When the Glass House Shatters

In 2020, Bon Appétit faced a public reckoning after employees of colour exposed severe pay inequity, systemic racism, and a problematic YouTube video culture, leading to the resignation of editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport after an old Halloween photo surfaced showing him in brownface.

In February 2021, Gimlet Media's award-winning podcast Reply All—hosted by PJ Vogt and produced by Sruthi Pinnamaneni—launched a multi-part investigative series examining the Bon Appétit scandal.

It was only days after the first two episodes aired that former Gimlet Media producer Eric Eddings (co-host of The Nod) published a viral Twitter thread accusing PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni of hypocrisy. Eddings and other former Gimlet staffers revealed that Vogt and Pinnamaneni actively opposed a staff unionization drive at Gimlet and fostered a similar clique-driven, exclusionary, and toxic workplace—particularly for employees of colour. The potential unionization was seen as a liability for the upcoming $230 million acquisition of Gimlet by Spotify. (They did in fact shut down Gimlet only two years later.)

The backlash was immediate and severe. The remaining episodes of "The Test Kitchen" were shelved/cancelled, Vogt and Pinnamaneni apologized and resigned from the show and company, and the iconic podcast effectively collapsed, with only a handful of episodes being produced afterwards.

In March 2021, reporter Reggie Ugwu published an in-depth feature titled What Really Happened at ‘Reply All’? for The New York Times. And The Times itself had a high-profile podcast scandal involving Caliphate, which also collapsed due to unchecked star talent and institutional editorial blind spots. The paper admitted it had ignored red flags and failed to verify fabricated claims made by an alleged ISIS recruit. The podcast's co-creator and producer, Andy Mills, was forced to resign after past allegations of workplace sexual misconduct and aggressive behaviour resurfaced.

Ned Fulmer was a member of the comedy group The Try Guys and was known online as the "wife guy," as Fulmer built his brand around devotion to his wife Ariel. In September 2022, grainy photos of Ned kissing a woman at a New York City bar and a Harry Styles concert surfaced, and he was fired after admitting to an extramarital affair with Try Guys associate producer Alexandria Herring.

Fulmer launched a comeback podcast called Rock Bottom, featuring an appearance by Ariel where she stated she has not forgiven him for the betrayal, though they maintain a friendship in order to co-parent their children.

In a November 2025 video titled "Addressing The Backlash," Fulmer explained how he finally learned to "practice empathy and listening and boundaries with Ariel and others, which, you know, is sort of part of what was damaged about my brain."

In 2022, podcaster and Internet figure Ethan Klein criticized Fulmer on the H3 Podcast regarding his workplace affair, stating:

Putting your kids through that, I mean, that's lifelong trauma for your kids at that young age, too. And it's gotta be humiliating for his wife, too… She's gotta do this in the public eye.

It was only a few weeks ago that Hila Hacmon (formerly Klein) filed for divorce from Klein, after it was revealed he was unfaithful in a months-long affair. The actions of the crew of the H3 podcast on social media led to the discovery that the affair was with 27-year-old animator and crew member Tamara Joseph.

This also comes after Klein's campaign of harassment against smaller creators and women, where he had been filing defamation lawsuits against Denims, Kaceytron, and Frogan after they reacted to or criticized his content. Journalist Taylor Lorenz publicly accused Klein on Twitter of making sexual comments about women on his Instagram stories and orchestrating sexualized, misogynistic online harassment campaigns, which Hacmon took part in.

It is, frankly, puzzling why Klein and the H3 Podcast had fans prior to the cheating allegations, and why they were shocked at Klein's infidelity after he had demonstrated his character over and over for years.

Klein has been radio silent after releasing two statements on his Instagram stories. This is in stark contrast to the hundreds of posts he made referencing his ex-cohost Hasan Piker in the past year.

These are, of course, just a few examples of many. The Internet will always be bloodthirsty for scandals and controversy. And, admittedly, these are some of the few times people can collectively enjoy the schadenfreude of watching deceptive men in power finally face their comeuppance.

I think there is an overlooked, pressing question here: Why do we care so deeply about the morality and goodness of our entertainers? Do a person's reputation and notoriety mean they are obligated to be good, even if their work has nothing to do with being moral or just? Often times, people feel more strongly about the hypocrisy and the contradiction of the brand and identity than about the act itself.

