The first person to sing a song to Parker McCollum scored $500. The first person to wrap Maddie & Tae in wrapping paper got the same.

Ernest and Dierks Bentley have also stood in public with Joey and Steven from Are You Kidding TV. They’re the “first person to bring us …” guys on TikTok and YouTube, and they symbolize a shift in how artists are marketing music.

• Joey Gizzi and Steven Lannun met at Elon University in North Carolina and started their YouTube channel in 2016.
• After graduating in 2018, they stopped producing videos, but the COVID-19 pandemic and emergence of TikTok as a dominate platform brought them back together.
• They currently have 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube and eight million followers on TikTok.

They’ve given away as much as $5,000 of their own money in a single video, plus prizes like computers and gaming consoles.

Early on, the prizes were a bit more humble.

“It was just, take the dollar,” Lannun tells Taste of Country. “That was our first sign video ever. I don’t know how we came up with it. We stood outside on Elon’s campus and the sign said, ‘Take the dollar,’ and we wanted to see who would take it.”

Even Peyton Manning has collaborated with them. Last month, the duo introduced a new concept called “Silent Interviews” that piggybacks off the radio silence fans of the channel have come to recognize. Loud Luxury and actor Khleo Thomas were their first guests, but other brands and influencers who’ve reached out to them include Mr. Beast, Mario Lopez and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“We try to make the challenges with these celebrities not too long,” Lannun says. “Simple enough where people run by, they’ll go grab something, bring it back. But they’re usually in and out within 20 minutes.”

“And it’s always a concern for (a celebrity’s) team,” Gazzi — who is kind of the Teller to Lannun’s Penn — adds. “Like, when we’re meeting, they’re like, ‘So how long are they going to have to stand there?'”

More country collaborations are coming very soon (look for a big one on Friday, Sept. 27), and there’s a reason for that.

Here are is a condensed version of the Taste of Country Nights interview with Are You Kidding TV, followed by six burning questions. The full unedited interview will be featured soon on the Taste of Country Nights: On Demand podcast.

Who Are the Are You Kidding TV Guys?

Joey Gizzi (beard) and Steven Lannun (none) make social media comedy videos, “where we propose a challenge to the public via a sign taped to (Gizzi’s) chest. And we don’t talk, we don’t acknowledge questions, and we kind of just stand there with sunglasses until somebody completes the challenge, and then they get money.”

Sometimes the challenge is a simple one, like spotting five things wrong about how the pair are presenting. Others take more work. To earn a free semester’s worth of rent and meet Manning, someone needed to lug a mattress over to where they were standing and make a diving catch onto that mattress.

Does Are You Kidding TV Pay People to Collaborate?

They get this one a lot, and the answer speaks to the heart of why country stars are so eager to work with them.

For starters, the two men live in Nashville. Also, the videos provide promotional value toward a record release or similar. “So for us, we get the benefit of having someone big in the video, and then they get some promotions. That’s a win-win,” Gizzi explains.

Reactions from anyone who plays along are equally organic. Nobody gets paid unless they accomplish the task at hand. Sometimes people accuse them of staging a video because Lannun’s microphone can pick up ambient conversation, but that’s just a result of heavy gain.

How Much Money Have They Given Away?

At one point, Gizzi and Lannun kept a spreadsheet to tally how much they’d spent, but that’s long since been forgotten. So, loosely the pair estimate they’ve given away $50,000.

“Don’t quote us on that,” they joke.

About That Are You Kidding TV + Mr. Beast Collaboration …

The Are You Kidding TV collaboration with Mr. Beast is an example of a video that didn’t go as planned. It started when he followed them on TikTok, and then reached out to collaborate two hours later.

Plans were made, and Mr. Beast’s team even paid for and helped set up a large swimming pool near Duke University in North Carolina. The popular YouTuber keeps an extremely tight schedule, however, and while Joey and Steven were waiting for their time, his team told them it wouldn’t work out.

Don’t worry, it ends well: In addition to getting to talk business with him that night, they got time for a simpler concept the next day.

“So, like, he pulls up, gets out, does it, gets back in the car, waits for the next one,” Gizzi says. “He’d get mobbed if he was just waiting out there on a college campus.”

Have They Ever Gotten in Trouble?

Yes. Are You Kidding TV is often filmed on a college campus, and one time they set up at Vanderbilt without seeking permission. If you follow local news in Nashville, you’ve heard other stories of Vanderbilt University strong-arming protesters, media or other performers off the campus.

“I think the video was shotgun a Sprite, get $10,” Gizzi says. “And then campus security just, like, not cool with that. Said: ‘Never come back. Never come back. You’re gonna get arrested.’ So we haven’t come back.”

An Are You Kidding TV Tour?

The two men are forever dreaming of new challenges that won’t embarrass anyone too much and won’t put anyone in danger. Gizzi and Lannun say they recognize the responsibility that comes with a camera and a stack of cash, and don’t want to do wrong by their fans, many of whom are kids.

“I think people also want to be in the TikTok now,” Lannun says. “So even if the prize was smaller, I think they still would do a lot just to be on camera.”

In addition to new challenges and concepts, Gizzi and Lannun have dreams of taking their show on the road. A return to Elon University sparked the idea for a tour that is still a ways off, but more tangible today than when they were begging people to take $1.