Ned Fulmer, Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang, known together as the Try Guys on YouTube, have recently made headlines for the departure of one of their members. The group, originally formed by Buzzfeed in 2014, has amassed 8 million subscribers by doing exactly what its name says: they are a group of guys, who would try out anything that seemed interesting. Some of their most popular videos have titles like “The Try Guys get their bones cracked” and “The Try Guys bake pie without a recipe”. In 2018, they split with Buzzfeed and created their own company, 2nd Try, which has grown to nearly 2 dozen employees since its founding.
What Happened?
Fans started to notice that in The Try Guys’ recent videos, Ned wasn’t appearing. This sparked a Reddit thread, where rumors of Ned cheating on his wife Astoria began to circulate. Ned has been married to Astoria since 2012, and they have had two children together. Within the group, Ned is known as the “Wife Guy,” simply because of how frequently he mentioned her in videos. Ned fully embraced this persona, and the two of them created a podcast about parenting, wrote a cookbook together, and even toured colleges to discuss healthy relationships. This perfect image all fell apart when Ned was seen with Alexandria Herring, a producer for the Try Guys, at a Harry Styles concert and nightclub in early September. Photos of the two kissing swiftly spread across the internet, bringing the affair to light. Alexandria was, and still is, engaged to her partner of 10 years.
Aftermath
On September 27th, the remaining three Try Guys released a statement announcing that Ned Fulmer had been terminated from the group and was no longer involved in the company. Then, on October 3rd, they posted a video to their youtube titled “what happened.” In it, they explained how they were informed of the scandal, how they approached dealing with it, and how it made them feel. “This is something we took very seriously…This is not who we are and is not what we stand for,” Eugene said. In regards to how the situation made them feel, Zach Kornfeld stated “I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to fully articulate the pain we feel at this moment…We’re losing a friend, we’re losing someone we built a company with, [someone] we have countless memories with.” Moving forward, the Try Guys still plan to create content but are faced with the challenges of having to start over on projects that Ned was an integral part of. Ned also released a personal statement on his Instagram, apologizing to his fans, colleagues, and his wife.
