The Fall of The Wife Guy

Truly some divine comedy

Oct 07, 2022

Sweet subs, I have sinned. I relish in these holy times, in these blessed times, ah yes, The Fall of Eve, no, that’s not right, The Fall of the Wife Guy. He hath eaten the forbidden fruit (slept with a coworker) after living a noble life (YouTube career trying things) once so full of grace (that good good monetized content). But he…Ned…? Hath fallen for this forbidden knowledge, this carnal sin—threatening the precarious franchise on which this particular Eden was built. Or has he…?

Yes I’m talking about the Try Guys, but mostly about Wife Guys in general. Or: what happens when you build a career on being a self proclaimed Wife Guy, Nice Man, or, dare I say….Good Boy, when you are, like all people, fallible.

If you are more offline than me, read this from Gawker to get caught up, or let me try. Oh god, the gaping hole of where Ned was in the Try Guys is like a magnet, it’s calling to me, I’m ready to fill in. I’m trying things and I just can’t stop!

Okay anyways: what am I talking about? TLDR: A cheating scandal.. (Sidenote, a guy who was once actively cheating on me put it poetically: “everyone cheats.”)

A bunch of former Buzzfeed dudes made a popular YouTube series. One of them was a big ole Wife Guy—like, had a podcast with said wife about parenting—and subsequently cheated on his wife, who works with him, with another employee.

With a gravitas that is frankly unnerving, the remaining members have stoically addressed their fans (and an entire swath of the internet who previously and still have no idea who these people are) about how they will proceed: the cheater is out, he’s not going to be in any remaining videos, he might even be erased from some existing videos. I would watch the shit out of Try Guys videos with just an amorphous blob speaking where the cheater had formerly been. That’s art.

Here is a headline I saw while writing this very newsletter:

The framing of this response seems, frankly, quite overdramatic, but sure it seems they are taking seriously the complicated nature of a workplace where professional and personal lines are blurred and the obvious power dynamics between a boss and subordinate. Wait, are they? They certainly can’t help the lurid headlines being given to this situation, but in immediately generating content and giving interviews, the focal point remaining fixed on the actual transgression at work—however bad you may or may not think it is—is lost entirely in a solipsistic haze of how these adult men are coping with a fairly common, albeit unfortunate, situation. I guess what can you expect from people who literally talk about themselves and what they are trying for work in front of an audience. They are now trying introspection…they are trying to cope with the tremendous loss of their brand…they are now also trying to do a cheat…

And I’m not trying to be an asshole here but like. Do people know who these guys are? The seriousness ascribed, the heaviness. It feels as though we are watching Mount Olympus tumble. But like literally…do people care? Am I supposed to care? I do not want to!

I am however praying for the women involved, for they will among other messes heaped primarily in their direction have to endure a whole new spate of content from the remaining Try Guys as they monetize and publicize their, uh, healing process.

I suspect what people, many at least, are invested in is not the infidelity itself (there are like 10000 cheating scandals happening at this very moment) but the supposedly hypocritical nature of a guy who has very much made his wife part of his brandTM and is not, in fact, a dutiful spouse.

Why, exactly, is this hypocritical? Prior to this transgression did we simply believe Big Wife Guy, the sprawling industry of PR that circles around those clearly suspect men who are most certainly hiding something? Would you be shocked, too, if I said that a Wife Guy loves to cheat? (And maybe wants to name his child after you? Isn’t that romantic?) That perhaps this professed Wife Guy-ness is, in and of itself, a sort of psychic barrier protecting his simmering inability to be faithful? Doth he protest too much?

The Wife Guy aura is, like this scandal, not about the wife at all, which is why I personally find it so funny that this shtick could ever be convincing to people–or worse..and more common..an object of thirst. It is like a public proposal: it claims to be romantic, but more often than not it is non-consensually thrusting a woman into the spotlight as an object to be adored, an accessory to the dude’s own Good Boy narrative. We Remember: Curvy Wife Guy. Among many others. They are endless, they are legion.

We know by now that the problem with creating a career around being a Wife Guy, Good Boy, Great Man, etc. – as I’ve explored for many years now – is not only that such self description is ludicrous and hilarious, but also because it puts them on a pedestal of their own making. We applaud them for doing a thing for their spouse, like a normal spouse, a veritable parade of thirst for the most menial shows of support. A double edged sword, for the ease of uncritical reception finds a partner in the swift fall from grace. When they fall, they fall hard.

Perhaps we should instead argue for a sort of Wife Guy neutrality, to strive for sheer mediocrity so that we are neither enthralled or shocked, just softly let down.