Oh Ehy Its This Thread Again

MEMES, Part ii: Scumbag Steve 40:12

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If in that location is an OG meme in which a human is the star, Scumbag Steve is it. He spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011 as a universal representation of dudes who are the worst. And, similar any person grappling with immediate internet fame, Blake Boston — the human behind Scumbag Steve — tried to capitalize: merch, rap songs, public appearances.

But the total story of what happened to Blake — and his family — has never been told. The Scumbag Steve meme became a bargaining chip in a custody battle, a complicating factor in meeting his birth mother, the cause of fights with extended family unit members, a source of feet attacks, and an echo of trauma. In this episode, we get past the origin story of Scumbag Steve and larn about Blake's real struggles with PTSD and corruption — and how trauma has brought him and his mother, Susan Boston, even closer.

Show notes:

The Scumbag Steve photograph
The Scumbag Steve website

Full Transcript:

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads upwards that some elements (i.due east. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

TRIGGER Alert: This episode mentions the sexual assault of a minor.

Ben: When he pulls up the long driveway of his parents house in the Boston suburb of Millis, Blake Boston — yes, that is his last name — appears to live upward to our expectations. He gets out of his white Mercedes SUV, lights a Newport cigarette nearly immediately, and starts gesturing with a pointer finger on the same hand where he's fisting a large Dunkin' java with the ease of someone who is used to gesturing with a big Dunkin' coffee in his hand.

Amory: Blake is gesturing into his mom's garage, where a small burgeoning forest of new marijuana plants are turning into teenagers with the help of large black felt pots. Pot in the pots. They're his mom's. Blake's immediately friendly, open, and fun. He's got a thick golden beard, thick forearms covered in tattoos. Nosotros go around the dorsum to enter the family home from the immaculate deck, and Blake'southward sons leap up. One asks if he can help u.s.a. put our recording kit together. The other announces that they are nigh to go save some tadpoles.

Ben: Blake's Mom, Susan, is not exactly a shrinking violet either. She and her son Blake, and her grandsons, seem clearly cut from the same cloth. Fifty-fifty if technically they aren't. Today'south interview is Susan'due south Mother'due south Twenty-four hours present. But commencement she has some questions.

Susan Boston: You're not going to make u.s. look like assholes, right?

Ben: No. I hateful that'southward up to you.

Susan: No, it'southward upwards to editing.

Blake: You demand to carry, the matter is, is you lot say.

Susan: You need to behave.

Amory: Spoiler: Nobody in this conversation is going to acquit. Susan did try to brand sure that at to the lowest degree Ben behaved, every bit any *mutha* would.

Susan: Don't spill your h2o on all this stuff.

Ben: I'll try not to.

Ben: Amory and I are here, trying not to spill the glasses of ice h2o that Susan gave us, in a kitchen that is beautiful and full of flowers. And we're here with Susan and her son considering Blake — afterward months of DM-ing with us — has agreed to practise yet some other interview about what happened to him. He's done many.

Blake: My name is Blake Boston, AKA Scumbag Steve. Scumbag Steve is a meme. It's similar a grapheme. Me being a typical guy I was kinda hiding the hurt feelings with anger. Basically someone saw that and was like, that dude looks similar a scumbag.

Amory: But non many with his mom. And non many where he's talked about some of the things that fill out the picture beyond the image his mom posted online that became a meme, and turned into a years-long obsessive internet-induced anxiety set on for both of them.

Ben: Today, Blake and Susan Boston are going to talk more than openly about what happened. An interview with public radio is a flake of a departure from their usual Mother's Twenty-four hours routine.

Ben: Is is information technology truthful also that that for previous mother's days, you used to ask Blake to.

Susan: Steal?

Ben: Steal some flowers?