I think a part of it comes from the fact that when we deeply enjoy a person and "consume their content" often, our being fans becomes a part of our identity, and how they act reflects on who we are.

Fans react to celebrity transgressions using their devotion to a celebrity as a resource for building their own identity, and so a scandal becomes deeply personal. Researcher Toni Eagar describes three ways fans to respond to moral failings: ignore it, justify it, or break the relationship off, and the last is the "most traumatic" for people with the strongest attachments.

This isn't new. Robert Cialdini documented in the 1970s how college football fans say "we" when their team wins and "they" when it loses, basking in reflected glory. It's no different with entertainers—when they make us look good by association we're happy to claim them, and once they get cancelled and embarrass themselves we put as much distance between us and them as we can. It is far less about their morality than it is about our own reflection.

And the hypocrisy seems to be the thing people are angriest about in all of these stories. We dislike hypocrites because hypocrisy is a form of false signaling: when someone condemns a behaviour, we feel duped when we learn the truth. A paper also found that "honest hypocrites," people who admit they do the thing they condemn, were judged far more kindly.

The hosts of a toxic workplace investigated a toxic workplace, the "wife guy" cheated on his wife, and the man who lectured Fulmer about infidelity ruined his own family with it. The brand was the promise, and the betrayal was the promise breaking. If what we resent most is the false signal and not the failing itself, then the way out is honesty.

I think, too, people use these happenings as a vehicle for their own discourse (which, I admit I'm doing right now) and to be able to communicate their thoughts and feelings with a stronger collective understanding.

I am deeply uninterested in moralizing at the parasocial spectators and the voyeurism of Internet celebrity. Rather, things like this make me look inward: We are all in desperate need of good role models. Not of people who are performative and monetize the branding of goodness, but rather people who are sincerely steadfast in their values, and who know how to course-correct when they inevitably make a mistake.

Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, Steve Irwin—the most prominent examples many people can think of are no longer with us. And I think there has been a gnawing feeling and vacuum in their wake. I yearn to be a good example myself through action, but I know how often I fall short. Any of us can be one bad headline away from being proven wrong, but I can point to people like José Andrés, who founded World Central Kitchen after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, or LeVar Burton, who has spent decades championing literacy for kids.

More than that, though—I think we need to recalibrate our expectations. The quicker we are to judge and criticize others, the quicker others will be to do the same to us. The glass of our houses when we throw stones is really just a house of mirrors.

And the toxic, impossible standards of purity bleed into our politics just as much as our social media. Don't we remember when, in 2019, Barack Obama told a room of young activists that calling people out isn't activism? Or how longtime activist Loretta Ross wrote in the New York Times how call-out culture is toxic, and proposed we "call in" instead.

A Yale study of Twitter found likes and shares teach people to express more outrage over time, and people will absorb the outrage norms of their network. Pew found Americans can't agree whether calling someone out online is accountability or punishment, and the answer is unsurprisingly split along partisan lines. People think they believe in restorative justice until they're faced with a person who's done something truly horrible. Grace needs to be given at the times it feels like people deserve it the least. Restorative justice and forgiveness are not easy, and they're not supposed to be.

But the point of giving people undeserved grace is that we will then receive it ourselves when we inevitably fuck up.

It's also important to distinguish between the contrarian playing Devil's advocate and authentically trying to give someone empathy and grace. I think people too easily conflate minimizing and apologia with attempts at healing and moving forward. And I know it's an unpopular sentiment, but I do really think we do need to figure out how to handle people beyond just alienating and cutting them off. It is difficult and laborious, and certainly unfair, but I think people are worth it, and I don't know how we're supposed to function as a collective and community otherwise.

I myself have been accused of being a pearl-clutching, sanctimonious alarmist. It's true that I have strong values and I am not afraid to be vocal about them, but that is not the same as shaming and judging others. Philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke came up with the term moral grandstanding. The test for it is whether you'd be disappointed if nobody gave you recognition for speaking up. The difference between having values and policing other people's values is how much you're concerned with looking like you care about it. I love people and care deeply about the world. I do not think I am superior or in the right — I like to think that I am trying my best.

Really, I try my best to remain unremarkable, and to use my skill set to make things for the world for free and contribute to the commons. I am deeply uninterested in fame or accumulating wealth or power, partly because I have obsessive-compulsive thoughts about scrupulosity and morals. It feels silly when I write that out, but it's the truth.