Scumbag Steve

The original photo was taken in 2006 at the Boston family home in Medfield, Massachusetts5. Blake Boston was 16. His mother Susan, who was taking a photography class at the time, snapped the shot in a hallway9. Blake was pleased with the result. "I sure as shit thought I was a balla," he later recalled5. He had his friends hype up the photos to encourage Susan, and she posted the image to his MySpace page9. The photo also wound up on the cover of "Ma Gangsta," an album by Blake's rap group Beantown Mafia4.

Five years passed before the internet found it. On January 21, 2011, a Reddit user posted a compilation of image macros using Blake's photo under the title "I hated this dude"4. The post hit the front page and pulled in over 8,600 upvotes before archiving. A commenter identified the young man as Blake Boston (also known as "Weezy B"), and another commenter coined the name "Scumbag Steve," which got over 300 upvotes and stuck1.

Blake had no frame of reference for what was happening. "Who the fuck knew what a meme was? I had never even heard the word," he said5.

Scumbag Steve was one of the most covered Advice Animals of the early 2010s, with articles in the Daily Mail9, Slate7, Mashable3, BuzzFeed10, and the Daily Dot2. Pepsi used the Scumbag Steve concept in advertising, though without Blake Boston's actual involvement or likeness3.

Blake's attempt to pivot into a rap career off meme fame drew coverage from The Mary Sue11 and Strange Music12, making him one of the first "meme celebrities" to try turning internet notoriety into a music career. His arc from angry victim to reluctant embracer to self-aware meme veteran set a pattern that future unwilling meme subjects would follow.

The meme also raised early questions about consent and the ethics of turning a random person's photo into an internet punching bag. WBUR's "Endless Thread" episode in 2021 was one of the first in-depth explorations of the long-term psychological toll of becoming a meme against your will, revealing that Blake dealt with anxiety attacks and PTSD partly triggered by his meme fame8.

In 2016, Blake told BuzzFeed News he considered himself qualified to spot scumbags, taking a public jab at Donald Trump: "Being considered the quintessential internet scumbag, known worldwide... I can, without any hesitation, say that Trump is one of the biggest scumbags around"5.

Blake Boston's first reaction to his sudden internet fame was rage. During the opening weeks, he fired off profane rants and tried to get websites to take the images down5. He woke his mother Susan late at night to show her the search results, and she started crying. Because Blake was adopted as a baby, Susan's immediate fear was that his birth mother might see the meme and think the son she gave up had been raised to be a scumbag5.

The angry outbursts made everything worse. Reddit users screenshotted Blake's furious Facebook posts, and some of his quotes were turned into new captions for the meme1. As one Redditor put it: "NOBODY TELLS THE INTERNET WHAT TO DO"1. People found his phone number and called at all hours. Someone posted an ultrasound photo of his unborn child and wished it would die9.

Identity confusion added another layer of chaos. A Twitter account appeared under @BlakeBoston617 in late January 2011, and the Blake on Twitter seemed to enjoy the attention, leaning into self-promotion1. This baffled observers since Facebook Blake had been so hostile. Blake claimed the angry Facebook posts were fakes posted by impersonators, though Urlesque's reporting at the time made clear that verifying his real identity was a tangled mess1. BuzzFeed's Chris Menning described Blake as "pretty clueless about what he's doing and how to go about it" but noted he was "throwing around meme terminology that he learned from KYM to try to sound confident"1.

By late 2011, Blake had calmed down enough to show a different side. He wrote a thoughtful open letter to the girl behind the "Annoying Facebook Girl" meme, advising her not to take the internet personally. "The internet birthed you and they'll decide when you (the meme) will die," he wrote. "You can't take this personally. I'll say that again, you can't take this personally"13.

In 2012, Blake went all-in on leveraging his accidental fame. He attended SXSW and ROFLcon, where he performed his "Scumbag Steve Overture" rap alongside fellow meme celebrities Chuck Testa and Antoine Dodson5. He launched "Scumbag Thursdays," releasing a new rap single on iTunes every Thursday under the rapper name "Blake Boston AKA Scumbag Steve"3. The songs incorporated actual Scumbag Steve captions submitted by fans as lyrics. "You can always come up with different scumbag stuff that people do," Blake told Mashable. "Putting it in the first person is a little bit easier"3. Slate noted the attempt was risky, since efforts to "reverse or harness meme fame" had historically been disappointing7.

Blake was disarmingly honest about the overlap between himself and the character. He told The Boston Globe in 2012 that his similarities with Scumbag Steve were "probably why it hurt"5. Like the fictional Steve, Blake at the time borrowed lighters without returning them, smoked menthols, drank Mountain Dew, lived with his parents, was unemployed, and aspired to be a rapper5. "Everyone has their scumbag moments," he told the Daily Dot at ROFLcon2. In a Strange Music interview, he revealed he was formerly a big Juggalo and a dedicated Tech N9ne fan12.

The deeper story came out in 2021, when WBUR's "Endless Thread" podcast did an extended interview with Blake and Susan at the family home in Millis, Massachusetts8. The podcast revealed that the meme had been weaponized in a custody battle, complicated Blake's meeting with his birth mother, caused fights with extended family members, and triggered years of anxiety attacks. Blake opened up about PTSD and earlier abuse. "Me being a typical guy, I was kinda hiding the hurt feelings with anger," he told the hosts8. The episode painted a picture of a mother and son bonded by shared trauma and humor, finishing each other's sentences and stories, still close after everything the internet had thrown at them.