Susan: Yeah, and I find that, y'all know, it's nature. I mean, OK, information technology is in somebody's yard. But, you know, you lot would recollect--

Blake: It was like drive by. She literally drive me around. So nosotros lived in that time. So we would literally drive around like Norfolk county, I guess you'd phone call it. Aye, information technology would exist like five or half dozen unlike towns. And by the time we were done, she'd have a bouquet of all dissimilar colored lilacs. Probably if you bought it, the store would be similar a iii hundred dollar bouquet 'crusade it was then large and she -

Susan: Yeah, I remember when I first had Gabriel, my oldest, I was 21 and she was like, come on, Blake, yous got to get over hither. I was living here at the time and I was like, What are you talking well-nigh? And she'south like, We're going to get my flowers. And I was like, I'grand not 14 anymore. I'm going to get arrested for this. And she I don't care. I don't care. I bought her flowers one fourth dimension. I bought her lilacs.

Susan: And I was mad. I gave him the silent treatment. I was like, this is something this is a tradition that we need to do all the time. Just but one guy chased united states of america and he's like, Mom, Floor it. And I was similar, I would exist the driver.

Blake: Yep, that was the year I was on probation. And you lot made me practise information technology. Oh, like, mom, yous're going to become me arrested.

Ben: And so I experience similar yous're already answering this question, but like, how would you describe your human relationship to each other?

Susan: I don't actually similar him.

Blake: I don't even remember her proper name.

Amory: This couldn't be farther from the truth. Blake and Susan end each other'southward stories. Each other's sentences. Each other'southward jokes. You couldn't find two peas more in a pod.

Ben: Merely a lot of close parent-child relationships are forged in the fires of trauma. And, if you lot're lucky, the love and sense of humor and struggle that can come after that trauma. Then information technology also makes sense. Considering Blake Boston and his mom have some trauma — some of it unrelated to the meme; some of it very related to the meme.

Blake: Like, sticks and stones may break your basic, but words never hurt you.

Susan: But they do.

Susan: Hello, I'thousand Susan Boston and I live in Millis. Dog Boondocks. All right. That'due south awful considering somebody will mind to it.

Blake: What happens when you're in the friggin' bulldoze thru at Dunkin' Donuts and someone's like there's that freakin' Sue Boston over there talking trash. Then yous're going to call me in hysterics. "Get down hither, please!"

Susan: No. I'yard Susan Boston. And I alive in Massachusetts and I'm a mom and a grandmother and a married woman. How about you lot, Blake, now that you tin can speak?

Blake: Well, since you asked, my proper name is Blake Boston, a.thou.a. Scumbag Steve, and I am a loving father, cook by profession/musician. And I'm just, you know, doing my matter, raising my kids, having a skilful time while doing information technology. You know,

Susan: Don't forget your fiancée.

Blake: Oh my god.

Susan: That would have been a complete --

Blake: Take two. Hahaha.

Amory: I'chiliad Scumbag Amory.

Ben: I'grand Scumbag Benny, and yous're listening to Endless Thread.

Amory: We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston'due south NPR station. And today we're talking to a true OG meme and his mom, who talk a LOT — sometimes, at the aforementioned time.

Blake: They did me so bad. They did me so dingy.

Susan: OK, whatsoever they even had even––

Blake: Tin I finish the question he asked me?

Susan: I gotta call back this one thing or else I'll forget.

Blake: This is why yous don't do an interview with your mom.

Susan: OK, listen to me.

Amory: Now, when we refer to Blake Boston — who conveniently happens to accept that terminal name while sounding similar THIS...

Blake: Why make their jobs harder? Let'south make this as polish every bit possible.

Amory: … When we refer to him as an OG meme, it'southward because Scumbag Steve turned X this year. Which is like a century in internet years. And he has remained ubiquitous. In our concluding episode, we learned virtually "Kilroy Was Here," a meme that physically made the rounds around the world during Earth War II.

Ben: Just Scumbag Steve was among the start modern-twenty-four hour period memes, reaching all corners of the globe simultaneously. Instantly. Because... the Internet. And if sometime during the concluding decade you lot've stumbled across the Scumbag Steve photo showing a random, teenaged, rosy-cheeked kid wearing a crooked, backwards baseball lid, a fur-trimmed coat, a gold chain, scraggly facial pilus and an aloof stare, you've probably also seen some of the captions information technology'due south been given past strangers on the net.

Amory: Captions that are… scumbaggish. Things like…

[Voice-OVER] "Pukes on something. Disappears." "Tin I borrow a dollar to snort this with? Pockets dollar." "Drives slowly in the left lane. Speeds up when you effort to pass him." "Grandpa gets surgery. Steals pain meds."

