This past week, there was a huge scandal in the Try Guys community. For the uninitiated, the Try Guys are four guys (Eugene Lee Yang, Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfield, and Ned Fulmer) who got together at BuzzFeed to try things. That’s their brand, and I really enjoyed their BuzzFeed videos, even if they did edge into cringe territory. Which they did. Even back then. Let me put it this way. I really liked Eugene and put up with the other guys. Ned was my second favorite, and I tolerated the other two. I supported them when they first created their own company, but I did not like the direction in which they were going.
I remember a video in which they were working at a coffee shop in Australia. This was just after they left BuzzFeed. They were drawing dicks in the lattes, and that’s when the luster wore off for me. I’m sure the owners of the coffee shop knew what they were signing up for, but the regular employees (one of whom showed them how to make the lattes) didn’t necessarily have a say in the whole matter. They probably were thrilled to be a part of it, but would they be able to say they were uncomfortable if they weren’t ok with it? Probably not.
As a friend said, sometimes, having a big HR is the right way to do things (BuzzFeed). But, yes, they were being held in check by BuzzFeed, which, again, is a good thing. I get that they are content creators, which is much different than working for an office or construction or retail. But still. When I was acting back in my twenties at Theater Mu (regional Asian American theater company), a friend and I were making very ribald jokes to each other. Someone else came up and told us to rein it in because others may have an issue with it. I bristled at the time, but she was right. We should have been more cognizant of our surroundings. That’s what happens when you’re in theater, though. You forget that there are still standards to which you need to adhere because, hell, we’ve seen each other naked. And, yes, there are people fucking around all over the place.
That video left a bad taste in my mouth. Plus, Keith and Zach decided that they needed to be more exaggerated versions of themselves, which meant more yelling and grimacing. They became less authentic and more like caricatures, and I could barely watch them at times. To be honest, I was only watching for Eugene. I was a Patreon for the a while, but quietly unsubscribed when I had reached my limit. This was probably less than a year into their solo venture.
They pulled their significant others into more of their videos, and the Try Wives have their own podcast. More on that in a bit.
They each had their own personality. Keith is the tall loud one who eats everything off the menu and loves fried chicken. Zach is the angsty one who is little, loves tea, and has ankylosing spondylitis. Eugene is gay and the fashion icon, hot as fuck, and good at everything. And he drinks way too much. He’s also the political one and is campaigning for Beto O’Rourke. Ned is the Wife Guy (ugh) and loves his wife so very much! I’m not kidding that that is a part of his brand. He has husband of _________ in his Insta bio. He was always talking about ‘my wife’ and how much he loves her. They have two sons, too. They have put out a cooking book for ‘date night’ and done other things together as well.
This is all background for the fact that he was caught cheating on her this week with a video producer of the Try Guys who is also featured heavily in their videos. Alex is part of the Food Babies and is engaged. So, she’s not his colleague as many of the reporters are saying, but his employee. This is an important distinction and one that has been glossed over all the time. He put out a statement saying it was a ‘consensual workplace affair’, which I’m sure was at the counsel of his lawyer. But it ruffled my feathers because he doesn’t get to say if it was consensual or not . In addition, even if she wanted to sleep with him, the hierarchal nature of their relationship (apparently, he was head of HR as well) made it unethical at the very least.
Ned was fired form the Try Guys when this all came out and the last time I checked, Alex was still there. She hasn’t said a word since this all came out, not that I blame her. There is nothing she can say that will make people think better of her, especially as so many of the fans stan Ariel (Ned’s wife) so hard. It’s depressing how many of them are excoriating Alex and wishing much ill on her.
This is what I wanted to discuss. Parasocial relationships. The Try Guys have built their brand on being themselves on camera. They include their partners and sometimes their parents (and their kids when it comes to Ned) so it can seem like fans are getting to know the real them. Which, they are to a certain extent, but it’s still a very edited and stylized version of themselves.
In comparison, the RKG guys do livestreams separately and together. When it’s the three of them, there is a much different vibe than there is when each of them streams solo. Krupa gets the most real in his streams and even then, I’m well aware that he is showing a very small portion of himself.
This is morbid, but if I had died permanently last year (a sentence that is really odd to type), he probably would have been like, “Oh, that’s really sad” and then moved on with his life. I’m not saying this in a self-pitying way; it’s just how it should be. He doesn’t really know me and my being alive or dead doesn’t affect his life (except the twenty dollars I give him monthly). Like, I expect he cares about me in the general sense, but it’s not like I’m a friend of his.
In the same vein, when Alan Rickman died, I got dozens if not hundreds of condolences in my Twitter feed and on my FB wall. I appreciated them and joked that I did always want his name linked with mine, but it was odd to me because it wasn’t as if I actually knew him. I knew a lot about him, of course, and I knew him from watching his movies (and the two music videos he was in), but I did not know Alan Rickman, the man. That didn’t mean I wasn’t sad when he died–I was. But I was also cognizant that I wasn’t really mourning him as a person because I did not know him.
With content creators these days who appear to bring their whole selves onto camera, the line between the actual them and the them they present to the world is a blurred one. For the millions of Try Guys fans (80% are women and the vast majority are young), they feel like they know the Try Guys as people. They don’t. Not really.
The problem with idolizing anyone is that when they falter, they suddenly become lower than dirt. In the same way that the Try Guys were held in adulation by their fans, now, Ned is being vilified by the same fans. I’ve skimmed some of the comments on Insta and YouTube, and the common theme of ‘how could you do this to Ariel/us?’ runs rampant among them.
I’ve also seen people demanding that the other Try Guys tell what they knew and when they knew it. “We deserve to know!”
No. No you don’t. These are still people with their own lives and they don’t owe their fans a damn thing about this. Again, I understand that the very nature of the Try Guys format allows for this feeling of being owed every little detail of their lives, but their are limits to it. The Try Guys are not dancing monkeys who have to put on a show for every coin thrown at them. They have the right to say no, we’re not talking about this.
I do think it’ll be wise for them to address it because they fired Ned and need to put that out there. Since their whole brand is built on their personalities and how they mesh, they will have to address the elephant in the room.
It’s amazing how much legs this story has. When I found out about it, I thought it would be a Twitter thing at most and then on to the next internet scandal. But no. This has caught the imagination of people for some reason and will not die. It’s in part because of John Mulvaney and Adam Levine also having their Wife Guy cheating on thein spouse moment in the sun, and I, for one, cannot wait until it’s over.