This Group: The Seven Who Became Famous Together, and How They Reached the Day They Had to Part

30-Second Overview: Starting in 2011, "This Group" (TGOP) transformed the performance chemistry of seven people into catchphrases used by Taiwanese audiences in their daily lives. In 2023, they announced a hiatus for the following year. The outside world first heard "dissolution," but the members themselves spoke of resting, changing, and returning to a pure heart. This gap reveals the most difficult question for early Taiwanese internet celebrity groups: when a channel is simultaneously friends, a company, a stage, and a source of income, can relationships alone sustain long-term cooperation?

Image credit：Intermediapost / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Original source

In 2011, Zhanrong, Zhanrui, Jupiter (Mu Xing), Dong Zai, Yin Sheng, Nick, and Shi Tou began publishing videos on YouTube. A 2025 follow-up report still described this starting point as "publishing on YouTube in 2011," noting that one year after their hiatus, they remained in the top five according to the Taiwan Internet Celebrity Rankings cited in that report¹. This was not a channel suddenly pushed up by algorithms, but a group of performers slowly exchanging rehearsals, division of labor, and friendship chemistry for rhythm in front of the lens.

Their most recognizable works often required no expensive sets. Waiters, roommates, family members, and colleagues were all characters the audience already knew. In 2017, member Zheng Yinsheng spoke about the team's production, leaving two sentences that sounded unlike a success story: "The reach is so low I can't eat," and "Even when we are on the verge of bankruptcy, we still make videos very seriously!"² Jokes are light on screen, but the cost behind the scenes is heavy.

Seven People, First Turning the Channel into a Stage

In 2011, YouTube did not yet have the clear creator titles it has today. Dong Zai later recalled that after receiving a call from Zhanrui, she joined the team, serving successively as a window/contact, agent, producer, public relations, company administrator, and HR. Liberty Times cited her social media posts, stating that within the team, she did not just stand in front of the lens, but also handled how a small production organization operates³.

This detail is crucial. What the audience sees is a group standing in the same frame, but inside the team, actors, screenwriters, producers, agents, and administrators coexist. The channel is like a theater troupe, and also like a company. Every time "everyone films together," someone is actually behind the scenes scheduling time, finding venues, negotiating collaborations, handling personnel, and distributing income.

A 2024 TVBS report described the channel's scale with 3.57 million subscribers and 336 videos, listing seven members. The report also reviewed the period when the "Super Blind Covers Series" gained attention in 2016, noting that members once prioritized creating good works over profit-sharing⁴. This made "together" not just an emotional slogan, but a working method that put personal compensation on hold.

The problem is that working methods can sustain a group for a while, but not necessarily support everyone's life. The same TVBS report mentioned that commercial video rates were rumored to reach 1.3 million NTD, but after being split among seven people, each person received less than 200,000 NTD. This figure should be understood as the distribution scenario described in the report, not an estimate of the channel's annual income⁴.

The Cost of a Single Video, Hidden Behind Laughter

In July 2021, after the first micro-lockdown easing, the group gathered for the first time to film. Liberty Times reported that actors and staff wore masks throughout, with Yinsheng and Zhanrong also wearing goggles; all members tested negative for rapid antigen tests before filming, following the Ministry of Culture's epidemic prevention guidelines⁵. The team said to the camera: "We can still film under full epidemic prevention! Nothing can stop us (hopefully)."⁵

This "hopefully" reflects their tone, and also mirrors the reality of the creator industry. Works need to remain relaxed, but the production site must add procedure after procedure. The pandemic made group filming more difficult, yet the team still strived to preserve the sense of "everyone in the same frame" for viewers.

In 2022, Zhanrong and Zhanrui announced a pause in uploading videos due to their father's stroke, prioritizing family matters. Liberty Times recorded that the two later updated that their father had regained consciousness, writing: "We are truly very grateful, it's so good to have you all."⁶ The channel here was not just a place to release works, but also a public room for members to explain life changes to the audience.

The Summer of "It's Time to Change"

In August 2023, Zhanrong announced via the official "This Group TGOP" Facebook page that after months of discussion, the members decided to pause the channel's updates the following year. Yahoo News cited the announcement, specifically retaining the team's reminder regarding outside misunderstandings: pausing updates does not equal dissolution, nor does it mean there will be no more works⁷.

