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One of my colleagues has a theory: If you know the Rizzler, you might not have been surprised that Kamala Harris lost the presidential election. If the name Big Justice doesn’t sound familiar, the results from the election may have been a total shock.
Back in March, a Florida-based father-and-son duo named A.J. and Big Justice posted a TikTok expressing their enthusiasm for Costco Wholesale and its food court items. The pair — as well as their extended universe of relatives and non-relatives, like the Rizzler — have since become viral sensations, cementing their internet celebrity status with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“The Costco Guys, the Rizzler, and this whole kind of straight-bro-coded mediaverse is a stand-in for how siloed media consumption on the left has gotten,” says Vox’s senior politics reporter Christian Paz. As a result, Paz suggests, some progressives may have “missed a bit of the political evolution the country was going through.”
It asks the question: Does the rise of the Costco Guys — who are in no way explicitly political — help explain a cultural landscape shaped by straight bros that presaged a Donald Trump win? Or is their presence on the internet something more innocuous, a throwback to the early days of YouTube when regular people would go viral and get airtime on Ellen? The answers are a little complicated.
A history of the Costco Guys cinematic universe
While they officially became viral sensations back in March, the Costco Guys’ celebrity has been years in the making. Originally from New Jersey, the family’s patriarch, Andrew Befumo (a.k.a. A.J.), was a professional wrestler who went by “the American Powerchild Eric Justice” before he retired and went into mortgage lending. About a decade ago, he started a family YouTube channel, featuring his wife Erika, his daughter Ashley, and his son Eric (a.k.a. Big Justice), called All Befumo’d Up. The channel featured the sort of mundane if heartwarming content you might see on a slice-of-life reality show, like cooking meals, attending an Avengers screening, and singing Christmas songs.
Since 2022, Befumo has mostly been making videos on TikTok (@a.j.befumo) with Eric — who he nicknamed Big Justice after his wrestling persona — with occasional appearances from Ashley and Erika, “The Mother of Big Justice.” Early videos show the father and son attending baseball games and reviewing local restaurants using their food review scale known as the “boom meter.” Delicious foods get a “boom!” Underwhelming or flat-out gross foods get a “doom!” — which is rare.
They also recorded themselves running regular errands, like going to retail chains, with an unusual amount of enthusiasm. However, it’s that level of excitement in depicting the suburban, middle-class experience that’s part of their draw. While many famous vloggers are filming tropical vacations and helicopter rides, the Costco Guys treat a trip to Party City like a special occasion.
These videos raked up hundreds of thousands of views and earned them some sponsorship deals. However, it wasn’t until this past spring that their affinity for Costco would give them a ticket to internet stardom. On March 1, they posted their own version of the viral “We’re X, of course we Y” trend about their love for the wholesale chain. “We’re Costco guys,” says Big Justice at the beginning of the video. “Of course we go shopping while eating a chicken bake.”
By July, they released a Beastie Boys-esque theme song, featuring Erika and Ashley, called “We Bring the Boom” that now has 14.4 million views. Since then, they’ve incorporated Costco and their extremely limited food court menu into much of their content, having guests rate the store’s “double chunk chocolate cookie” and come with them on shopping trips. They’ve released several remixes of “We Bring the Boom,” including a Christmas edition most recently. Ashley and Erika also emerged from the background of A.J. and Big Justice’s videos, creating their own page in October, @ashleyandmamajustice, where they mostly rank and review desserts.
Despite how normal these guys seem, viewers still feel like they’re watching something off-kilter and idiosyncratic. They have a wide-eyed, unflinching gaze — almost like they’re being held hostage and forced to read off a teleprompter — when staring into the camera. While you could argue that their zeal is earnest, their mannerisms are unnatural and stilted. The rap songs are inarguably cringe.
In the months since their initial virality, the “Costco boys” label has extended beyond the Befumo family to include some of their most frequent collaborators. Most notable among them is the Rizzler (a.k.a Christian Joseph), a kid influencer whose father began posting videos of him on TikTok in 2020. His father dubbed him the Rizzler, based on the slang term “rizz” that’s short for charisma. He’s since popularized the “rizz face,” a half-serious-half-smirking look similar to the alt-right meme/pose known as the “Chad face” or more broadly the “Gen Z Lip Sync Face.” A.J. said in an interview that a TikTok of the Rizzler joking around while wearing an ill-fitting Black Panther costume led him to contact the Rizzler’s father about collaborating. Other frequent guest stars include cousin Angelo, who may or may not actually be related to the Befumo family, and a TikTok dancer named Jersey Joe who posts videos dancing to Jersey Club music.
Do the Costco Guys really belong to the “bro internet”?
Since their rise to prominence, the Costco Guys have earned a questionable reputation on social media as alleged Trump supporters if not avatars for an increasingly MAGA-fied internet. The evidence is mostly superficial. They live in Florida. They spend much of their time in the big-box stores closely identified with the suburban American experience. Their logos and merch prominently feature the American flag.
“There’s a lot of stuff about their content that is seemingly Republican-coded,” says EJ Dickson, senior culture writer at The Cut. “The main one is that they’re part of a demographic of white men in a state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. The other aspect is the American flag imagery — very early on in their career. Actually, when A.J. was working in the mortgage industry, he was making content in front of an American flag.”
Other examples are more eyebrow-raising. Their fanbase — at least based on their account’s commenters — leans heavily white and male; comments on one Costco Guys’ livestream featured rows upon rows of the N-word in all-caps. Logan Paul knows about them.
Unlike Paul, though, the Befumo family has largely — and intentionally — avoided politics in their journey to fame. In an interview with internet reporter Taylor Lorenz, A.J. said that they’ve been approached by presidential candidates to collaborate but that political content was “not in their wheelhouse.”
Possible political affiliations aside, Dickson, who profiled A.J. and Big Justice for Rolling Stone in July, doesn’t think this accounts for all of their popularity.
“I do think people genuinely enjoy seeing this guy and his kid just being goofy and making this incredibly silly content together,” says Dickson. “A lot of people think their content is charming in its way.”
She also argues that their videos may be more subversive than progressives online give them credit for: a father and son spending an immense amount of time together, showing each other affection and bonding over food. She compares them to bona fide right-wing personality Andrew Tate, who “built his brand in the thrall of his domineering and withholding father.”
The fact that A.J. is monetizing time with his family has not gone without criticism. A behind-the-scenes video of A.J. sternly directing Big Justice in a video made the rounds in August and reinforced the assumption by some that he’s a stage dad. Still, the image of fatherhood he promotes is adoring and hands-on.
“Even though [A.J.] performs masculinity with the way he looks and the workouts, he’s kind of doing the opposite by virtue of just clowning around on camera and spending a lot of time with his kid,” says Dickson.
Regardless, the Costco Guys do ultimately exist in a lineage of influencers and celebrities that draw straight, white, right-leaning male fans. Several moments this year have shown, from the conservative appropriation of Sydney Sweeney to the overnight success of Hawk Tuah Girl, that it’s not totally up to public figures to decide who they appeal to.
