The Origin of Scumbag Steve
Today I’m going to be writing about one of my favourite memes, Scumbag Steve. Scumbag Steve is an image featuring a young man standing in a hallway wearing a fitted cap sideways. The meme is about negative or “scumbaggy”, if you will, behaviour.
The meme originated in a Reddit thread in early 2011 in which a reddit user created a bunch of images similar to the one posted above and titled “I hated this dude”. The man in the photo has been identified as Blake Boston, and the original image actually came from a cover for a rap album created by Boston under the stage name “Weezy B”. Amazingly, in under a month since the Reddit post, scumbagsteve.com was registered and a compilation was posted to Buzzfeed. Scumbag Steve spread across the Internet like wildfire ever since, and is now (at least in my opinion) a classic meme. Boston even made a rap song titled “Scumbag Steve Overture”!
There have actually been a few spin-offs of Scumbag Steve. Some of the most prominent ones are Scumbag Brain and Scumbag Stacy. Scumbag Brain is a photo of a human brain which describes self-conflicting psychological experiences. In addition, Good Guy Greg (which can be considered the polar opposite of Scumbag Steve) was created not too long afterwards.
In addition, Scumbag Steve’s fitted hat has even become a meme on its own. Under the same premise as its owner, the hat has been added to thousands of images to give them a “scumbaggy” spin.
I think Scumbag Steve became famous because it’s such a relatable meme. Whether it be with a parent, peer, employer, spouse, or any other person, we’ve all been in situations where someone was being a Scumbag Steve. That being said, don’t be a Scumbag Steve! Have some empathy for others and treat them the way you want to be treated.