Amory: And if you've looked at that photograph of Blake Boston and idea that some of those captions might be truthful, many things will surprise you over the grade of this episode.

Ben: Many things, only not everything.

Ben: What was Blake like as a little child?

Susan: Well, as a little kid, he was horrible.

Ben & Amory: Hahaha.

Ben: Blake was adopted as an infant.

Blake: Note to everybody: exercise non conceive a baby in the back of a musculus car considering I'm the event.

Amory: Susan says Blake was a truthful mischief maker. Hyperactive, predictably unpredictable — a riot and a parental panic attack, all in one.

Susan: I remember one fourth dimension we went to the Boston dwelling house show and I said to my parents, go to the other end because yous could go in and go out. At that place'south no style he'll become lost. Only he wants to get through past himself. So he went through. I come effectually to the other side. Um, my parents are looking. I'm similar, where is he? Where is he? He freaking climbed out the window. Oh. And started going beeline to where they were selling like candy. And I was I idea he was gone. I was like, this is he'southward the type of kid that, I was at one betoken thinking of having a ternion on him. Everywhere we went, he was the kid that everybody loved. Everybody idea was hysterical and acquired me, like, just so much angst. You take no idea. But I adored him.

Ben: Blake was a handful, and Susan brought in professional assistance pretty early on.

Blake: Well, my first ever therapy session was later on I got fleck in the middle by a dog.

Amory: Chip in the heart? Oh God.

Blake: Yep he ripped like like half my face up off.

Susan: And then he was identified like this is how he was identifying with the dog instead of the victim. And so I had to take him to this therapist, his play therapist, considering he was bitter all the kids at the preschool.

Amory: Blake was just 4 years sometime at the time. He had to have facial reconstructive surgery. But instead of becoming afraid of dogs as a result, Blake started acting similar one around his classmates.

Blake: I was like tackling them, growling, growling, bitter the canis familiaris. And then my brother and I started punching people. I'd like claw at them similar I was a leopard.

Susan: He said in trauma with kids that historic period. He said sometimes they're going to identify you lot there. Information technology's a victim, y'all know, and exist afraid of dogs or whatsoever or the rarely. Only sometimes it does happen. They get the dog and he became the dog.

Ben: Susan says therapy helped her son a lot. Just every bit he got older, nix could cease this teenage boy from being, well, a teenage boy.

Blake: Oh, and forget most when I found out about Jackass, I would literally-- Apr Fools was my solar day. I put jello in her toilet, saran-wrapped her toilet. I put it information technology was so funny. I got her one day. I put it, I put it, obviously not a used condom, but I put soap in it, and then information technology fabricated information technology look used and I--

Susan: That's disgusting. That's too much. NPR!

Amory: This became a common refrain throughout our conversation with Blake and Susan.

Ben: Every time her son said something outrageous — not safe for work or for broadcast — Susan would yell…

Blake: What do you think one-half those books--

Susan: NPR!

Blake: Do you non realize one-half the romance books out there are more graphic than a porno?

Susan: I told y'all NPR we're going to bring it up a notch!

Ben: We should admit, a four year sometime bitter other school kids? Roofing your mother's toilet with Saran Wrap? This is real life SCUMBAG cloth right? Or at leastfuture scumbag textile.

Amory: But Susan — equally y'all may have guessed from the whole Female parent'south Day flower-stealing ritual — she'due south pulled off some shenanigans of her own…

Blake: You're forgetting the whole point where you dress upwardly and put on a fake beard and like cool disguise and so you can watch me perform.

Ben: Blake has pretty much e'er wanted to exist a musician. He started playing in bands in high schoolhouse. And yes, one time, a friend of his helped sneak Susan into one of his shows so she could cheer him on without, yous know, being the mom at the show.

Susan: He put a whole beard on me and a doo-rag, recollect?

Blake: I still take that movie!

