GUEST POST: Why These Comedians Went Viral in March

An analytical breakdown of some recent, viral comedy videos.

Hello! I’m David Zucker, a former data analyst at TikTok that now helps comedians grow their audience. I incorporate data-driven analysis to make my global roster of clients go viral with purpose. I also run a mailing list of my own, where I talk about digital marketing strategy, and recently conducted an audit of Matt Rife’s social media profiles.

Today, I’m continuing a monthly round-up segment called “Virality Bites”, where we’ll go under the hood of a few recent hits from a variety of comedians and comedic styles.

The first section of today’s analysis will be available for all subscribers, but the rest will be for paid subscribers only. Let’s get into it!

Boy Room - “Jerome“

@boy.roomJerome, 32, Chinatown, NY Welcome to Boy Room, the show where we investigate boys rooms. On today’s episode, Rachel Coster travels down to Chinatown where she visits handsome lad Jerome which is also filled with bike parts and a closet that looks like the Eye of Sauron. #apartmenttour #nyc #messy #boys #boyroom #comedy #funny #hoarders #newyork

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Boy Room is the first “show” to launch from Gymnasium, Adam Faze’s new production company whose mission statement is, “to bring great shows with the people you love to the places you actually are.”, according to this promo video on their Instagram.

Hosted by Rachel Coster, it’s sort of like Hoarders meets Cribs, capped at 90 seconds.

Featuring frequent camera angle switches, AI-generated mock home improvements, and Coster’s amusing observations accompanied by reality TV-esque underscores, it’s extremely watchable.¹

It’s also clearly created by people who actually browse these apps and understand what’s popular, and so it successfully parodies those NYC apartment tour videos.

Only four episodes in, the show is rapidly growing on both TikTok and Instagram. Faze attributed the recent TikTok growth to a change in the edit:

Since that tweet last week, the view count on the video he’s referencing has doubled.

Here are the advanced stats for their first 4 videos (last updated Sunday night)

Interestingly, in addition to earning far greater reach than its predecessors, the breakthrough “Jerome” episode had higher engagement rates in every metric.

Just for fun, here’s how the same four videos performed on Instagram:

Again, it had the highest reach of the four episodes (so far, at least. Instagram Reels are notorious for taking weeks – and sometimes even months – to pop off). But every other video performed equal or better in terms of Like PCT, and the first video actually had the highest Share PCT of all of them.

Compared to the first two episodes, the Jerome episode definitely “cuts to the chase” much quicker. It “shows” us rather than “tells” us what we’re about to watch by eliminating the brief spiel at the top of the earlier episodes.

It’s also extremely clear what we’re getting if we follow this page, hence the rapid uptick. Unlike individual comedians or brands who throw 7-8 types of content into the digital void and then wonder why they don’t get a massive influx of followers after one viral video, we know we will continue to watch Rachel go on tours of boys’ rooms.

Advice for Gymnasium / Boy Room: