A rather good letter from "Scumbag Steve" to "Annoying Facebook Girl"

Blake Boston, the young man who appears in the "Scumbag Steve" photo-meme (a picture of a teenager in a sort of "urban" outfit, captioned with various wry sayings that imply that "Steve" is kind of a jerk) sent a moving and sensible letter to "Annoying Facebook Girl" (another meme-unfortunate, featuring a photo of a girl pulling a face, captioned with expressions of enthusiasm over irrelevancies). Boston/Steve has clearly experienced a serious impact on his life as a result of his meme-status, and has given the matter a lot of thought.

But here’s what I need you to know. When you go off to college, and you’re walking down the hall and a group of kids see you and scream, “Oh my god it’s Annoying Facebook Girl,” don’t cry. You see. Some people can’t distinguish the internet from real life. There are people who refuse to believe my name isn’t Steve and that I am not really the scumbag (well not all the time, that is). Just remember who you are. And that you know you’re a decent kid.
You’re going to be in shock for a while, when you see what people have written. But the most important and self-preserving thing you can do is know that it’s not you. You can’t take this personally. I’ll say that again, you can’t take this personally. Hell if I did… well let’s not go there.
The part that will suck though is that there will always be those people that somehow think YOU did this, that you made the meme, and that you could stop it if you wanted to. That you have some control over it. You don’t. The internet birthed you and they’ll decide when you (the meme) will die.
There will also be those people who assuage their guilt by telling you how great it is, how lucky you are to be a meme. Just smile. What they are really saying is, thank god it wasn’t me.

Scumbag Steve’s Advice for Annoying Facebook Girl (via Reddit)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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AbdulAlhazred

So, wait, Scumbag Steve is being Good Guy Greg here?
My entire world view is turned on its head! Are dogs going to be captioned next!?
- ooshrooms
  
  I assume Good Guy Greg wrote it but gave the credit to Scumbag Steve.
http://www.facebook.com/KBENBENEK Kurt Benbenek

No matter if Steve/Blake is a scumbag or a jerk or whatever, anyone who uses the expression “self-preserving” and the word “assuage” in one letter of advice is OK in my book.
- AceTracer
  
  Blake was discussed at length at the last ROFLCon. He’s done a good job of positively spinning his infamy, but having heard him speak I find it difficult to believe this was actually written by him.
  
  Edit: After RTFAing I see that the letter was edited for grammar, so that makes a little more sense now.
  - http://www.facebook.com/KBENBENEK Kurt Benbenek
    
    If Blake is infamous, what does that make a Marilyn Monroe or a Charlie Sheen? Mega-mega-mega-infamous?? I had never heard of him until this post, and I read my Yahoo home page every other day!
    - noah django
      
      >I had never heard of him until this post, and I read my Yahoo home page every other day!
      >read my Yahoo home page
      >every other day
      
      not sure if troll
      - xenphilos
        
        No, unfortunately, Yahoo news tends to showcase internet memes from time to time. I’ve personally seen Ridiculously Photogenic Guy and frog sitting on a bench as a headlined story.
Rider

Well if you dress like an idiot, yeah you did kind of start the meme and deserve it.
- John Fleming
  
  Congratulations for apparently never looking silly, even once, during your entire life.
  - EH
    
    Not in front of a camera, anyway.
    - Quiche de Resistance
      
      Richard: Do you enjoy these games? In which the player must appear ridiculous?
      Violet: Sir Richard, life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.
- Guest
  
  Nice hat, Rider.
- rons
  
  Good one, Steve.
- http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC
  
  I request a link to your Facebook page, so we can see how well-dressed you typically are.
- http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi
  
  Oh victim blaming! That always goes down well on Boing Boing.
perch

It’s meant to be, guys!
Justin J. Snelgrove

Both of them look pretty, uh, generic. Especially “Annoying Facebook Girl” — I’ve known at least a half-dozen people who could easily pass for her. Just don’t make that face, and I don’t see how anyone could recognize her.
Rider

“The original image came from the cover of the album “Ma Gangsta”[1] by the rap group Beantown Mafia.[2] The first known image macros were posted in a compilation to Reddit[3] in a thread that reached the front page on January 21, 2011 and received 8,607 up votes prior to being archived. A commenter in the Reddit thread identified the young man in the photo as Blake Boston, a.k.a “Weezy B”. In an interview with Know Your Meme, Blake revealed that the picture was originally taken by his mother.”

