Uh i'll watch this for a minute. The idea in the beginning was original intelligence. What happened, but you guys actually always wonder why i'm generally not to the youtube platform. Oh that's.

What happened 44 months smiled to create the most ridiculous massive unhealthy meals out of foods that were already ridiculously unhealthy, no vegetables, anything that could be considered a vegetable. I don't want it on the burger, fast food, lasagna, turban, epic, thanksgiving and maximum mac and cheese. All gained well over 10 million views, helping them to maintain their position as one of the top 10 most subscribed channels for a whole year and 12.. However, a quick skim over epic meal time these days reveals that the channel has unfortunately been unable to retain their viewership over an extended period.

That's unlucky of time, the approximate 50 000 views on each video is in stark contrast to the channel's heyday. With many of these 50 000 views likely coming from former fans either coming back for a hit guys, you guys will use the watches, ended up happening to epic meal time and why the channel's extreme viewership eventually floundered, because in the beginning everyone was talking about them. On youtube, facebook, reddit and even in real life, which was the first thing that gave them a massive advantage over every other youtuber, the gamer from mars, mentioned a similar phenomena around four years ago. In his video talking about the group, i remember back in the 10th grade whenever there was a new episode of epic meal time, all the kids would come to school the next day and discuss the creation they had made on the exact opposite side of the world.

Over here it was the same story. The first thing you wanted to do after you discovered epic meal. Time was tell your friends and family about this channel that made the most outrageous food imaginable. For some reason, epic meal has generated more word-of-mouth discussion than what felt like any other channel at the time to watch that, because you're not entirely wrong actually and obviously, as their food challenges, got crazier and crazier.

Discussion surrounding the epic meal time channel got crazier and crazier in the process. The channel would implement a unique recognizable style to the video muscle ground morrenstein. The creator and host of the channel would take on an overly serious borderline root - persona 15 baconators. What 15 baconators? Alongside recurring, characters such as muscles glasses, whose whole stick was basically just to stand there, looking tough, additionally to add extra fuel to the fire, each episode would feature a high quantity of jack, daniels and bacon strips which similar to russians, as mentioned in the previous video, Were just a weird, unrelated random pop culture trend or meme back in 2011., tyler bacon, you love bacon, why'd, you love bacon.

I don't know, bacon is the greatest thing ever. The video is always set up in a way that naturally lent towards success. In that there was always some reason to watch each and every video until the very end you wanted to see what the calorie counter would get up to. At the end of the video you wanted to see what the final food creation would look like at the end of the video, and you wanted to see the interesting ways in which they would eat the food at the end of the video channels, weren't as sophisticated Back then, to the point that they'd try and deliberately get you to watch until the end of the video, as is common these days.

So when the format naturally forced you to watch the whole thing, it was an unbelievable advantage with way above average levels of word of mouth unique, recognizable branding done alongside. I missed you so much unbelievable. That forced you to watch each and every episode of completion. Very few competitors stood a chance against epic meal time, after only nine months on youtube.

Their channel achieved one million subscribers faster than any other youtuber up until that point, and only a year after that, epic meal time, another founding father, that's cool, such as fps russia and shane dawson, which then opened up the opportunity for an epic meal time mobile game And a spin-off tv show called epic chef with a presence held in every corner of popular culture. Epic meal time was on top of the world, however, with so much success gained in such a short period of time across a friendship group of up to 10 different people, disputes and arguments between the crew began to unravel the channel's, unbelievable success juggling the politics was Always the the one thing i did not like to do and i didn't enjoy, as 2013 rolled around fans began to notice that it was becoming less and less common to see the whole epic mealtime crew together as a group in any of the videos one article Written by new rockstars made a comment about one of epic meal time's recent videos, stating that the strangest part of the episode was not the bizarre monstrosity of a meal that had been created, but rather the fact that harley morenstein was appearing in the video by himself. The reason is come to the surface and was what you might call unfortunately, predictable behind the scenes some of the people within the group weren't exactly getting along. You know.

