cuz I was like I idolize scripted content. I love movies and TV so to be able to like do

that at BuzzFeed in between all the other stuff was so much fun. Whenever you guys called me or not called me, whenever you requested me, there was an intern request form and we would always be like, "Ryan Bgar, we need him." But I remember lighting this because I had my blue gels to make it look It looks nice. It looks good. It holds up. Friendship. I know you want to be more than just friends with me. This is such a good video, too.

I saw you eyeballing me the other day at lunch. You were checking out my jeans. It kept giving me the updown and I was like, "Dang, girl, right here, right now." Him, Justin, and Clinton says, they were the only videos that I watched at the company. And when they came out, I got just as excited to watch their videos as I would like a TV show or anything on YouTube. They shot one at my parents house. Yeah. At one point, too. That's one of my favorite ones. Dude, you were just the best. Well, I also was just like these guys like I'm catching them in a moment and they're going to be doing something way

bigger, you know, and uh it's I was just happy to be there. Yeah, I loved being in a trio. I always wanted to be like in a band or in a like on a team, like a winning team. And so it was just really cool and like the three of us are all so different and then having like our inside jokes with each other. Like Justin and I did these movie trailers that it was like the who's your bro movie trailers that first off actually no let's go the original trailers we did wedding season is coming and that one did crazy on Facebook. That was our first button together button.

You would get a button if you got a certain amount of views in a week and they had a button ceremony at the end of every week where people they would hand out the buttons. I had people from high school reaching out or sharing it and going like, "Oh, wow." Like, "I love you guys." And then when people started calling us the trio and then don't tag me. I just remember we did gay wedding season is coming cuz it was like gay marriage was legalized so we did it again. I just randomly remember that. I was like, I should probably rewatch that one. See if it's still good.

See if it holds up. And then that sort of spawned into Justin and I doing the Who's Your Bro movie trailers that Steven Caner did and we worked on those with Ryan and Garrett Warner. And we're all such movie fans and like grew up wanting to make movies. So being able to find a genre and make fun of it and go into the tropes and just try to shoot as much as you possibly can in one day and just be as silly as you can. I've always loved you guys were the only people making scripted content. Yeah. Well, I remember there was like a scripted division like we had like an office sitcom cuz we had a whole office set. That's when I took it personally.

The three of us were always trying to be like we want to make the best stuff. And I'm I'm so proud of like what we did. I think so many of these sketches hold up. One of my favorite videos we did was this Airbud video where we did a scripted sketch about the kid who is benched for Airbud and Justin played my stepdad and it came back and I was like a dog took my spot and we played it very serious. We shot it like Friday Night Lights and it was my Magnum Opus. I was like this I'm going to get on SNL like this is the thing Justin and I are going to show we're pitching our show like this is the video. The

trade-off in order to do that you need to make four other additional videos quick. And so Justin and I blocked and one day we had no ideas and Justin came up to me. He's like, "What's up with brunch? I've never been to brunch. Let's just do a video about brunch." Didn't script anything. We found stupid costumes in our costume department. Shot it in 20 minutes. And it was our biggest video ever. And the AirPod video bombed and everyone was like, "You guys are the brunch guys." And we became the brunch guys. And it was something that we really were just riffing with each other. It's also part of the Buzzfeed experience trying working really hard in something and tanking and then the thing

you made in like an afternoon goes crazy and like that's the thing like people like yell quotes at if anyone's like compliments it. I just feel so good cuz it was a labor of love. I almost didn't make it to video producer. I remember at our holiday party when I was a fellow the person who I won't name their name but they were running the fellow department at the time came up to me having a few and was like Zack not going to lie you're on the bubble. I don't think you're going to make it. Do you remember that feeling of like being a fellow and you're like I either am going to get the greatest job of all time especially for like being in your like early to mid20s or you're out

looking for it and I just remember being like what do I have to do to get this job and then immediately getting the job and then getting paired with Justin and Quinta. Justin is so smart when it comes to comedy. Remember he worked on The Office and New Girl and we were all like what's that like? And then Quinta had like cool Disney kid energy. You really you met her and you're like you feel like you've been famous your entire life. She's still probably one of my favorite people to make laugh. Yeah, making Quinta laugh did feel very good. She wouldn't laugh for everything. I'll tell you that. You got to earn a laugh with QB.

Jesus Christ. Oh my gosh. 39 million. It's like Zach. This one hit 1 million. Dude, that's insane. This was a video where we were just fighting for our life to be honest. Uh we didn't know if we were going to continue making BuzzFeed Unsolved. The company was at like a different place where they were actually considering maybe even sell selling the unsolved property. They made me make it an hour long because it was going to go on a Verizon platform called Go9. Go 90. We all had a Go90 project. And uh and then it ended up not going through the deal. So then they were like, "Okay, just still make the video." But I had been basically told if this video doesn't do well, we're nixing the

series. And so I really was fighting for my life here to make this show work. And this is the first ghost hunt we've ever done with Shane and I out on location. and it just worked. It was a crazy shoot. It's It's still one of my favorite things that Shane and I have made together. And I remember editing this one very Oh, yeah. This was long. Wasn't this the longest Buzzfeed video we've done at that time? I barely slept for months. I remember watching this going, "Oh, we're making TV now." Like, this is TV.

