A love letter to Eugene Lee Yang
If you haven’t heard the news, Eugene Lee Yang has officially announced his departure from the Try Guys after a 10-year long run of making digital content. In a silly, moving, and sincere final video titled “Love, Eugene,” he says farewell to the audience that has helped shaped his career and leaves us with some hard truths about being a public figure on the internet. I have been a huge Eugene supporter for 8 of the 10 years he’s been online, and this has only deepened my respect for him.
As a young queer and trans Asian person, there were no people like me to look to as an example. Especially not in creative spaces (publicly anyway). I have often felt like an island all on my own, even in my own communities. Just like Eugene, I’ve sometimes been the only person of color in a group of friends and I’ve struggled with my own internalized shame around my gender, sexuality, and racial identity. I’ve also struggled with being a black sheep in an Asian family, contending with their expectations for a specific kind of life. Eugene was one of the first people that I saw speaking truth to my experiences publicly.
When his series of coming out videos dropped in June of 2019, I rewatched them over and over again and allowed myself a rare cathartic cry. I released things I didn’t even know I…