I went through a period on epic meal time where you know things are like getting difficult with personal relationships and it's becoming very taxing mentally two of the most infamous recognizable crew members alex perol and tyler lemko. Each had a falling out with both the creator of epic mealtime harley morinstein and his brother darren morenstein, who had also been a co-creator of the channel when interviewed on the topic alex perl, who played the character of muscle's glasses, stated. Essentially, i felt like i wasn't being treated fairly, considering the value i brought to the show other than harley no other member of the crew had any ownership of the company. There were many promises made over the years that were not kept.

It got to the point where i couldn't trust harley as a friend and harley, and his brother, as business associates. Later harley would explain that alex peralt had been a salaried actor, who is simply paid to play the role of muscles gloves guys guys. This is a tough situation where it's kind of hard to quantify the value of somebody with an asset as to the channel or whatever right right. How much you pay them? How much are they worth you don't even know if you don't, if you don't, if he doesn't show up and he's not there for a long time, how much is the channel going to suffer right? That would be.

That would be his value. But how do you know until you get there, you don't? So how do you put a value on that? It's kind of hard, it's gon na buses, you got you got paid vacant and that's why i had a big issue with like the falling out, because i was like dude man. One day a month, we film you in like four different bacon strip shirts to make it look like four different episodes and then you're gone for a month and you get a salary but with muscles glasses. Being such an integral part of the show, perhaps alex felt entitled and was possibly even promised a piece of the business or simply more money for his involvement.

A promise that, as mentioned in the previously discussed interview, may have never been delivered on from harley's perspective. He's guys guys this one is like impossible to sustain. Yes, it puts it in their shoes. You know the value of the other dude right and then the main creators which are almost as similar as you as you are right, are going full time for whatever, and you have to kind of like get a side hustle like either.

You continue to go to school or or to get to get a job. It just feels weird. Is it not it's gon na it's gon na odd you're on the same boat, but they go all in and you're out there having to get a psychic and like that with uncertainty of your future. It's kind of weird stated that toward the end of their relationship, muscle's glasses became somewhat unimportant for the show to continue yet he expected to be paid even more than harley himself.

It was like six months of a back and forth of essentially asking to get paid more than myself and anyone else got or anything like that and after six months of like discussing it, i was kind of like that. One day i woke up - and i was like yeah - you haven't been on for six months and the show's still going on, so i'm not so worried about your leverage because we're still existing. I was like bro, let's not beat her in the bush. You get paid to eat bacon once a month like relax like like relax with all this tyler lemko agreed with muscle's glasses, stating that he had left for the same reasons, however, also added that business just got in the way of it being fun.

Now you can almost feel the truth of this statement, as their channel got increasingly more popular harley stated that at times, specifically, when the team moved to la the videos were becoming a chore or a job, something he needed to do for the sake of paying his Employees as opposed to a fun project as it had been in the beginning, i kind of got this place where i'm like it's a job got ta, do it got ta do and i go back and watch some of these videos. I'm like i see that i see that moment where i was like. Yeah got ta do my cause. If i don't do it, you know people aren't gon na have jobs during the initial months of the channel.

It was just a group of dudes who seem to be making the videos because they genuinely wanted to see nothing more than what kind of monstrosity they could come up with for that specific week. But as time progressed that bunch of bros just trying to make the stupidest thing possible, vibe just kind of went away by 2014, not long after the channel was one of the most popular on youtube that even put out numerous episodes. Where harley, the host of the show didn't even appear and was replaced by other members of the crew like they were just making the food because they were paid to do so, while harley was probably out handling other things. This is just so weird the channel.

Wait that vibe is so much more going on and infrastructure happening beyond. Just me being like i'm in the kitchen with the camera boy get at me, going too hard on the business side of things can really take a hit on the channel's level of fun and homely relatability, which may have happened in epic meal time's case. Judging from tyler lemko's comment of business just got in the way of it being fun. However, it's kind of hard to blame harley in the epic meal time channel for going more corporate and wanting to up the production value, because the production value might have been one of the only things they could change.

The format was extremely limiting. We mentioned earlier that cooking a big meal to completion proved incredibly effective in getting the viewer to watch each and every video until the end. But for the very same reason it was incredibly simple to replicate and there was barely anything they could do to make the format novel the show's not like it's like a novelty anymore. There's you know, there's many channels that do the exact same thing, essentially yo lyric you're done you're.

