- Ned Fulmer is no longer working with the Try Guys.
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.
Throughout this video,
there will be things that we want to say or go into further,
but as I'm sure you're aware, there are some legal issues
we have to consider as we go through everything.
- On Labor Day weekend, multiple fans alerted us
that they had seen Ned and an employee
engaging in public romantic behavior.
We reached out to check on that employee.
Ned confirmed the reports and since confirmed
that this had been going on for some time,
which was obviously very shocking to us.
And 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 all of this has been for you this week.
- And thus began a three week process of engaging with
employment lawyers, corporate lawyers, HR, PR, and more
in order to make sure we were taking all necessary steps.
From the jump, 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.
This is something we took very seriously.
We refused to sweep things under the rug.
That is not who we are and is not what we stand for.
- We immediately removed Ned from work activities
and engaged an HR professional
to conduct a thorough review of the facts.
We also opted to remove Ned from our releases
pending the results of that review.
Over a few weeks, that's included removing his section
from videos, digitally removing him from others,
and choosing not to feature him in our merch throws.
Honestly, I want to give major props to our editing staff
for how deftly they've handled that.
There are several videos
that we've deemed as fully unreleasable.
You will never see them and that is due to his involvement.
And that's a decision that has cost us lots of money.
We will not be able to recoup that money,
but it's a decision we stand by proudly.
- Now, we can't talk about the details of the review,
but suffice to say we found that Ned had engaged in contact,
well, conduct unbecoming of our team
and we knew that we could not move forward with him.
So on Friday, September 16th,
the three of us signed written consent
of the members of Second Try LLC
approving the removal of Ned as a manager and an employee.
We chose not to rush into the announcement
for a few reasons.
Namely, there are real people who have been affected.
And while we consider this a company matter,
there's just also a family at the center of this.
- Now we were always planning on a public statement
and we're working towards that with our team.
But in light of rapidly accelerating speculation,
we knew we couldn't wait any longer.
We were obviously incredibly shocked
and deeply hurt by all of this.
This is someone who we'd built a brand
and a company with for eight years.
We feel saddened, not just personally,
but on behalf of our staff and our fans who believed in us.
- I don't know that we'll ever be able to fully
articulate the pain we feel at this moment.
It's hard to rewatch old videos
that we love and are proud of.
We're losing a friend,
we're losing someone we we built a company with,
we have countless memories with.
We just made a TV show together.
I'm sure many of you feel the same way.
It's weird.
We're sorry that this ever happened
and we don't know what more to say.
- This is also our staff of 20 strong who,
they just don't deserve the negative attention
our brand is now getting 'cause they didn't do anything.
But they're our family and they're some of the most
talented creative minds in the world
and our primary focus right now is making sure
they feel comfortable and proud coming to work.
The work they do never ceases to astound us
and frankly, there's just no world
in which we could have navigated all of this without them.
Now, there are videos that were shot
ahead of all this, right?
We're gonna be editing Ned out
like the new season of "Without A Recipe"
and we're working with our editors
in finding creative solutions to the footage.
And we also have some branded videos
that we've already committed to.
So when you see a video
that's sponsored in a few weeks and you're like,
oh, that's kind of weird, well, yeah, it is kind of weird.
It's just how things are and that's why.
- Look, I get that when stuff like this happens,
there's going to be speculation and gossip
and we ask that you respect the privacy
of the family members and employees
who may be caught up in this.
We also wanna remind you that the internet
has a tendency to be a lot harsher towards women than men.
So please, we ask that you exercise kindness.
- Things will change here.
What we hope is that within this,
there's also the opportunity for positive growth
and better videos ahead, but it's gonna be hard.
This whole thing is gonna be really fuckin' hard.
- And we imagine you have lots of questions,
lot more questions right now
and we're gonna have more to say in the future,
just right now we're focused on
bringing the best content possible
between now and the end of the year and then figuring out
what the future of this channel looks like from there.
- That's it for now.
Again, more to come.
Some things may change.
We are just sort of figuring it out all one day at a time.
- Thank you for your support.
We appreciate you and we look forward to
introducing you to the next era of the Try Guys ahead.