Like I said, umm yeah it is kind of your fault. It’s like he took his persona straight from Married With Children.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  This makes me glad I was too shy to share my middle school music aspirations. I shudder at how much tinfoil would of been wasted.
Guest

Some people pretend they hate being yelled at, then watch FOX News at the dinner table.
ChicagoD

I dunno, that Scumbag Steve look is pretty specific. I feel like it wouldn’t be very hard to avoid being recognized if you stopped dressing in your “urban” style and shave. By the way, “urban” is such a kind description. The ones we use in real life are much more mean.
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

Don’t trip, 90% of meme creators obviously suffer from face blindness anyway.

Example:

http://nynerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/news%20reporter.JPG

These are the people who think the reporter and sketch look the same. (Obviously there’s some racism at play there as well, but still.)
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Come on now, they don’t look the same, but they’re close enough for it to be amusing.
  
  Race doesn’t factor into this one for me, I know of at least a couple white guys that could be sat in that chair resulting in an equally humorous image.
  
  Also, I hadn’t seen this before, so thanks :)
Bradley Robinson

Don’t worry, Steve. I will post you once per month on a randomly chosen message board to ensure your longevity.
Quiche de Resistance

I’ll just leave this here
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  <3
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  I don’t normally do this but… *LOLs for ten minutes straight, regain composure long enough to write half of this… **looks at image again*… returns with much the same intent* still chuckling.*…
  
  Damn that was funny. Thank you for that, I truly needed that.
Andrew Singleton

Shared. Mostly beause the letter itself can go to all sorts of people catching grief over stuff they do/have dne online. Refreshing to see people helping people make news instead of TSA Dumbfuckery or Police living up to stereotypes.
milkman

Maybe my estrogen is really high today, but it seems that there is just something wrong with people and the Internet if it’s being used to destroy (or even negatively affect) people’s lives because of a picture or two where they look a bit different than others or probably just having fun. Unless you know Blake personally, you can’t base his character off of a picture or a sympathetic letter OR proof that he thinks he’s a rapper. If we can’t find anything better to do with our time than harass people we don’t even know, let’s all gather at my house and drink Kool-aid around midnight.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  I don’t think that you’d find these are examples of personal attack., someone just came up with an idea and grabbed a random picture of a person that fits the persona.
  
  There are examples of what you’re talking about (any open ended communication and sharing tool will involve both good and evil, people are flawed, that’s life) but this isn’t really one of them.
  
  Think of it as an unfortunate consequence.
Bradley Robinson

Yeah, I went there.
Lurking_Grue

Nice letter but a bad explanation of the word meme.
SomeGuyNamedMark

Surprisingly “Scumbag Steve” is his original birth name.
Thad Boyd

The latest issue of Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve has a rather good story about a girl who’s mistaken for a porn star.

This reminds me of that a bit. Good on ya, Scumbag Steve.
http://www.facebook.com/rickhargett Rick Hargett

In a similar, but more touching, vein – recently Josh Fonner, of the “fat goth” meme, wrote a wonderful, open letter to Heidi Crowter of the “I can count to potato” meme. (and a scathing letter to her mother who is drawing publicity to herself and her mentally challenged daughter).

http://slacktory.com/2012/05/the-potato-letters-josh-fonner-i-can-count-to-potato/
loroferoz

What you are, or more objectively what you have actually done, can have little or nothing to do with your image.

We humans are terrible at judging people. It takes mental effort. And most of us don’t bother. It’s a fact, most people wouldn’t bother to think, that the star of an internet meme might not have originated it and might be very different from the meme in real life.

Remember, it’s the same people that choose to forgo doing any mental effort with their welfare on the line of fire; and are routinely swayed by image to acclaim stupendous douches and crooks with a record of serially screwing people into positions of power and trust.
Palomino

Many soap opera stars have been slapped in public by outraged viewers. This is the internet version of that. Actors can be typecast too, this is the same thing, being an Internet Type Cast.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  Really the Advice Dog type memes are the explorations of specific archetypes.
TaymonBeal

Is this new? I could swear I saw it months ago.
ill lich

Wait. . . these are real people?
http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

I was amused the Scumbag Steve is an alliteration, but I just love the fact that his real name is Blake Boston.
rolthewolf

The burning question I have for Boston is: Did it help you get laid at all?
http://twitter.com/theFreqHorizon Frequency Horizon

This is really old. Why are you just posting it now? The real news here is the awesome “Scumbag Steve Overture”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF8cmBV7dRY
Mark_Frauenfelder

He’s got a decent sense of humor about the whole thing, though: http://therealscumbagsteve.tumblr.com/
RedShirt77

He comes off as a scum bag