By: ANGELINA MANDELL, Copy Editor
Ned Fulmer, one-fourth of the Try Guys YouTube group who made his defining personality trait loving his wife Ariel, cheating on her with his assistant producer was definitely not on my 2022 bingo card. It wasn’t on any year’s bingo card for that matter. All of this drama unfolding over the course of 24 hours and then developing throughout the week definitely made my head spin, but if it wasn’t all over your Twitter feed or TikTok for you page, here’s the general rundown.
If you’ve never seen or heard of the Try Guys, how? Anyway, they are a group of four guys on YouTube–Ned, Keith, Zach, and Eugene–that used to work for Buzzfeed in the 2010s. They then left to form their own channel. It’s quite self-explanatory, as the Try Guys’ jobs are to try different things and film themselves doing so, including anything from making Keith eat every food on a restaurant’s menu, to hooking the guys up to pregnancy contraction simulators.
Ned Fulmer constantly made loving comments about his wife Ariel, while also making videos with her. They even wrote a cookbook together. Ned’s whole gimmick as a YouTube personality was that he was the type of man every woman wanted: someone goofy and cute who adoringly loves and cherishes his wife. That was until users on Reddit found pictures of him making out with Try Guys assistant producer Alex Herring at a club, and even attending a Harry Styles concert.
To everyone’s surprise, just one day after these rumors circulated on Sept. 26, Ned, Ariel and the Try Guys made posts to their social media revealing the truth of the rumors. While Ned was obviously making the situation sound less like cheating when he said he “had a consensual workplace relationship,” and Ariel just wants privacy to focus on her family, the Try Guys hit us with some shocking news: Ned was out of the group.
After all the rumors surfaced and were confirmed in just over 24 hours, later that week, the Try Guys posted a video to their YouTube channel on Oct. 3 entitled “what happened” explaining that this wasn’t just a one-time thing, but something that had been occurring over a longer timeline; they had been in the legal process of ousting Ned for a while. As friends and coworkers, they were hurt and angry at what Ned did and how he lied. The remaining Try Guys Keith, Zach and Eugene explained how they were hurt as they found out about this through fans alerting them on social media.
Now, I’m all for some good hot gossip every now and then, but this is giving me major flashbacks to the scandal of John Mulaney cheating on his wife last year. I can’t help but raise the question once again: should we really be obsessing over someone’s love life like this? Would we obsess over our best friend’s parents getting a divorce? Would you want someone to do the same if your father had an affair? Ned and Ariel do have children; how do you think they’ll be affected by this publicization of their marital problems?
I can’t help but think that dealing with these issues and potentially repairing their relationship will be much harder now that social media articles, comments and DMs will be hounding the couple. Sure, you may be thinking that someone should not try to mend a relationship with a cheater, but accidents happen, and couples can bounce back from a mistake.
I initially was shocked at how fast the Try Guys cut him from the group but having an affair with the producer of your show and lying to your long-time friends should do it. Re-watching recent Try Guys videos that came out before these rumors were made public are now a whole new level of awkward.
But still, why are we as a social society so obsessed with every semi-famous white guy who cheats? This was a typical workplace scandal: employee sleeps with employer, legal process ensues, someone loses their job, life sucks. Why is this any different from when someone’s corporate Dad sleeps with his secretary and then gets fired and his wife leaves him? It’s always shocking with public figures like Ned Fulmer and John Mulaney who make loving their wife a part of their personality, but we don’t see what happens behind closed doors.
Whether you consider Ned and the Try Guys “famous” or not, they are still normal human beings with lives and feelings. We shouldn’t insert ourselves into their lives and pry for personal information at an emotional time like this. This culture of gossiping about such personal events is nothing new; it has existed throughout the history of Hollywood and celebrity culture. However, I think that as a society, we need to reflect on our actions, how we place celebrities in a species outside of normal human beings, and realize that this tabloid gossip culture is toxic.
