t’s not difficult to predict exactly what your favorite YouTubers will do or say in a live show. Most take the stage with a goal to bring their videos to life, whether commentary or humor-based. Danny Gonzalez and Drew Gooden aren’t your typical YouTubers, though.
Though YouTube success is largely measured by views—and in turn, repeated, proven topics and voice—Gonzalez and Gooden aren’t tied to their past, their top releases or any sort of predictability.
The pair are known for their comedy and commentary, and they’re often teased for being undeniably similar, both in video content and personal life. In their upcoming tour, fittingly titled the “We Are Two Different People Tour,” Gonzalez and Gooden set out to create an entirely different kind of stage show that supports the wishes of their fans but allows them to grow.
Gonzalez and Gooden spoke to Newsweek about the tour, which launches in Naperville, Illinois, on Thursday and Friday, and explained how it’s unlike anything their fans have seen from them. “The tour is a very theatrical 90-minute production,” said Gooden. “Our goal is to make something that’s unlike any other YouTuber live show we’ve seen before, and we’re hoping we accomplished that.”
While the pair sometimes film videos together and have an obvious overlap in fan bases, they’re known for different things. While Gooden brings a sense of reality to commentary pieces, Gonzalez more often posts music videos in response to his own commentary. One of his most successful commentary series follows the controversial and eerie children’s YouTube channel Billion Surprise Toys. His videos, which question everything about the children’s songs, including a talking fridge and the unexplained redesign of an animated father figure, have become big enough to start national conversations.
When asked if Gonzalez has had any contact with Billion Surprise Toys, past a handful of his reaction videos being removed from YouTube, he responded. “Unfortunately I’ve never had any real communication with them aside from them taking my videos down, which they just recently did again,” said Gonzalez. “It’s been a very one-sided conversation. Billion Surprise Toys if you’re reading this bring back Papa,” he said of the father figure, whose disappearance was never explained.
Most recently, the pair created a mocking video of actor Jeremy Renner’s app on EscapeX, and noted it wasn’t much different from an Instagram account. In response, Renner fully deleted the app, which gave dedicated fans some exclusive access to his life, and conversation.
The stage show will be different, in terms of theatrical representation of the pair’s comedy. But their own senses of humor will carry into the new territory, Gooden explained. “I think we both see this as a way to evolve ourselves as comedians and try to break out of the mold that people may have come to expect from us,” he said. “But at the same time, our sense of humor hasn’t changed, and the jokes are in line with what you’d see in one of our videos. It’s just delivered in a different format.”