Pity The Fuccboi: Learning To Live With And Maybe Even Love Our Mortal Enemy

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Complex Original

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You know The Fuccboi. He's the worst of us: a hypebeasting clown, a materialist stan, a garish parody of frank individualism that knows too little and costs too much. He's a social pariah borne of social media, a living meme in a perennial walk of shame. Point at his stupid fits. Laugh at his self-serious hashtags. Cringe at his conspicuous consumption. These are your rights as casual citizens of the Internet, where moral relativism is the closest thing there is to law and unoriginality is the closest thing there is to sin. He's guilty of it all. But whatever you do, don't hate The Fuccboi. Understand him. Pity him. Respect his inadvertent sacrifice. The Fuccboi exists to set you free.

In mid-2014, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd wrote an excellent piece for Jezebel about the demise of The Fuccboi. The whole thing is great, and you should definitely read it. But the bits pertinent to this piece is are useful, know-it-when-you-see-it definitions of fuccboism, focusing mostly on the rote logoism that characterized "elevated streetwear" through the first half of this decade.

On The Fuccboi's general appearance, Shepherd writes: "[he's a] streetwear trend-humper who pairs items like Hood by Air logo tees with dropcrotch shorts over leather leggings and tops it off with a sheen of Rick Owens, figuratively more than literally." YEP. On his sensibility: "a certain blend of awkwardness and thirst, combined with lots of disposable income...that translates into a need to be associated with the culture it inhabits." PLEASE, GO ON. On his osmosis into the wholesome middle class waters of American suburbia: "The fuccboi is out in the wild." GOD HELP US ALL.

The brands have changed and will change again a hundred times. That's just how this all works. But The Fuccboi's mentality will endure and that's his core. He's a leeching mannequin frantically appropriating the world around him, a chameleon with clothes on. The Fuccboi is a poseur, basically, but one who has so deeply commits to the pose that he's become more real than that which he imitates. WHOA.

But while most martyrs know their sacrifice, he is blissfully unaware of his.

I spent a lot of my youth in Catholic schools and churches. Most of the Good Word rolled off me like beads of water on a Teflon pan, but the concept of metaphysical barter always tickled me. Jesus traded his life to wipe clean the ledger of human sin. The Fuccboi, I think, does the same for you and me, sartorially and socially, at least. He wears camo joggers under Damir Doma shorts with a T-shirt that says "FL33KIN" in block letters, and we laugh in his fucking face because knowing what sin looks like makes it easier for us to see grace in the mirror. The Fuccboi is the Joker to our Batman, the foil to our protagonist, always the villain of our story and never the hero of his own.

Immaculately conceived on some message board and perennial ISO, the "luxury excellence aesthetic" (or whatever), The Fuccboi is a Christ-like figure in this, our New-New Testament. But while most martyrs know their sacrifice, he is blissfully unaware of his.

Remember again, this is the Internet Age, where unoriginality is sin and moral relativism is law. The Fuccboi sees us while we see him and actually believes he is good by comparison. "What are the emperor's new clothes," he asks. "Where can I cop?" The Fuccboi is too busy posing to notice that his only role in this grim charade is to provide context so that others may thrive. Don't hate him. Understand him. Pity him. Maybe even learn how to love him. At the very least, learn how to live with him. The Fuccboi exists to set us free.

Dave Infante is a writer living in New York City. Read more of his work on Thrillist and follow him on Twitter here.

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