Susan: And I was dressed in similar these big chains. And I was like walking, and he never even saw me until I had, similar, didn't take a photographic camera or something —

Blake: I was on stage and I almost stop rapping because I was like, oh --

Amory: Susan has washed many things out of beloved for Blake that have ended upwardly beingness kind of mortifying for him. Only the well-nigh mortifying of all is the reason the Scumbag Steve meme exists.

Susan: You know, practice nosotros take to really, like, rub information technology in?

Ben: The story goes like this: In 2006, around the fourth dimension Blake was playing shows with his loftier schoolhouse band, Susan was getting into photography.

Susan: I idea it was so cool, OK, I thought I was-- And they would humor me because I'd use the same filter and I just exercise a blue crimson light and coming through and I'd be like, wait at this. And he'south similar, good, mom, proceed at it, proceed at it while they're downstairs probably making out with girls.

Blake: We were doing a lot more that.

Amory: Susan wanted to back up Blake's musical endeavors — beyond just showing up to his shows in a beard. She thought he needed some promo photos. So one day, as Blake is trying to exit the house, she snaps a picture of him in the doorway. He wasn't ready for information technology, only it was a pretty skilful shot, she idea.

Susan: And I said to him, give me your MySpace. And he's like, Mom! I'yard like, you lot going to do all of the stuff you lot have to promote yourself! So he gave me the thing... I put the pictures upwards.

Ben: Including a motion-picture show that would plough Blake Boston into Scumbag Steve. Simply non for a while. Which makes the origins of Scumbag Steve all the more mysterious…

Amory: Susan posted the photograph on MySpace in 2006. Simply it didn't accept off every bit a meme until Jan 2011, when it popped off among Reddit users. Within days, someone had made a website: scumbagsteve.com. Blake and Susan have no thought who started the meme. They barely knew what a meme was at the time.

Blake: All I know is he kept calling. Information technology. he Goes I'k a me, me, me, me, me, I information technology'south not French merely I didn't know. But let's non talk about excuse considering every fourth dimension you go in donuts, you and your croissant.

Ben: A daughter from schoolhouse called Blake to tell him he was all over Reddit and 4chan — ii sites he likewise wasn't familiar with — which made processing the meme and its prominence a fiddling complicated.

Susan: People would be like, oh, you front paged on Reddit again this week. I'd exist like, so...?

Blake: But so there would be other people, like we become to your mom'south house and and then at that place would exist your sister, like not my sis, merely a distant cousin saying, oh, I don't recollect he should come. He's been stealing hurting meds. And I'1000 like, first of all, I've never blown coke day in my life, yous know what I mean? I don't do hard drugs. I fume weed, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol. I've taken mushrooms. simply I don't practise hard drugs.

Amory: So this was because someone had put a caption on the picture that had to do with like stealing drugs?

Susan: Right. But no just one of the things that I will tell you is that when we used to get upwards, go on the Internet and nosotros'd see them, we would be in hysterics laughing. Oh yeah. Full hysterics. Until then, every once in a while, then nosotros'd look at each other and say, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Amory: Do you lot retrieve whatsoever of the captions that you thought were funny?

Blake: Oh, what the hell was it? Steals your keys, spends xx minutes helping you lot wait for him. Yes. Oh my God. Sleeps on your couch. Steals all the modify within or the change inside the cushions.

Amory: Did any of these resonate with you lot?

Blake: The lighter one.

Susan: A couple of them did.

Blake: I notwithstanding practice that at present because like if you lot go go on a night of drinking at present, don't go out with one lighter and I'll wake up the adjacent morning with 3.

Ben: Scumbag Steve started out as what's called an ADVICE ANIMAL meme. Basically, they're pictures of animals and humans with captions on them suggesting a certain character archetype. Only over time, iterations of the airheaded stuff started to get pretty upsetting — captions that had to do with mistreating and taking advantage of women, which Blake and Susan say isn't him.

Susan: Those hurt. Those were horrible to u.s..

Blake: Those, I don't like those. There'due south a certain line you don't cross.

Amory: Simply Blake had no control over when the line was crossed online, who was crossing it, and who was seeing all of these memes. And if the line between Blake Boston and Scumbag Steve was getting blurry for even his family unit members — who idea he might exist stealing pain meds considering of a caption online — what did the residual of the world think of him?