Zhanrong said in the announcement: "We, the group, have decided it is time to take a break, and next year we will find a suitable time to pause 'This Group' channel."⁷ He also said this decision was hoped to move everyone forward in a better direction, returning to a pure and tight "heart."⁷

Here appeared the first contrast. The outside world most easily translated "stopping updates" into "dissolution," but the team repeatedly asked media to use more precise terms. For them, pausing was not a sensational ending, but a way to put the channel, which ran daily like a machine, back into a place where they could rethink things.

A few months later, media began asking for the real reasons. In January 2024, Wind News reported that producer Shi Tou discussed the hiatus on the "Producers" channel. He said: "Not continuing means being bored of it; individuals have it, the group has it, everyone is tired!" The same report also quoted him saying "the company is having operational problems"⁸.

These two sentences cannot be compressed into a single answer. Fatigue is a human state; operations are a company's state. The two push each other, but they are not the same thing. Shi Tou also discussed the possibility of releasing an album or developing towards an artist direction, but when facing the short-video market, the team felt a state of "wanting to rush but afraid to rush"⁸.

ETtoday's report on the same interview retained the statements "it must be related to money" and "the company's operations are in trouble," and recorded that members had discussed repeatedly, with the idea of "thinking about taking a break" gradually forming the decision to pause⁹. The commonality among different media was not to announce a single truth for the team, but to let readers see that the pause involved money, fatigue, the company, the platform, and the next step.

After the Last Video, What Remains?

In late January 2024, "This Group" aired its final project. On February 15, Dong Zai posted a team photo, reviewing her work from window/contact, agent, producer to HR, and wrote: "All along, 'This Group' has been my sky, my everything. Watching 'This Group' grow, I also have to grow up."³

She simultaneously said: "Pausing does not mean the end, because each of us is still wandering in this world!"³ This sentence did not guarantee the channel would return, but it left a boundary for shared work experience: the channel can stop, but the members' lives will not press the stop button together.

In March 2025, Liberty Times looked back at the status one year after the hiatus, reporting that Xiao Gong established a personal studio, mainly shooting short videos. This分流 (divergence) is highly symbolic. The seven people once put everyone's energy into the same channel; after the pause, creative ability began returning to different individuals¹.

This also explains why "This Group" deserves to be written as a profile article, and cannot simply be placed in an internet celebrity ranking list. Ranking lists leave behind positions; TGOP leaves behind a working memory of Taiwanese internet culture: several people without fixed traditional TV time slots, who found actors themselves, wrote scenarios themselves, handled the company themselves, and then let the audience take sentences from the videos back to classrooms, offices, and homes.

The Platform Changed, and So Did the Group's Time

Early videos by "This Group" relied on joint appearances. The humor was built on members being familiar with each other, allowing the audience to remember each person's expressions, voices, and positions. The advantage of this model is high recognizability; the disadvantage is that every project requires coordinating multiple people simultaneously. As long as someone has work in drama, music, family, or personal channels, what once seemed like simple filming becomes a scheduling negotiation.

Shi Tou mentioned in an interview that the team discussed releasing an album or developing towards an artist direction, but worried about costs and market changes. Here one can see how platform shifts change content organization. Short videos require faster responses and higher update flexibility, creating new beats for the production methods that maintain long-term character and group chemistry. ETtoday's report summarized this state as "wanting to rush but afraid to rush"⁹; it is not an industry term, but the hesitation of a group facing a new market.

If one person films, changing direction only requires adjusting one's own work. If seven people film together, changing direction affects everyone's income, time, and identity. This is the invisible cost of group channels. The audience only sees updates or pauses; the members face the reality that everyone must rearrange their work.

Profit-Sharing Is Not Just an Arithmetic Problem

The 1.3 million NTD commercial video and the seven-person distribution scenario in the TVBS report are most notable not for the amount itself, but for showing the audience that group income must pass through division of labor. Performers, producers, agents, administrators, and company expenses may all occur within the same collaboration. As works get bigger, distribution rules must become clearer, otherwise "doing it together" slowly becomes "bearing it together."⁴

Dong Zai reviewed her handling of windows, producing, PR, and HR, explaining that a group is not just seven people standing in front of the lens. The more behind-the-scenes work there is, the more systems are needed. In her hiatus article, she mentioned that as company personnel gradually increased, many things had to begin having institutional regulations³. Reading this memory together with Shi Tou's statement about the company's operational status is sufficient to understand why the hiatus was not just creative fatigue.