That is he live. Is it guys is he is he live? This? Is this absolute croc lord holy holy, i'm getting so tired of this go live or play a game stop going in and out of dinner, i'm not getting out of origin. I can't because you can heal for every single video, but beyond that the room for variation was limited, resulting in unavoidable repeatability began to show in the video's average monthly viewership by late 2013 long after the departure of tyler lemko muscles glasses and approximately three years after The channel posted their first video, the channel's monthly viewership, declined to approximately 10 million per month, where it would stay for the following three years. Despite the job harley hadn't lost any passion for the project, he'd upload a new epic meal time, every single tuesday for five years straight.

However, the drop in views did mean that making the videos financially feasible was becoming harder and harder youtube isn't in a place where spending a thousand dollars with you know, like five employees, making an epic meal makes any sense anymore. You know what i mean with each video costing approximately a thousand dollars for supplies and probably another thousand dollars again, if not more, to pay for his five salaried employees. Getting the numbers to stack was increasingly difficult with a dwindling view count if each video was costing them two thousand dollars and we use a standard ad rate of say three to four dollars per thousand views. Each video would have to be gaining more than five to seven hundred thousand views just to break even a number that the videos wouldn't always reach.

In 2015.. Harley did mention that they had food sponsorships and merge sales to assist in making the videos more financially feasible. But with a slow yet continually declining years, i know that against epic meal time, the insane word of mouth that that experienced that's pretty sharp substantially, as everyone knew about the project, it wasn't cool to talk about it on the school yard anymore. The weird popular culture obsession with bacon had well and truly passed.

It was still a staple of this guy. As soon as i stopped watching the videos, i never even tried or went back. I i don't think this is one of those things where you. Whenever you stop watching it's not like, oh, i watch like less videos.

It's like from 100 to zero. Like i remember once i stopped watching, i never even clicked a single one episode. Every channel, a bit of an outdated, feel almost like the videos were a tribute to what the show used to be, as opposed to a show striving for a fresh meta, updated production, epic meal time also swapped out the intensity that had kept their content. Interesting in the beginning for blander, more relaxed, docile videos that felt like they had less energy invested into them: big wally, big wally, wow, wow, so sweet, i'm eating the sesame seeds and they taste dr peppery.

Do i have sesame seeds in my beard. All of this. In combination with the fact that it was really just the same, video over and over again with different foods, dropped the viewership to approximately two to four million views a month throughout 2017 and with a continually dropping view, count and the channel approaching 10 years of age. Harley began to think about energy is nitpicking a little bit, but it is pretty confirmed that you're shutting down epic meal time on octo in october of 2019 yeah.

The main reason for this, as harley explained, was due to the age of the show, also implying that the cooking had become monotonous. Now it's it's we're coming up to the 10 year and i'm like uh, you know like uh 10 year, like i don't even like cooking bro. No i'm kidding when october 2019 rolled around the date at which epic meal time was to end the channel's content changed slightly to eating the whole menu challenges, as well as the display of cheap or expensive food. However, it slowly changed back to cooking up massive meals, similar to the early days of the show.

Overall, the channel just feels a little bit outdated. The thumbnails feel a couple years behind and the video page looks a little inconsistent and unstructured when compared to the early days of the channel. However, harley seems like an incredibly driven success, focused individual with a high degree of personal responsibility, who simply found himself imprisoned within a video format that unavoidably became repetitive, he's taken the fall of his channel, there's playing what he was like. Simply grateful for the opportunity to have been a big name in the early days of youtube and attitude that we i made like feel bad, and i didn't because i was just kidding i was kidding.

I don't doubt appreciate as committed. I never expected it to go. So long i never expected it to be such a thing. You know there was definitely some uh trials and tribulations.

There's. Definitely lots of things to celebrate. I think i'm a very fortunate guys, i'm going to pull the reverse victim card, guys, guys guys now, i'm feeling i'm feeling really bad that he feels bad now now, i'm thinking about just ending the stream. At this point, i think i was very lucky.

I might just look out jesus man, not now it's kind of cooked up give me.