Last week, we learned that the YouTuber “Try Guys” had pushed out/fired Ned Fulmer. The Try Guys started at Buzzfeed, but for years now, they’ve been their own stand-alone brand, making lots of money from their YouTube channel, their social media content and their tours. Fulmer was one of the original Try Guys and he was the “Wife Guy” of the group, basically using his marriage as his whole personality. And, as it turned out, using his wife as cover to act skeezy towards women, including a coworker. The official story was that Fulmer had a consensual affair with a coworker. The internet rumors were that Fulmer screwed around a lot and his behavior was pretty gross. Well, now the remaining Try Guys have done a YouTube video explaining all:
The remaining members — Eugene Lee Yang, Keith Habersberger and Zach Kornfeld — addressed their fans for the first time on Monday since they revealed they no longer were to be associated with Ned, whom they actually fired on Sept. 16.
“Ned Fulmer is no longer working with the ‘Try Guys,’” Kornfeld said in a YouTube video — which they named “what happened” — with Yang and Habersberger sitting beside him on a couch. “By now, we’re assuming you’ve seen the Reddit threads and TikToks and tweets and news articles. We want to give you a timeline of what’s transpired and some transparency into our decision-making.”
Habersberger, who looked somber, continued, “On Labor Day weekend, multiple fans alerted us that they had seen Ned and an employee engaging in public romantic behavior.”
He went on to say that they reached out to the employee to “check on” her before Ned, 35, “confirmed the reports and since confirmed this had been going on for some time, which was obviously, very shocking for us. We just want you to know that we had no idea this was going on. All of that information was just as shocking to us as this has been for you this week.”
Yang, 36, added they spent three weeks talking to various lawyers, human resources and public relations experts to “make sure” they were taking the necessary steps. “We were acutely aware of just how contrary this was to the values of the company we’ve built and those of everyone who works here,” he continued, taking a moment to compose himself. “This is something that we take very seriously and we refuse to sweep under the rug, that is now who were are and that is not what we stand for.”
Kornfeld, 32, then revealed that they “signed written consent approving the removal of Ned as manager and employee,” on Sept. 16, which will explain his absence from the most recent “Try Guys” videos and social media. The team removed him from their merch store and digitally erase him from old videos, as well as any marketing products. Kornfeld even said that their decision to completely scrap some videos where Ned was heavily featured “cost” them a lot of money, but they stand by their decision “proudly.”
Admitting that they could not release the findings of their investigation for legal reasons, Habersberger, 35, said they found “Ned engaged in conduct unbecoming of our team and we knew we could not move forward with him.” He also explained that the reason they took so long to make the matters public was that “real people had been affected,” but were ultimately forced to do after the pics and videos of Ned and Alexandria Herring surfaced.
“We are incredibly shocked and deeply hurt by all of this,” Yang added, holding back tears. “This is someone that we built a company and brand with for eight years. We feel saddened — not just personally but on behalf of our staff and fans that believed in us.”
A tearful Kornfeld continued, “I don’t know that we can articulate the pain we feel at this moment. It’s hard to rewatch old videos that we love and are proud of, we are losing a friend, someone who we built a company with, have countless of memories with […] We are sorry this ever happened and we don’t know what else to say. This will change here, but we hope that within this, there’s opportunity for positive growth and better videos ahead, but it’s going to be hard. This whole thing is going to be f–king hard.”
In some ways, I feel like this is incredibly melodramatic, but on the other side, I wonder if this is anywhere near the whole story. Going off the Reddit and Twitter threads, it definitely feels like there’s been some awareness of Ned’s behavior for a lot longer than a month. I also feel like that’s probably the thing they can’t talk about for legal reasons, the idea that Fulmer wasn’t just cheating on his wife with one coworker and that some of it might be considered sexual harassment and there are huge liability issues for their business. It definitely feels like all of this wouldn’t be *this* big of a deal if we were only talking about one affair, with one woman, and everything was consensual.
Photos courtesy of Instagram, YouTube.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmcHBmbn92e9OhnJiqlaKuqrrIp56YrKKurKjB2KyWnrCgoa6qur6tn56XpJ66prjIp5yYp5aUwamxvqecnZeWqrmusdGYqZ6ulaGutbXOp6po