Introducing the cuckboy, the new worst type of fuckboy

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Introducing the cuckboy, the new worst type of fuckboy

Bear with me on this one

In 2017 it’s fair to say that the idea of the fuckboy is now pretty past it. We’ve reached, and surpassed, peak fuckboy saturation. We’ve worn their fuckboy booty call texts as costumes, we’ve learned how to spot them and how to be one yourself.

Fuckboys have evolved alongside us, growing stronger with time, and mutating. First, we called it the softboy. The softboy was different from his fratty, brash ancestors. He listened to The Smiths and Death Cab For Cutie and liked Garden State and Elizabethtown. He says things like “making love” and “I’m so glad you don’t feel the need to dress like a slut to get attention” while looking at other girls. He secretly enjoys redpill and snaps six months into hooking up with you and calls you a bitch.

The softboy was a type of nu fuckboy, one who recognised the continued mainstream appeal of feminism and awareness and generally being “woke” and used it to his advantage with nothing more than a surface understanding of it. He was, in short, evolved, and specific. Not unlike the litboy, the fuckboy who wears these glasses unironically, calls himself “fucked up”, probably lives in Portland and texts you to explain patiently the subtext in Infinite Jest that you just couldn’t possibly have understood.

With every mutation the idea of being “woke”, aware, part of it, a feminist became more and more of the focus. And it’s reached its zenith in the cuckboy, the newest and worst type of fuckboy in an already saturated market. You might have already have heard of him, he’s been around a lot recently.

Maybe you saw him at the Women’s March in DC. Maybe he posted an angsty, overwrought, totally insincere status about the women he admires in his life for International Women’s Day (replete with picture of himself and rich in subtext of how poorly he treats women in real life and off social media). Maybe you first came across him when SNL perfectly dragged him in this sketch, earlier this month.

  • In a brilliant article by MEL magazine, the cuckboy is boiled down to his contradictions and drives home what SNL did so well in depicting him – that it’s not over the top, it’s not satire, it’s not exaggeration, everyone has encountered them at some point. “The cuckboi buys you a one-year recurring monthly donation to Planned Parenthood for Valentine’s Day. (It will outlast your relationship with him by 11 months”, writes MEL.

    “The cuckboi loves to whisper sweet nothings in your ear while he fucks you, his favorite being ‘Bernie would’ve won.’ The cuckboi tells his girlfriend he loves that she doesn’t shave her armpits, but is secretly glad she shaves her legs. The cuckboi knows that bragging about being good at eating pussy is lame, so he brags about eating ass instead.

    “The cuckboi is writing a novel about a dystopian future in which there are no men (except one, his main character, loosely based on him — who fucks, lovingly of course, all of the women left on the planet).”

    These contradictory statements are the perfect way to boil down the problem with the cuckboy. Identifying the trend isn’t attacking male feminists, it’s not misandrist, it’s not laughing at men who are actually interested in feminist issues and care about gender equality. They are not cuckboys.

    The cuckboy’s feminism is not sincere, it’s performative. It’s outward facing without any depth or belief. It exists only to convince you to fuck him, not to enrich your life (or his own) in any way. Half of the cuckboys public life is spent in an ivory tower, sweeping into conversations between women to share his views on an issue which has nothing to do with him – and loudly, so everyone else in the room knows he understands it.

    He posts White Knighting Facebook statuses about how much he loves and respects women, harvesting likes (from other women, obviously), but in his real life, does not love and respect women. He’ll wear a The Future Is Female top to the bar, but call you a bitch when you don’t want to fuck him for caring so much about your cause.

    He’ll post a Maya Angelou quote on his Instagram, then click out of the app to send some leaked nudes down his all boys group chat, where he oscillates wildly between leering and making fun of basic bitches and tone-policing the other, horrible, sexist boys in there. “Don’t show anyone outside here though boys”, he’s typing, breathing through his mouth, the screen fogging up. “That would be, wrong, loooooooooooool.”

    The continued existence of the cuckboy shows how far the fuckboy has mutated. We’re in a brave new world now, a dystopia where nothing is real and everything is a lie.

    OK it’s not as bad as that, but honestly, they are awful.

    @rosielanners