On September 27, 2022, the news broke out. Try Guys member, Ned Fulmer, cheated on his wife. *gasp* Why is this so surprising? Doesn’t stuff like this happen everyday? Aren’t celebrities’ cheating spouses outed on the regular? Haven’t we gotten used to…? Yes, this happens everyday to celebrities and we’ve gotten used to it. But it is a little bit different in the Try Guys’ case.

The Try Guys is a content creator group founded by four employees of the popular entertainment company, Buzzfeed, back in 2014. The group of guys, Eugene, Ned, Zach and Keith, slowly built up a solid fanbase for trying a variety of activities ranging from labor pain simulation to baking without recipes to playing chess against a master and documenting them in 20-40 minute long videos on YouTube. 

Their personalities and openness to trying new things and adapting to them are what made the guys and their brand as the group of funny friends so appealing, even after successfully leaving Buzzfeed to make their own independent production company. Another reason for their never ending support from viewers is their genuineness and honesty in the work they do and content they put out.

An integral part of the quartet, Ned Fulmer is the family guy of the group. He makes his on screen personality all about his wife, who he’s been with for ten years and shares two children with. Because his relationship with his wife, Ariel, was so publicized, it came as a great shock that he cheated on her. It wasn’t just a breach of trust between two married individuals, it was full on lying to and deceiving a large dedicated fanbase about something so sleazy and cruel. Not to mention, he cheated with an employee of his company, who was also loved by fans due to the Try Guys’ involvement in her wedding to her fiancé of ten years.

This information came out late September, sending a wave of shock amongst online communities and forums. Not too soon after, The Try Guys, Ned, and his wife Ariel, made separate statements on their respective social media sites and announced that Ned is no longer a part of the Try Guys.

Why do celebrities get away with more stuff than the average person does? Does it have anything to do with the parasocial relationship between fans and the artist? Is that parasocial relationship healthy? Or is it the influence of social media and money? I’d say it’s a combination of all of these. 

It’s no secret that a lot of fans of celebrities have a mob mentality when it comes to defending those celebrities – *ahem* Twitter – but how much of it is actually justified? It’s understandable to want to stand up for people you like when they’re being verbally attacked but somehow that common sense is gone for a lot of people when the celebrity is clearly in the wrong. 

So how do we address this? Have everyone log off of Twitter and take classes on morals and philosophy? No, what we need to do is lessen the impressionability of these young minds while in school. If we, collectively, start taking social media and it’s effects seriously, we can successfully prevent the creation of mob-like armies of Twitter-dwellers.