The E-Boy Epidemic
While VSCO girls may be the talk of the town in teenage girl world, E-boys, are in actual fact, the new “It” thing. Move over Soundcloud rappers and soft boys, there’s a new sheriff in town. Scroll through social media and countless E-boy tik-tok compilations or video essays making fun of soft boys will fill up your searches. But who are these boys?
Well, to make it easy, this is how I define it.
E-boys — These are the “girl’s who aren’t like the other girls’. They listen to music you probably heard of but they think no one else has. They also try to be as alternative as they without straying from the mainstream. I wouldn’t say they are an evolution of soft boys but more of a subsidiary and are mostly found on TikTok.
The E-boys are rising on the Internet and are the modern-day heartthrob. However, unlike the boys of teen heartthrob’s past, these boys aren’t really talented. They release content but they don’t really sing nor act nor much of anything. So why do the teen girls still fall for the E-boy? I have a theory.
In every decade a group of guys explode in popularity due to their looks and talent or… so I thought. We’ve had musicians —N-sync, The Jonas Brothers and One Direction. Actors — Leonardo Dicaprio, JTT, Christian Bale, Timothée Chalamet Cole Sprouse, and James Dean. Many of these stars paved their ways and reached immense stardom through star power, talent and looks.
But looking back, would most of these stars reach the same level of stardom without their looks? The answer is no and we have proof. Social media has allowed anyone to garner fame and with YouTube’s boom in the last 10 years along with the now-deceased vine, a new crop of heartthrobs came into the spotlight. They were the boys of O2L or Our Second Life and MagCon also Meet and Greet convention.
Both of these groups were essentially the same. A bunch of cute boys that were marketed to teen girls, to be the boyfriend they wished they had. They weren’t the “douche-y” boys in your class but more so your older brother’s hot BFF. They taught you how to get a guy like them and were just goofy. They were glorified vloggers who used their looks to propel them into the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
But look at those two groups now. Most of them have faded into obscurity. Look, I’m not saying none of them have talent. In fact, some of these boys have managed to stay relevant and still create content. Heck! Shawn Mendes was one of these boys. However, it goes to show that your looks only take you so far and once that 15 minutes of fame is over, it’s all about your talent, star power, and marketing.
In short, the rise of the E-boy is one we have all seen before albeit cringe-ier than most groups. The smart and talented ones will stay while the rest will move on living their lives. So let’s see how long the stardom lasts and what group will be the next to rise.