Blake: You know, I go try to go on dates and then girls wouldn't want to date me because they'd be similar, oh, yous're simply going to try to accept sex with my best friend. And I'm similar, what are yous talking almost? This is our first date. Aye. You know, people could non they could non dissever it. They couldn't remember. No, I lost a lot of my, you lot know, high school friends around this area. Huh. And a lot of them stopped talking to me and, you know, idea that I was that person.

Ben: Susan went total Mama Bear. Merely like she'd done at Blake'south shows in loftier schoolhouse, she wanted to cheerlead for her son. So she waded into the various online forums where Scumbag Steve was circulating to endeavour to set the record straight.

Susan: I was new to everything, OK? I had no knowledge of the Internet, no noesis of Reddit, and I literally thought that I could rescue his reputation. And I was on at that place all night. I'd exist writing something and I signed it as Blake Boston's real mom or something similar that. And they'd say, Hi, Blake, but what are you trying to do?

Ben: They just causeless it was him.

Susan: Oh, yeah.

Ben: Susan's attempts to defend Blake, heartfelt as they were, were, of grade, futile. And actually, she never had a chance.

Amory: Because Blake's random unknown face up didn't just go viral. Going viral is brief. Everybody talks virtually it for a day and then mostly never again. But every bit any net true cat knows, memes can have 9 lives, ix chiliad lives, 9 million lives! And suddenly Blake had been catapulted non merely into a new level of recognition, but into a new identity as a scumbag.

Ben: And if you lot've seen this thing, yous take to admit. The epitome is perfect. You lot immediately want to caption it yourself. Information technology's an amazing canvas upon which to permit loose your ain ridicule of scumbaggery. It became so iconic that information technology inspired spinoffs. His backwards hat — JUST THE Lid — could exist placed on whatsoever image to announce shady activity. Someone stuck it on a map of the Usa to criticize Guantanamo, for instance. And, unlike about of the other memes from the advice animal genre, Scumbag Steve is live and well.

Amory: Remember our meme chorus — the group of experts nosotros talked to about memes more generally? Well, every bit the meme chorus explains, the most iconic memes are the ones that perfectly, uniquely, instantly capture an intangible idea — in this case, Scumbag.

Joan Donovan: They're really ways in which we construction and then create a shorthand for a whole fix of ideas.

Gianluca Stringhini: So, y'all know, if you lot want to convey a certain message online, you lot know that you can use a certain meme and people volition get it.

Amory: So here's Blake, in his early 20s with his whole life seemingly ahead of him, and, all of a sudden, he's a scumbag in the eyes of just virtually everyone. His options were express at this point. But if he couldn't discard the Scumbag Steve characterization, he could lean in to it. Not unlike the dog attack from when he was young, instead of becoming the victim, Blake became the affair you'd think he'd shy away from. Susan watched him "become the dog" all once again.

Susan: And he, like, get to these performances acting like a consummate asshole.

Blake: Oh, yep. New York Metropolis walking downwards the street punchin' limos while the driving by, they beep at them, jaywalking. And I'll just punch the limo. I mean, thinking information technology was my task considering I was there as Scumbag Steve.

Susan: And I'd be similar, that's only information technology's not you. And he'south like, Mom, I got to either go with this or not.

Ben: And for a while, Blake went with it. He thought information technology might be good for his music career. He posted music videos on YouTube that seemed to fully embrace the identity the net had given him.

Scumbag Steve (rapping): Who's been smokin' up all your weed? Scumbag Steve, Scumbag Steve. And who keeps pickin' out your girlfriend's weave? Scumbag Steve, Scumbag Steve. Who showed upward and drank all your beer? Scumbag Steve, Scumbag Steve. And how'd you get puke on your brand new gear? Oh yeah that's me.

Amory: Doors did open for Blake. He got to perform at South by Southwest in 2013, he was invited to internet conventions like ROFL-Con where he was received like a celebrity. He appeared on WWE.

Ben: But there were doors threatening to close, also. When the meme blew upwardly, Susan was in the process of contacting Blake'southward nativity mother, whom he'd never met but always wanted to. Blake had e'er struggled with what he calls a void in his eye. A question for his nascence female parent: Why didn't you want me?

