The Rise & Fall Of Three Fine Guys
How the YouTube trio rose to fame and had it all come crashing down
Abongwe Booi, Matthew Frey and Tebogo Moloto came together in April 2018 to shoot a video for Booi’s YouTube channel. When this video was shot, the trio has known each other and had been friends since their first year at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2016. Having been friends for a good 2 years, the on-camera chemistry between the three was palpable. The three had so much fun shooting the video for Booi’s channel, they immediately decided to start a group channel. When the video on Booi’s channel went live, they announced that a group channel was coming soon. By May 2018, Three Fine Guys was born.
Very few YouTube groups are able to gather the right mix of skill and personality to get the best synergies and make good content. TFG was able to do this perfectly. Before starting the group channel, the three were relatively well known at UCT in their individual capacities and had some sort of social capital. Though they were not technically “famous on campus” but they knew just enough people who also had social capital in Cape Town.
Booi was a Film and TV student who had been making YouTube videos since he was in high school and had the technical knowhow from a production perspective. Frey was an avid watcher of international YouTube channels and had a host of international experience having lived in various countries. From a content perspective, he knew what kind of content works in international markets and how that could be adapted for a local audience. Moloto was the center ground where Booi and Frey’s creative ideas found a meeting place. This combination of personality, skill and knowhow was the perfect recipe for the South African university content market.
The content, technical production and personalities were great but the secret ingredient to the rapid success of the group was their consistency. The mantra was “TFG Sundays” and true to their word the group dropped a new video every Sunday. Even during varsity recess when Booi and Moloto were back in Joburg and Frey still in Cape Town, the group was still releasing videos on Sundays. For an almost two year stretch, the group seldom missed a Sunday upload and that consistency — subscribers knowing that they have a guaranteed TFG video to watch every Sunday afternoon — kept subscribers coming, and coming and coming.
In 2018 YouTube as an original content creator platform was in full swing in the South African market and specifically in university campuses. That was the beginning stages of the normalization of 10k subscribers. Just in the previous year, major YouTubers had just clocked 10 000 subscribers and the latter part of 2018 to 2019 was when 10k was an expected subscriber count to be seen as a YouTuber. Just a few days before their 1 year anniversary the channel hit 10 000 subscribers which at the time was a significant milestone and 2019 turned out to be the best and last year for the group.
Throughout 2019 TFG had an exceptional year. After the 10k mark, their subscriber base grew in leaps and bounds and by the end of 2019 the group was on track to clock 30k subscribers. The number of comments on a video and general engagement on YouTube was on a steady incline throughout the 2018–2019 period. None of the guys were heavily present on Twitter and their videos were still a topic of conversation on the platform. On Instagram, the TFG account had a healthy following and the guys individually also amassed a healthy following on that app. The trio were also able to secure sponsorships, the biggest being the Hunters Dry summer campaign. By every metric, TFG was a big group that was on a very fast incline to being one of the biggest YouTube groups in South Africa.
In August 2019 UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana was brutally raped and murdered by local Post Office employee Luyanda Botha. The death of Mrwetyana brought the entire country to it’s knees and as the nation mourned her passing there was a revitalization of anti-GBV campaigns. As many corporations, celebrities, influencers and anyone with a platform was campaigning against rape culture and gender based violence, TFG was not to be left behind. The Sunday after the news of Mrwetyana’s passing broke, TFG did not release their ‘normal’ videos but a short sit down with just the guys in honor of Mrwetyana and other victims of GBV. The following Sunday it was back to regular programming with the end part of the video being a dedication to the memory of Mrwetyana and other GBV victims. No one knew that the death of Mrwetyana would trigger the last days of TFG.
There was a very important moment post the news of Mrwetyana’s murder. In the days succeeding the discovery of her body and subsequent arrest of Botha, scores of people across the gender lines came out primarily on social media to share the names of people they accused of having abused them. During that week, it felt like there was a new accusation every minute of the day. The majority of people who stood in accusation for harassment were men and the hashtag #MenAreTrash made the rounds on social media once again. The TFG trio kept consistent with their politics of believing women. Moloto and Booi specifically on Twitter expressed support for the hashtag, Frey does not have a Twitter account and so he’s position on the hashtag is lesser known.
As mentioned, the majority of accusations ventilated during that period were against men — TFG is made up of young men who at the time were aged 22–23 and who had been in university for 3 full years. At the time when the accusations were made in 2019, none were made against the members of TFG.
TFG had a rocky start to 2020. The first two months of that year were the dying days of the pre-pandemic period and the group struggled greatly to release content during those two months. They released apology after apology for not releasing any videos on their usual Sundays. During this period, technical challenges were blamed for the non-uploads. Later Booi revealed that there were academic and personal challenges that resulted in the non-uploads. Booi mentioned that he himself was going through a breakup at the time and was in no mental place to shoot, edit and release content. Adding to it being a pandemic year, it was only natural that the group halted the release of content. The final nail on the coffin came during 2020.
In the aftermath of another brutal killing of a woman in South Africa, there was another round of women who came out with accusations of assault and harassment against men. The first of the accusations to hit TFG was against their close friend Themba Hadebe. Then there was another against close friend Ntobeko Sishi. Then Alex Biyaya. At this point three of their closest friends had all been hit with accusations. One of the women in question released screenshots where Sishi had apologized for behavior that he admitted was akin to harassment, the apology was made as Sishi was reflecting on his behavior during the aftermath of Mrwetyana’s murder. Just as we thought the accusations were only towards their close friends, the group was personally hit.
Both Moloto and Frey were accused separately of abuse and harassment. Moloto was accused of relentlessly pursuing a woman who continuously communicated that she was not interested, even going to the extent of contacting her friends. Frey was accused of abusing his ex-girlfriend, an allegation that he refuted through statements on his Instagram story. At the end of this bloodbath of accusations, Booi was the only one who did not have an accusation against him however he was still expected to stand accountable for not calling out the behavior from his friends.
At the time, Moloto and his younger brother deactivated their Twitter accounts. Booi released a series of tweets in which he acknowledged the accusations made against pretty much all his closest friends and said he was taking time off social media to reflect. It is important to note that all the people mentioned here remain close friends and there was no ending of friendships from the accusations themselves.
Although the accusations against the TFG members and their friends were not a trending topic on Twitter, there were a couple of people who spoke about it and the accusations that were primarily made on Instagram received a lot of views. From the events of 2019, the accusations against them and their friends that arose in 2020 and the fact that it seemed unlikely that the group would be physically together to continue making content in 2020 the group could foresee that it was unlikely that TFG could have a future. And that is when the channel officially called it quits.
In January 2021 TFG released a video titled ‘Thanks for everything’ in which they announced the official end of the channel. In that video they said Booi and Frey would continue making content on their separate channels but Moloto would not continue making any YouTube videos. This was the official end of the very short 2 year lifespan of the TFG channel.
At the time of writing this article both Frey and Booi continue to make YouTube videos in separate channels both enjoying varying degrees of success. Booi has worked on an HBO Max series ‘Raised by Wolves’ as assistant director and is currently in Los Angeles, California with his music producer brother. Frey is still at UCT. It is not clear what Moloto is doing now but it seems he’s now based in Durban and has recently launched a Substack called ‘Young, Dumb & Broke’.
