Try Guys Try Cheating: Ned Fulmer’s cheating scandal highlights a wider societal issue

I was a BuzzFeed kid, hands down. After school, I’d lock myself in my room for hours on end to watch the YouTube series “Ladylike” and “The Try Guys.” When the Try Guys left BuzzFeed and moved to a self-owned company, I moved right along with them. 

However, all that nostalgia and comfort content that once was able to distract me from the anxieties of middle school came crashing down. On Sept. 27, the Try Guys released a statement that Ned Fulmer — a Try Guy of eight years — would no longer be affiliated with the brand through an Instagram post and two videos on their official YouTube account.

Reason being, Ned Fulmer had just cheated on his wife. My first thought went to a video from 2017 in which Ned discusses how he believed that if you cheated on your significant other, you should be transparent about it. The funniest thing is that Ned took on the viewpoint that if you cheat, you should tell your significant other.

That aged super well. 

The cheating wasn’t even a one-time incident either, it was — according to one of their videos following the incident — a several-month-long relationship that had been buried up until that point. I don’t think I need to say that I find this disgusting — not only the action of Ned but the public’s response to it.

It sounds to me like he “lost focus” — a direct quote from his apology post — and didn’t tell his wife Ariel for a little too long by his own standard. He should’ve listened to his own advice and not let it come out through fan accounts on Reddit. 

Although there will never be an appropriate way to address a cheating scandal, Ned’s apology was horrendously underdeveloped and failed to address the most important thing — his own mistake. He never took accountability for his actions, just saying he “lost focus.” But hey, at least he managed to apologize to his wife in a brief, copy-and-paste-from-another-apology way.

Most of the time, cheating scandals involve household names, people that are already exposed to both positive and negative feedback on a widespread scale. But I can’t get over the TikToks and Instagram posts that some people are making when they didn’t even know who The Try Guys were two weeks ago.

Ariel Fulmer wasn’t a well-known name before Sept. 27, and I can only imagine how much anxiety she’s experiencing being thrown into the ring of public scrutiny and having to deal with repairing her marriage for her kids, if she chooses to do so.

The gross hold that cheating scandals have on most of American society is pointless, feeding off the suffering of others. The personal life of someone you don’t know shouldn’t be the thing that keeps you from living your own life.

It would be better for everyone involved to recognize these problems and then move on, and allow the people that are actually hurt to experience their emotions free of opinion.

My heart goes out to Ariel and her two children, who have all of a sudden been shoved into more spotlight and scrutiny than they had ever been in. For the sake of her safety and mental health, I hope that “scandal” dies out fast.