Amory: Susan had tried to raise someone Blake's nativity mother would be proud of. And and so, of a sudden, correct when they were reaching out to introduce Blake to his birth mother, he'd become internationally known as a scumbag. Would she fifty-fifty answer their letters now?

Susan: I was brokenhearted. I was like. They're going to think-- her whole family, the embarrassment actually of it and the right. Yeah. And and and they're being not who he is at all. Only, you lot know, how practise you explain something like that? I didn't know if they knew what a meme was. I mean, we certainly didn't. You know, there were so many things that were built into that.

Amory: Including the fact that Blake himself was a parent now. And his alter ego Scumbag Steve just happened to be spreading in the middle of a custody battle with the female parent of his children.

Blake: More or less her angle was, oh, yeah, he'south a scumbag and he'due south, you know, out doing all these crazy drugs and this and that where it'southward not the example. Yous know, like I said before, I don't use drugs, you know, marijuana. But I don't really consider that the marijuana, you know. And like that kind of messes with me, too, because, like, I've tried ever hard to stay away from crap like that because, you know, I've not personally dealt with addiction, merely like a lot of my friends take and I've lost some friends because of addiction. It'southward like that alone just kind of touches me the incorrect manner.

Susan: And you take a limited amount of fourth dimension to stand up in forepart of a judge to say who y'all are and how you lot tin be a great parent and and why information technology's right for your children to exist with you. And if you lot can imagine the fearfulness of going in there and thinking that limited amount of time is when somebody holds up his picture show. With all these sayings on them over and over and over over again or here, go on, Google, Google his proper name, in that location'southward 7 million over seven million memes of him. And then how exercise y'all explain that to somebody that's non, you know, aware of what a meme is and what it is then vital to his character and in his life. That'south where. That's really the crux of what was me wanting to really make everything all right forth with for his reputation, but I just I knew that if this went that far and he ended up losing his children over meme, I don't know how he would have come up back from that.

Amory: Information technology'southward pretty unusual for the father instead of the mother to stop up with custody of kids in a divorce. And neither Blake nor Susan wants to talk very much about what happened and why. They're notwithstanding afraid of what might happen. Apparently, there was a whole reality bear witness following Blake and his family effectually that MTV shot and piloted, and Blake'due south ex — the mother of his boys — got that project deep-sixed.

Ben: Just what nosotros can say is that Blake has had full custody of his boys for vi years at present. And he credits them for helping him get through some darker moments. Some of which have been brought on past the meme — times when the world'southward vision of who Blake was felt suffocating, which he'll admit fifty-fifty while in the aforementioned jiff he'southward almost trying to brush it off.

Blake: There were times where, you know, I go a footling besides drunk considering of it, then I'd freak out and, like, scream at the top of my lungs, like, throw a niggling hissy fit.

Amory: But there have been other low moments, brought on by something else entirely.

Blake: Where, yous know, I but sit in the house and I'll go through a little mental episode where I just get really exhausted or merely like get really sorry for no reason. And like randomly my kids hug me from time to time, just like come and say, Daddy, I dear y'all or y'all're the all-time father. And then it similar, snaps me out similar that. Then I just likewise hold on to that stuff, likewise.

Susan: That'due south role of PTSD.

Blake: Yeah.

Ben: This something else entirely is something fans of the meme have no idea near.

Amory: Something that he'south finally starting to talk about with his mom, the person closest to him.

Blake: Then I called her at similar 2 in the morning, one morning. And I was like, I got to tell you something. And I was like, do y'all retrieve style back in the day? And she was similar, Blake, I already know. And she started crying and I started crying.

Ben: More in a few.

[BREAK]

Amory: I'll admit that I don't know exactly how to ask this. So I might I might--

Susan: Be insensitive

Amory: I might tumble over my words.

Blake: I'm offended.

Amory: But it seems--

Susan: I am as well.

Amory: Oh good, good if that's where we're starting from, we're in a good place.

Susan: Oh god.

