Is it correct to use “both of us” after a “you guys”?

Question

In a youtube video, I heard the following sentence, addressed to the audience:

I'm telling everything to you guys, I think it's better for the both of us

This sentence seemed very weird to me, because I saw both as strictly two single "things". Can the whole audience be one of these "things"?

You can say "both teams" so the two "things" don't need to be single, but if you're in a group with 5 people you obviously can't say "you and I both" to mean "every one of us" (right?)

Is this sentence correct?

Answer 1

better for the both of us is a kind of set phrase, so this could be a witticism. You haven't provided much context, but I could easily imagine a "stand-up" comic saying it to the audience. It puts the audience in the position of the person to whom those words might be said in another context, and the conversations where that phrase is used normally have some uncomfortable element to them. It would be a kind of allusion to such an uncomfortable situation which casts the current conversation between speaker and audience in that light. I'm trying to be very general there, since the discomfort could be almost anything:

It will be better for the both of us if we stopped seeing each other.

It will be better for the both of us if you know this about me...

It will be better for the both of us if you keep quiet about all of this.

Answer 2

In this case, the speaker is grammatically declaring the audience to be a single cohesive unit, the "audience" singular. However, having just described the audience as "you guys," "all of us" would have been a better fit than "the both of us." As is, the sentence is not grammatically consistent, but the meaning is not much obscured.

It may be that the speaker practiced with an audience of one, or is an inexperienced speaker in these settings, or just slipped up and made a small mistake.