The Audience's Memory Is Also in the Group

When the 2022 family incident occurred, Zhanrong and Zhanrui first paused uploading. This decision would be remembered by the audience because the channel had long kept members' work and lives visible. Audience support was not just supporting a brand, but supporting the individuals in front of the lens who had already been recognized. This intimacy can form long-term loyalty, but it also increases the public pressure on members facing private changes⁶.

Dong Zai said "This Group is my sky, my everything"; that is a sentence from a long-term worker looking back at life. It is moving, and also heavy. When a group carries work, friendship, growth, and the opportunity to be seen, pausing naturally feels like losing a life coordinate. She then said everyone would continue to move forward in their respective journeys, precisely explaining that the end or pause of a group should not be simplified into who leaves and who stays.³

Why the Audience Remembers These Seven People

The content of "This Group" has a design easily underestimated: it turned relationships Taiwanese audiences encounter daily into recognizable character arrangements. How family members would reply, how colleagues would push responsibility, how waiters would face guests, who friends would look at first in awkward moments—these scenarios did not require a massive worldview, but required actors to be very familiar with tone, pauses, and each other's reactions. When seven people were in the same frame, the punchline was often not a single line of dialogue, but who caught whom's mistake first.

This performance method gave the audience a feeling of "I know them." A 2017 report mentioned that even when economically distressed, the team put works first, explaining that their recognizability relied not just on star-like individual exposure, but on the rhythm accumulated through fixed cooperation². In 2021, during epidemic filming, the team still wanted to maintain the sense of multiple people in the same frame, concretizing the production cost of this rhythm⁵.

Because characters and members were tightly bound, once the group paused, the audience lost not just an update slot, but a fixed set of viewing relationships. Some were used to watching the interaction between Zhanrong and Zhanrui; others remembered the positions of Jupiter, Dong Zai, Yinsheng, Nick, and Shi Tou in different scenarios. These memories do not necessarily require the seven to be on stage together again, but they will make any solo work carry the shadow of the original channel.

When creator groups reach this stage, the real question is no longer whether they can film another viral video, but whether each person can establish new work coordinates outside of shared memory. The 2025 report recording Xiao Gong establishing a personal studio is precisely a concrete example of this conversion¹. The abilities left by the group have not disappeared; they have simply dispersed from the same set to different studios, different channels, and different performance forms.

Re-understanding "Together"

The story of "This Group" has no clean climax. Starting to film in 2011, gaining more visibility in 2016 with the "Super Blind Covers Series," finding ways to gather and film under epidemic restrictions in 2021, pausing updates due to family in 2022, announcing a hiatus for the following year in 2023, and completing the final project in 2024. Each node pushed "together" forward, and wrote its cost more clearly.

They did not stop because they no longer had an audience. At least from the ranking cited in the 2025 follow-up report, one year after the pause, they still had recognizability and a position¹. The truly difficult question to answer is how a channel can simultaneously take care of seven people's creative directions, income needs, life changes, and the next platform.

Therefore, the pause looks like disappearance, but is actually closer to disassembly. The identities of channel, company, friends, actors, producers, and individual creators are re-differentiated; everyone must decide anew what to take away, and must admit that some things cannot be maintained by chemistry alone.

In the 2023 announcement, Zhanrong hoped the team would "return to everyone in different ways"⁷. The most valuable part of this sentence today lies not in what it predicted, but in that it acknowledged form must change. The seven who became famous together do not necessarily need to prove they were once together using the same channel.

The three images used in this article are all generic production scenes, not photos of TGOP members or filming sites. Image links point to Wikimedia Commons original files; each caption includes the original file page, author, and licensing information, avoiding misreading illustrative images as character records.

The last object "This Group" left for Taiwanese internet culture is not a video, nor the number 3.57 million, but that frame where they were once together. It makes people see that what is hardest to maintain is never heat, but giving different people within the same name a reason to still move forward together.

Further Reading

This Group TGOP Official YouTube Channel provides channel works and official video context. This article did not use the channel page as a footnote source; body claims correspond to specific article pages.

Image Sources

• Hero: Recording studio console and instruments, illustrating the production foundation needed behind internet group works (not the actual recording studio of This Group), photo by Intermediapost, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

References