Amory: There's a reason I'one thousand tripping over myself here. Every in one case in a while in an interview, you're hit with something you lot didn't see coming. Something that tints the lens through which you run into a person's story. Ben and I had already spent an hr and a half with Blake and his mom, Susan, when he told us that, for MANY more than years than he'south dealt with beingness a meme, he's suffered from PTSD.

Blake: So I was molested at two different points in my life once when I was about five and once when I was nearly 15, xiv.

Ben: Wow.

Susan: An employee or–

Blake: A boss. Boss. Yes.

Susan: Groomed him.

Blake: We're non mentioning names. Nosotros're not mentioning where I worked or not mention any of that.

Susan: He wasn't the but one.

Amory: When you lot were five, that was someone else

Blake: that was afraid of. So my mom took me to Home Depot and information technology was the first fourth dimension I ever went to the bath by myself. And I was all proud and some friggin' knucklehead walked in after me and... Yeah, it was pretty bad. Just I lied nigh it, too, because I didn't want anybody to know what happened. Yeah, so he got away with information technology.

Susan: Well, he didn't really. I hateful, he did go abroad. They caught him.

Blake: They caught him. But when they asked me if he did annihilation to me, I said no.

Susan: Well, he was you you were a little kid. That was awful.

Ben: Blake didn't tell his mom almost what happened to him at his high school job until nearly 6 years ago when he was in his mid-twenties.

Blake: It was right after I got full custody of both my kids, I started having actually bad night terrors nearly exactly what happened. And sometimes it was the first time, sometimes it was the second. Just I would feel everything that was happening, similar it was happening like that fourth dimension.

Susan: When he became a parent.

Blake: When I became a full time parent, I guess, instead of, you know, half and one-half.

Ben: And so he called Susan in the middle of the dark and confirmed what she'd had an inkling about, even though she didn't know what was going on at the time.

Susan: Something was up. I just felt it in my gut.

Blake: Well I'm 15 years quondam and afterwards we're closed, he's buying everybody beers and were smoking cigarettes within the eating house and we're all getting boozer and having, like, weird ass stuff. I don't know. Yeah. We all thought information technology was cool because we're underage and here he is. He'south like he'south similar rolling joints for everybody who smoked weed and like y'all're taking shots and like we all thought we were cool because nosotros were hanging out with an older guy.

Susan: And he was grooming him.

Amory: So, back to the question I was having a difficult time articulating.

Amory: Information technology seems like this whole scumbag Steve thing, like you lot said, you can't control the Internet, and so this only feels like something that was out of your control. And as a mother, when you experience like something is happening that is out of your control and you don't know... you're trying and trying and trying to protect your son...just you don't know how to protect your son. And information technology sounds like this wasn't the commencement time that something bad had happened to your son where you don't know how to protect- You don't know what to do for him.

Susan: Right. And you've got to understand that, you know, when he had that state of affairs happen–

Blake: Just say the molestation. Just say it.

Susan: I know y'all're right. He. Which is really good Blake, that y'all can say it just like.

Blake: It took me 25 years.

Susan: OK, but when he is so that, yous know, was that a trigger, you know, having had that prior feel, probably. And so and honestly, that's where my husband was so good because he'd exist like this is this. That was that. OK? You trying to protect your son so diligently is not going to change the past. And it'south not the same thing. You can't give information technology the aforementioned weight. So, yep. Was it blurred? Yeah, but it was blurred in some regards and perhaps that's why I was so into it and trying to right it. But, y'all know, I don't know, peradventure I've never actually actually thought about it, not in those terms. Whether it was multilayered and triggers from before. Could have been. Practice you think information technology was?

Blake: Probably. probably had a lot to do with it.

Susan: Yeah, I never even thought of that, really.

Ben: Function of the reason why we wanted to talk to Blake and his mom together is because it wasn't merely Blake'south reputation that was beingness dragged.

Susan: I was challenged as a mother, like, am I not doing the correct affair? And that information technology was something I prided myself on that I that, you know, our relationship. And it was like you lot're telling me I didn't protect my son now?

Amory: It seemed like anybody in Susan'south life had an opinion about how she was treatment things, and she wasn't ever sure when, and how, to try to shut them all up.

