why the ned fulmer scandal is so painful
Picture this: you’re a girl in her late teens-early twenties and you’ve been planning your wedding on Pinterest since you were in middle school. You dream of finding that perfect person for you one day, someone who’ll love you forever.
Except that’s not realistic. Women already have to deal with breadcrumbing, gaslighting, ghosting, lying, benchwarmers, and “sneaky links” from the men we’re surrounded by daily, much less the ones we idolize and adore.
John Mulaney was the first to crumble our optimistic worldview, that there could be men who loved their wives so much that they would shout it from the rooftops and flaunt us to the world. When his cheating scandal broke, it was as if a brick had been thrown through our glass house.
Some have argued that we weren’t upset about the Adam Levine scandal the same way we are upset about this, but there’s a reason. Adam Levine acted like every other gym-bro you know who posts his (way too pretty for him) girlfriend every now and then. He had a sleazy personality before, and lets be honest, we can’t say it was a surprise coming from him. However, Fulmer and Mulaney’s scandals should not have been that surprising either, because a therapist would tell you that someone bringing up their significant other in every conversation is probably hiding something. This is classic overcompensation for their guilt, and it can be seen in John’s specials as well as the Try Guys™ videos.
Even so, the question is why did this hurt so much worse? Let’s discuss:
Ned Fulmer and John Mulaney were different because they’re not Harry Style’s level attractive. They’re average looking funny guys who roped us in with their jokes. We, as a collective, fell for their personalities, and they turned out to be facades.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll break it down further. Women are grappling with the fact that even the men who “love their wives more than anything in the world and want everyone to know that” are cheaters and liars. It is scary to think that someone who is so comfortable talking about their life partner could turn around immediately after filming that video or performing that set and go home with someone else entirely.
It makes us remember that it could happen to us. It also puts yet another crumb of paranoia in our brains about love. I know more women that don’t trust their significant other completely than I do those who trust 100%.
Overall, it just makes marriage feel more and more like a sham. Gen Z and the younger Millennials are already the least likely generations to get married, and pop culture news like this is making more and more people decide that it isn’t worth it.
Overall, Ned feels a little too much like the people we know in our everyday lives and that makes it much harder to displace ourselves from the drama of it all.