We had a great staff that was helping me fill in the edits and stuff like Steven Castro, Mike Fox. This is when BuzzFeed actually gave me resources to like help make the show knowing that this is the last harrah. Maybe I remember uploading this because the day or two before I was sleeping at the office and that's when I got in trouble for sleeping at the office because I needed to finish the video and I remember this uploading and it just kept having errors cuz it was so big. Yeah, I remember at that point I was just so tired that I was like whatever. When it went out I think I just went to sleep and then it did really well and the rest was history. Thank god.

I don't want to like puff you up too much. This feels like YouTube history to me the way that it's a 46-inute video. Like I'm not kidding. When you first probably started, the sweet spot was like a music video length video. It was like a 2 to 5 minute and then YouTube's like, "We need to make more money. Watch time is the way to go." And like this setup, everything on YouTube looks like this now. The whole purpose of this video was to make a long video. They told me, "Make this. We'll give you some money, but it has to be this long."

How much money do we think this video made, though? I have no idea, but I can tell you how much it cost. Not a lot because we were really gunning it. We shot like two different states and Mexico I think in 5 days. Wow. This was the last prove it moment and the coolest thing about this was that it gave us the ability to build a team. I remember Unsolved as a very just collaborative experience between not just Shane and myself but TJ Marchbank behind the camera, Devon Drawman who was the producer of the show, all the editors on our squad too. Steven Castro, Mike Fox, Anthony Frederick, all the research all the researcher. Elena Rook, uh Carrie Copel.

Yeah. Uh Lauren Wolf. They sat behind me and I remember being like, "What's Unsolved doing next?" They said, "You have a season of Unsolved. You can make a like six episode season, but we didn't have a lot of budget, but I was like, "We need to have some sort of rap party for this." I felt bad, so I just went to like the liquor store that was by the Chipotle. And I bought like a handle and I made everybody hats, BuzzFeed Unsolved hats, to like be like, "This is our rap party." And I remember we took a picture in one of those conference rooms.

You know, that Chipotle is not there. They changed the Chipotle. Really? Chipotle is where Starbucks is. Those sons of I know. One last thing I will say about this. I remember at the time when they pretty overtly told me if this doesn't do well, we're going to can the series. I remember thinking like why would they tell me that? That's so much pressure. And now like looking back, I really appreciate that transparency because it did give me that fight or die moment here.

I think that was kind of a Buzzfeed thing. Like I said, where I almost didn't make it as a video producer. They told me there's a lot of value in knowing you're expendable. Yeah. Now you run a company. So now you're just like, actually the people in charge were right. It looks great. It still holds Tristan Hill behind the camera there who also got the scared out of him at the Island of the Dolls.

I'm so happy I didn't do I am not like a get scared guy. Like I would not have done this. Shout out everybody who worked on Unsolved. Thanks for helping make this what it is. Are you weirdly emotional? Like I'm kind of like this is like weird. This is so weird and cool. It feels cool to just, like I said, the thing I remember about these shoots isn't the stress or the late nights. I just remember all the laughs and the good times and I would really try and make those as fun as I could for everybody that was there cuz they're grueling shoots, but you know, I always take a lot of pride in that we all actually got along with each other

and, you know, we never really fought or anything like that. Wait till the Shane episode. We'll see. Yeah, he's going to be a mess. He'll be a blubbering mess. This has been so fun. Every time I think about BuzzFeed, I really do look back on it as an era in my life that I'm just so grateful to have. I genuinely root for every single person that even people I didn't really even interact with more when you see them go on and do other things, it's just so cool because it's such a family. And I know sometimes that could feel toxic or whatever when

you're a work environment like this is a family, but it really felt like that. And so I am so honored to be a part of this and just thank you for having me. Thank you for watching videos and yeah, thanks. This was such a fun time in my life. It was such an amazing opportunity. Forever going to be grateful for it and it's been fun to look back at it. And like you were saying, I root for everybody that's from BuzzFeed. Like when I saw Quinta win, I think I cried.

I legit cried cuz I was like, "Hell yeah, it's that she deserves that." Not to give her too much of her flowers cuz she'll be annoyed by this, but like seeing her and go like she did it cuz we all had a dream of we want to be the internet people. We want to make it to the TV. And when you see someone where you're like, I remember you when you lived with like four girls in an apartment and you have been consistently like this person and you did it. It just felt like a huge moment. Even like me like forang into acting now, like there was a part that I went out for where somebody from BuzzFeed got it and I found out they got it and I was so stoked when I found out that they got

it because like a lot of times you audition for things, you don't know who gets it. And when I found out it was somebody from BuzzFeed, I was so stoked for them cuz I was like, "Oh, amazing. I know he's great. You're always going to be linked. So yeah, we're part of millennial culture. Sorry, Buzzfeed. That's the sign.