Last night I had a hard time trying to sleep. It was partly because I had had a sound 2 hour nap in the afternoon, enjoying some stolen time from a not-so-busy work day, and partly because I saw something on Instagram during my pre-bed scrolling that shocked me.
It was an official statement from The Try Guys saying that Ned Fulmer was no longer a part of the Try Guys, and that "after a thorough internal review", they "couldn't see a path forward" with him. At first I thought it was a prank. I read the comments and soon figured it absolutely wasn't. It was true, Ned was out. And the Guys were not playing.
For the uninitiated, let me give you some context as to why this is such a big deal and why Twitterati are fuming. The Try Guys are group of four three men, Zach, Keith, Eugene (and Ned) who started off as content creators on Buzzfeed as the guys who "try" different things. Trying could range from something as non-threatening to eating spicy food to truly scary stuff, like swimming in the open sea with sharks. The appeal of this content was not just the sheer range of things the guys "tried", it was the Guys themselves. Each of the four had a unique personality. The weird short pale but cute one who was allergic to most things, the giant who eats everything, the excruciatingly handsome brooding savage one and then the guy who loved his wife. The Guys eventually quit Buzzfeed and started their own company, branching out to a whole host of different content, merch and even landed TV shows (they had a bunch of baking/cooking without a recipe videos - some truly horrific and funny stuff). If there is one thing to know about the Try Guys, it is that their entire vibe is extremely wholesome. They are one big family, extremely supportive of each other and their respective partners are all bffs. Their partners also started their own podcast and named themselves the "Try Wives" and were extremely successful in their own right. It was perfect. Until the "I love my wife" guy went ahead and cheated on his wife with Alex, a long time employee and friend of the Guys who regularly appeared on their channel, who also, by the way, happened to be engaged to be married.
Ned's wife Ariel is a lovely woman, who has constantly supported him and the Guys at every step of their endeavor and eventually joined the Try Wives and became a YouTube star in her own right. So intrinsic was Ariel in Ned's entire persona and every single minute part of his life that at first, fans found it hard to believe that Ned would cheat on her. But not only was it true, there were pictures to prove it. And it was devastating.
In a month where the public was already reeling from the screenshots that evidenced Adam Levine's infidelity towards his pregnant Victoria's Secret Model wife, this was yet another blow to my now depleting faith in our generation's ability to maintain any relationship, especially long term ones like marriage. Add to that the utter audacity that men have in cheating on their partners who have done nothing but constantly support them every single step of the way, not to mention the favor they have done them by having their children!
The news about Ned cheating on Ariel is inexplicably distressing to me, possibly also because I believed with all my heart that he genuinely loved her as much as he did. What's worse is, he probably does love her all that much, but he did not have the discretion to choose what was right over what was easy and that is what scares me. I found myself going down a rabbit hole of subreddits, twitter threads, Instagram comments and more, trying to fathom just why he would do something like that, where there was every chance of being caught, jeopardizing his VERY public relationship, his business partners and making his company vulnerable to a sexual misconduct suit. The company is at risk of losing its sponsors, the employees are at risk of losing their job, the Guys have lost their friendship and Ariel and Will, Alex's fiancé, are possibly just lost.
Its heartbreaking that so many lives are facing the consequences of two people's careless and thoughtless actions. I have been hurt before too, each time by a person who chose to do what was easy, rather than take the path that tested their mettle and commitment. Relationships of any kind are based on the foundation of trust, and it is particularly difficult to gather the broken shards of something that fragile, and more so when building that relationship in the first place is itself an uphill task. Marriage, in my opinion is one of the hardest paths to tread, second only to parenting. If one cannot be sure of their partner's commitment to the relationship, to the life they are building together and to be the person they can rely on come rain or snow, especially when they are committed to putting in every effort to do the same... then how can one be expected to continue to believe in relationships at all, let alone in the institution of marriage? Is it surprising, given the number of cheating scandals and divorces we have seen in the media and even around us, that millennials like me find themselves jaded by the very mention of marriage?
To me, a person who actually believes in the institution of marriage, albeit the concept having taken a different form from my parents' opinions, it is getting harder and harder to justify my belief. I hope I am given an opportunity to experience otherwise.
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