If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media over the past few days, you’ve not doubt seen tweets and posts about drama surrounding YouTube group The Try Guys and Ned Fulmer. The former BuzzFeed group has nearly 8 million subscribers on YouTube, but you may be hazy about what they are and who Ned Fulmer is.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Who are The Try Guys?
The Try Guys, a group consisting of Keith Habersberger, Eugene Lee Yang, Zach Kornfeld and Ned Fulmer, are YouTubers who essentially “try” things. Strange things from eating strange food to attempting to simulate labor pain.
Some of their most popular videos focus on topics like trying out nail extensions, eating every item of food at Taco Bell or wearing a corset for 72 hours.
The Try Guys was initially a Buzzfeed series when it launched in 2014, but they ultimately went independent. A YouTube channel created in 2018 has become wildly popular, currently sitting at 7.8 million subscribers.
Who is Ned Fulmer?
Fulmer is a member of The Try Guys, well known for being a “wife guy” in that he regularly spoke about his wife, Ariel Fulmer, in videos and other Try Guys media. He and his wife co-authored a cookbook together and both regularly appeared on the podcast You Can Sit With Us. This is important for what comes next.
So what happened?
In short, Fulmer was caught cheating on his wife online. He is no longer a member of The Try Guys.
After some old fashioned online Reddit sleuthing, a now-deleted video of Fulmer cheating on his wife was posted online. This very in-depth Twitter thread does a great job of explaining the details if you want to get into it. Essentially, fans of the group noticed Fulmer was absent from recent Try Guys content and began digging deep on the ramifications of this. The end result, a video of Fulmer kissing another woman, was found and shared all over the internet.
Why is this important? It comes in the wake of multiple public cheating incidents surfacing online and going viral, most recently involving singer Adam Levine. In this case, the schadenfreude of a “wife guy” — an online term for a who person constantly publicly talks about how much they love their wife — being caught cheating has caught fire online.
In the midst of the drama, The Try Guys put out an official statement saying they had parted ways with Fulmer.
“Ned Fulmer is no longer working with The Try Guys,” the statement said. “As a result of a thorough internal review, we do not see a path forward together.”
Fulmer himself also posted a statement online.
“Family should have always been my priority, but I lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship,” he said. “I’m sorry for any pain that my actions may have caused to the guys and the fans but most of all to Ariel. The only thing that matters right now is my marriage and my children, and that’s where I am going to focus my attention.”
Ariel Fulmer also released a statement.
“Thanks to everyone who has reached out to me — it means a lot,” she wrote on Instagram. “Nothing is more important to me and Ned than our family, and all we request right now is that you respect our privacy for the sake of our kids.”