Blake: But I experience like somewhen you lot kind of took my side or my manner of thinking about information technology where it's like, you know, y'all tin say annihilation yous want to, but that doesn't get in truthful. So if you really want to experience that way, and then I but won't talk to you lot anymore. And she said that to people. If you really call up this is how I raised my son, then don't call me once more.

Susan: Yeah, I can't, I can't do it with everybody.

Ben: Sounds like, sounds like he was lucky to have you.

Susan: Lucky to take him in that regard, besides, because you you know, he like I'd be looking at oh, God, look at this 1. This child said that you did this, and I'd exist writing on 9gag and Reddit similar an idiot. No, he isn't, I'1000 his mother. And they'd be like, oh yep, Bob, yous're hither again. Yous're full of shit. And he'd exist similar, Mom, go with it. Just laugh information technology out. Remember? I say, OK, I'll endeavour.

Ben: A through and through scumbag wouldn't help his mom procedure anxiety like this. And so, yeah, Blake Boston — peculiarly if you lot know Scumbag Steve — is non actually who yous would expect him to be.

Amory: Information technology took a while for Blake to get to this point — years of therapy, friends lost, a reputation compromised — all considering strangers online found a picture on MySpace and decided he was Scumbag Steve.

Ben: Practise you wish that you lot weren't?

Blake: No. I love information technology. Now I dear it. Yeah. But it's cool considering now, like, I'k on cameos, so I do cameos from time to fourth dimension and, y'all know, starting a new ring. And so I'm going to hopefully piggyback off a little bit of Scumbag Steve. And so I become a fiddling fleck of fizz for the ring. So there's a lot of positive things going on, I approximate, because of it.

Amory: Earlier this year, Blake was able to greenbacks in on his online change ego in a way that never would take been possible when the meme came out x years agone. He sold the OG MySpace scumbag photo as an NFT, AKA, a non-fungible token… AKA, he just doesn't ain the original prototype anymore.

Ben: The transaction was in cryptocurrency — 30 Ethereum — which, at the time we're recording this, is hovering around 100,000 dollars in worth. Groovy for a moving-picture show he never asked to be taken and that had potential to accept his kids away at one betoken.

Blake: And then, you know, I still have the chapeau. I'll just throw it on from time to fourth dimension and I'll similar walk exterior and take the trash out in my apartment complex and anybody's like...

Amory: You go recognized withal?

Blake: More or less when I'chiliad in character. Similar if I, you lot know, I also have my own T-shirt, has course at noon, sleeps till 4:00 pm with my picture on it. So I'll wear that sometimes.

Amory: Blake has a level of clarity and agency over his meme-hood now that he didn't have before. He gets to decide when he wants to encompass Scumbag Steve, and when he just wants to be Blake. And perhaps more chiefly to him now, just "Dad."

Blake: Honestly, my kids, they kept me straight. I nonetheless acquit, you lot know, newborn pictures of my son'southward in my wallet. So I'll pull that out.

Susan: That's where you know who you are. When you're a begetter and parent, y'all know, not for everybody, just for him. He knows who he is, for his children, y'all know, and. That's stronger than any meme.

Blake: Definitely.

Ben: Susan's child kept her directly, too. As she and Blake rode out the Scumbag storm together, he buoyed her with the aforementioned realization that buoyed him.

Blake: People are going to say what they desire to say about you. You tin can't modify the other the manner other people, particularly if people are bullies, naturally bullies. You can't alter what they practise. You can change your mind-state on how you lot react.

Susan: No, seriously, that kind of heed frame, because I could not have away beingness, yous know, a mother within the meme situation. At that place wasn't. But he he did it for me. He separated information technology. And that was a lot to expect from somebody that was existence called Scumbag Steve worldwide. To expect him to exist there for me. Then I love yous and thank you lot.

Blake: Well, let's non get all mushy now.

Susan: OK, I won't cry.

[MUSIC]

Ben: Adjacent up: the bait-and-switch meme at the centre of a billion YouTube views, endless email link jokes, and a song that just might take special musical powers…

Amory: And, the guy who claims to take started information technology all.

Ben: We'll Ringlet that into your feed... in a calendar week.

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Source: https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2021/10/01/memes-scumbag-steve