Perhaps you remember Youth Asylum's big late-'90s single "Jasmin." But chances are you don't.

According to Kevin Yee—he's the bleached-blonde one in that perfectly 2ge+her promo photo above—the saccharine "Jasmin" got some airplay in Boston and Miami and made the top 5 of the Disney Channel's music video countdown, but that was about it. Youth Asylum released exactly one full song during their 1998-2000 tenure as major-label signees before Warner Brothers dropped them, effectively disbanding the group.

But wait, there are four bleached blonde ones! Yee is on the left.

Yee recently took to Reddit's Ask Me Anything board to answer questions about life as a former D-level tween music superstar. And while it's not particularly surprising to learn that he and his cohort were used and mistreated, barely holding together with giant globs of L.A. Looks Mega Hold™ styling gel, his experience makes for an engaging read.

Yee, for instance, says he only made $4000 on the entire experience and ended up in debt:

It was weird. The hardest part was afterwards because I felt like a wash-up at the age of 18. I came out of the group with a little bit of debt so I had to work at a clothing store to stay a float afterwards. I remember a few times there would be customers that would come in and recognize me. Once I was recognized when I was mopping the floor. But I have continued in the entertainment industry (first as a musical theater performer, now as a comedian) and have done bigger things since. My relationship with the entertainment industry is a life long journey....

He lived with his bandmates in a label-rented apartment in a complex that also housed other teen entertainers like Raven Symone and Christina Milian, but life was not a non-stop sleepover party. Just like you, he has awkward Facebook interactions with his friends from those days:

We didn't really fight but I wouldn't say we really got along as a group. I think some of us were forced to become friends since we were living in such close quarters and there was no one else around. Very few of us were from Los Angeles (where we were based) so they rented us a two bedroom apartment where six of us and a chaperone lived. So we had to get very uncomfortably close very fast. There wasn't really any "outside of work" since we were all in our teens and couldn't really go anywhere unescorted. Basically, we spent three years in that apartment unless we were touring or recording. None of us have kept in touch except through Facebook... and even then I have most of them hidden from my feed ;P

There were groupies, and while Yee—who is gay—didn't "take advantage of the situation," he knows people who did:

I do think their parents enabled their behavior. Most were very respectful but screamed a lot. They were SO loud. Never underestimate the vocal chords of a teenaged girl. I did witness some of my cohorts take advantage of the situation, but personally I never did. I also think "the people taking care of us" were letting the fans get close to us, bringing them backstage and such, enabling the situation. I think they figured the happier the fans, the more money will come in. It does seem a little strange in retrospect....

Most depressingly, before he came out, Yee's handlers took him aside and told him he'd have to stop acting so gay in order to maintain Youth Asylum's largely teen-girl audience.

My management guessed that I was gay pretty early on even though I wasn't out. One day they had a closed door meeting with the record execs and told me that I was coming off gay and that I had to change how I acted. They didn't care if I actually WAS gay, it was more how I was being perceived. We were marketed towards teenaged girls so there couldn't be a gay member. That's when they started to style me and control what I said and did. They used to teach me how to walk "straight" up and down the aisles of a grocery store. It was a very homophobic environment including the members of the group. When the group was over I came out of the closet to my family and now I am very open about my sexuality because I want to prove to people that it isn't a hindrance. You don't have to hide in the closet to be successful no matter what your job is!

And education—shockingly!—was not a priority:

I have to be a little vague on this one, but people who were supposed to be taking care of our well being were keeping the money that the label was giving us for education (for their own lavish lifestyle), and giving us occasional subpar tutoring not up to Los Angeles child performer standards. Halfway through our three years with the group "someone" (probably the union) found out and the label got in trouble (even though technically they were providing the funding). Only then were we provided with an education (the best tutor money could afford... he ended up traveling with us), but by then many of us were too far behind. I was the oldest and needed to graduate so my education was very very rushed. My diploma was basically bought for me. The others were still young enough to go back to school once the band ended and I'm sure they were very far behind....

Now, Yee is a comedian, and has no regrets about Youth Asylum. He told one Redditor he "learned a lot" as a boy bander and "would never have become as passionate about songwriting had I not been in the group."

The group's David Foster- and Quincy Jones-produced album will probably never see release, but Yee has a copy on his iPod, and when it comes on shuffle, he says, "I wistfully remember when.... And then skip to the next song."