If you didn’t know, a group of YouTubers—The Try Guys— have caused quite a stir lately.
Sooooo… What happened?
First, who even are these guys?
The Try Guys—Ned, Eugene, Keith, and Zach (left to right)—are a group of comedians who became famous for trying the most ridiculous things you can imagine. In their videos, they’ve made complicated dishes without recipes, tried high diving, gotten nail extensions, roasted each other, gotten hooked up to a labor pain simulator… things like that.
They started in 2014 as a series on Buzzfeed, where the four worked as video producers. The series gained popularity, and the crew eventually left BuzzFeed in 2018 to start their own production company—2nd Try, LLC. They’ve kept making similar “try” videos and maintained their status as a staple comedy group for many, but they aren’t quite A-list celebrities.
Then all of the sudden, fans started noticing that one member—Ned Fulmer, was not in the crew’s recent videos. Then they realized he wasn’t pictured in the recent Instagram posts either.
People went nuts on social media as rumors about Ned grew and grew.
The speculation started on Reddit, that is, on the Try Guys subreddit (an entire community of die-hard fans who post and talk about the Guys and their content) in early September. Then it escalated to Twitter and to TikTok. Come to find out, Ned, who was famously devoted to his wife (Ariel) and two sons, had allegedly cheated on her.
This BEAUTY is Ariel in October 2021.
And this is an adorable snapshot of the Fulmer family in a post from April 3rd of this year.
In fact, Ned was so heavily branded as a family man, the Guys even have an episode of them meeting Ned’s newborn.
Blurry pictures and videos of who users claimed to be the Try Guy and colleague Alexandria Herring (Alex), who works as an associate producer for 2nd Try, were posted all over Reddit and TikTok. The pair were apparently spotted at a Harry Styles concert at Madison Square Garden together on September 1st and then in a New York City bar kissing and dancing together on September 2nd. Reddit user, hamilton390 (who has since deleted their Reddit account), shared a string of screenshots of an Instagram DMs conversation between them and an anonymous account exposing the pair. “[Ned and Alexandria] werent even trying to be private,” the undisclosed Instagram user said. hamilton390 sent these screenshots to another Reddit user (in Reddit DMs) who had claimed they were making the allegations up. The second Reddit user (whose username we won’t disclose because it seems like they’re getting a lot of heat) challenged the credibility of the evidence hamilton390 provided (saying, “ngl that could literally be any white guy?”). hamilton390 then claimed he was Will Thayer—who Alex is ENGAGED TO and has been dating for TEN YEARS.
Here’s Alex and Will out on a date night on July 11th of this year.
The last Try Guys Instagram post Ned was shown in (including stories and reels) was on September 8th, promoting the Guys’ new Food Network show, No Recipe Road Trip. Ned was also *edited out* of episodes 178, 179, and 180 of their weekly show The TryPod (posted Sept. 8th, 15th, and 22nd) as well as of their familiar intro (that was replaced with ads featuring only the other three Guys). Reddit user domino331 wrote on Sept 27th about their video “Try Guys Ruin Chocolate Eclairs w/ Pro Chefs” from their Phoning it In series (linked below), “it definitely seems like SOMEONE was edited out. It makes sense for it to have been Ned. Something is clearly happening.”
Users watched and rewatched and watched again at .25 speed to notice incredibly small errors in the editing. For example, some say you can see Ned’s pink shirtsleeve, his shoulder, reflection, and even hear his voice and laugh in the video. Ned was apparently supposed to be a third taste-testing judge at the end of the video, sitting in between the two judges who made the final cut. The most convincing piece of evidence for this is the background of the shot. Behind the judges’ table is a very modern, light purple accent wall. Fans noticed that the pattern on the wall was different than in previous videos. This comparison shows that editors essentially shortened the wall and tried to match the lines up. They did a great job! And I might have believed it if the squares on the far right of the (original) wall weren’t so condensed into skinny rectangles in the edited version.
Just a quick reminder of what a cheater looks like.
On September 20th, The Try Guys announced through an Instagram post that they’d only release one video per week (compared to their usual many installations of many different series every week) in October. Fans speculate this is due to their frantic need to re-edit videos to exclude Ned.
In addition to all that, the Try Guys’ wives, Becky, Ariel, and Maggie (left to right), and occasionally Eugene’s partner, Matt, have a podcast that they post on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube every week called You Can Sit With Us. Ariel (Ned’s wife) did not appear in episodes 114, 115, or 116 (released Sept 13th, 20th, and 27th). :(
Here they are wishing listeners a happy Valentine’s Day.
As the public runs wild with all this information on social media, Ned and Ariel FINALLY post something on Sept 26th— family fun pictures of their sons on each of their Instagram stories. Immediately though, skeptics suggest these were old photos, saying the times wouldn’t have made sense. Reddit user throwaway72017201 commented, “they were old photos, because [Ned] posted about the “pizza night” at 2:50pm in their time zone.”
Also by the 26th— Will Thayer (fiancée to Alex) has unfollowed Alex and removed all posts with her in them from his account.
THEN on the 27th, a former social media employee of the Try Guys—Jake LaRosa—posted this TikTok, not *explicitly* saying, but definitely confirming the allegations. He captioned the video “My last day was Friday 🫖🍵,” ICONIC if you ask me.
So with that, the Try Guys really had no choice but to speak on it all. They posted this message on their Instagram and Twitter accounts. “…we do not see a path forward together…” yikes.
Ned posted an apology message himself (also on Instagram and Twitter) saying, “I lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship. I’m sorry for any pain that my actions may have caused…” YIKES.
Since the announcement, the Try Guys have gone as far as to change their logo and official social media profile pictures from a graphic of all four members to a white single-line drawing of a triceratops with an orange background. Each of the rest of the guys (Keith, Zach, and Eugene) and the official Try Guys Instagram account unfollowed Ned and removed the red heart from their IG and Twitter bios—now only a blue, green, and purple heart (representing Keith, Zach, and Eugene) remain, the red one was apparently representative of Ned.
Buzzfeed wrote an article around 3pm on the 27th, just after the Try Guys’ and Ned’s statements came out on social media. This made people go even MORE nuts with tweets and memes and TikToks both joking and being SO shocked and sad about finding out all the allegations were true.
TMZ then reported on September 29th that there’s sufficient evidence of Ned and Ariel trying to, “keep their relationship afloat.” They pointed out that the two are both still wearing their wedding rings and that they were out and smiling together on the 28th. Fans are critical of this rekindling (that I, admittedly, found out about through this TikTok showing up on my FYP), but they suspect it has more to do with their two young sons than forgiveness. TMZ reported Ariel as telling one of their photographers the couple is, “working on working things out.” As many TikTok users suggested in the comments section of the linked TikTok, that statement is not necessarily as absolute as it may seem—it does NOT confirm that Ariel has taken Ned back.
But let’s end on a high note—here are some of my favorite tweets about it all.
This clever take on their name—
Ned’s perfect replacement—
An idea for the title of their next episode—
Many fans (including us at HerCampus ✨) have compared this to the other recent cheating situations like singer Adam Levine—
From the OFFICIAL NBC Entertainment account—
Exactly the progress we need right now—
And finally, how I feel rn—
So… yeah, it’s a mess. But, if nothing else, at least we can say the Try Guys handled everything WONDERFULLY. Cheating should never be tolerated, especially not within the workplace. They reacted maturely and progressively, and I’m excited to see where the Try Guys go from here!