What is White Boy Summer?

White Boy Summer is a mock seasonal catchphrase, started by rapper Chet Hanks in March 2021, that parallels Megan Thee Stallion's Hot Girl Summer but was mostly treated online as a punchline rather than a sincere movement.

Where did White Boy Summer come from?

Chet Hanks launched the phrase in an Instagram video on March 26th, 2021, saying he felt the coming summer was going to be a White Boy Summer and naming Jon B and Jack Harlow as the vibe.

What does White Boy Summer mean?

Hanks pitched it as a style guide for white men, with Instagram Stories banning plaid shirts, Sperry Top-Siders, salmon-colored clothing and calling women smokeshows.

How do you use White Boy Summer?

People typically use the phrase to joke about white male fashion stereotypes or to nominate an unlikely celebrity, from David Lynch to Larry David, as a mascot for the season.

Is White Boy Summer still popular?

Hanks revived the phrase on May 20th, 2024 with a new Instagram post, and a $WBS memecoin keeps the tag circulating in crypto corners of X.

Chet Hanks is a rapper and the son of actor Tom Hanks, known for a Jamaican accent he debuted at the 2020 Golden Globes and for past controversies around his use of a racial slur.

Why did people mock White Boy Summer?

Writers at The Cut and other outlets argued that white men did not need a liberation anthem like Hot Girl Summer, and Hanks's own baggage made the pitch feel threatening to many readers.

What were the official White Boy Summer rules?

On Instagram Stories, Hanks banned plaid shirts, Sperry Top-Siders, anything salmon-colored and the word smokeshow, telling guys to wear plain black or white tees with Vans or Chuck Taylors.

Is there a White Boy Summer memecoin?

A $WBS token began trading on April 19th, 2024 and sat near a $14 million market cap by late May 2024, promoted with Hyperborea-style edits on X.

How did Hot Girl Summer influence White Boy Summer?

Hot Girl Summer, coined by Megan Thee Stallion in 2019, created the template of a seasonal vibe anthem, and Hanks explicitly pitched WBS as a male counterpart to it.

White Boy Summer

2021catchphrasesemi-active

Published October 21, 2026

White Boy Summer is a mock seasonal catchphrase launched by Chet Hanks, the rapper son of Tom Hanks, in a March 26th, 2021 Instagram video declaring the coming summer belonged to a specific style of white guy. The joke blew up overnight, with Twitter users countering his pitch with photos of David Lynch, Larry David and Glenn Howerton as mascots. By May 2024 Hanks was declaring another WBS, and a $WBS memecoin was trading alongside Hyperborea-tinged edits on X.

catchphrase memes celebrity backlash memes snowclone memes seasonal memes race and identity memes

Overview

The joke works on two layers. Chet Hanks pitched White Boy Summer as a sincere call for a seasonal vibe, modeled on Megan Thee Stallion's Hot Girl Summer, but his delivery, including a Jamaican accent he had revived at the 2020 Golden Globes, read as self-parody to most viewers1. Audiences treated the phrase as a punchline rather than a movement, and the typical post took one of two forms, either mocking the suggestion that white men needed liberation or riffing on cliches of American white male fashion like plaid shirts, salmon shorts and boat shoes2.

Follow-up posts gave the meme a rulebook to parody. On Instagram Stories, Hanks laid out specific regulations for his summer, banning plaid shirts because wearers would look like a picnic table, banning Sperry Top-Siders in favor of Vans or Chuck Taylors, and banning the word smokeshow as a descriptor for women3. Writers at The Cut noted that the fashion advice itself was not bad, but Hanks's history of controversies, including his repeated use of a racial slur, loaded the pitch with a different meaning than Hot Girl Summer carried1.

Typical fan posts cast an unlikely celebrity as the real face of WBS. Users circulated photos of Larry David in a Revolutionary War costume, Glenn Howerton paired with Christina Hendricks on a vision board, and director David Lynch with Hanks's words pasted on as a chyron4. The pattern reframed the meme into a game of nominating alternative, often absurd, patron saints for the season.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Instagram (origin) / Twitter (viral spread)

Creator

Chet Hanks

Date

2021

Chet Hanks uploaded the originating video to his Instagram account on March 26th, 2021, telling followers he had a feeling that the coming summer was about to be a White Boy Summer4. He drew a line between the kind of white he meant and the kind he did not, naming Jon B and Jack Harlow as reference points and explicitly ruling out Trump and NASCAR-type white1. The post gathered more than 330,000 views and 57,000 likes within three days, according to Know Your Meme's tally2.

The clip left Instagram almost immediately. Twitter user @KaraBTweets reposted the video the same day, and that upload hit roughly 4.9 million views, 94,000 likes and 24,000 retweets inside three days2. Hanks followed with Instagram Stories spelling out rules and regulations, a sequel that Twitter user @neurotard mirrored to the platform where it drew 2.4 million views in under 24 hours2. PopBuzz framed the whole launch, including Hanks's e-commerce tie-in, as a bid to make White Boy Summer the counterpart to Hot Girl Summer3.

How It Spread

Within a day of the original clip, Twitter users were workshopping what a White Boy Summer would actually look like. On March 27th, 2021, user @itsthereal posted a TikTok of a white guy performing a Michael Jackson routine to Smooth Criminal, flipping Hanks's pitch into a running bit about who the real mascots should be2. User @DylanTop5 posted a still of Hanks and Larry David in Revolutionary War costumes from the set of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which drew more than 29,000 likes and 2,300 retweets in under two days5.

Casting-call style posts carried the format further. Twitter user @gaysex420 posted a photo of Glenn Howerton and Christina Hendricks with the caption putting this on my vision board for white boy summer, picking up more than 13,000 likes6. User @jacob__posts shared a David Lynch photo with Hanks's words set as a chyron, hitting more than 9,000 likes inside a day7. Mainstream outlets including The Cut, The Daily Dot, PopBuzz and BET covered the rollout within the week, with The Cut calling the proposition a distinctly threatening aura rather than a vibe1 8.

Hanks revived the catchphrase on May 20th, 2024, posting to Instagram that he had seen his shadow and that 2024 would be another WBS, a riff on American groundhog folklore9. Alongside Hanks's return, a $WBS memecoin that began trading on April 19th, 2024 took on new life, holding a market cap near $14 million with roughly a billion tokens in circulation when Hanks posted2. Some of the promo edits for the coin, including one by X user @thuleluca combining meme footage with cars and weaponry, were tied to the Hyperborea esoteric and white supremacist edit tradition, pulling a joke seasonal catchphrase into a stranger corner of the internet10.

Timeline

2021-03-26

Chet Hanks posts the original White Boy Summer video to Instagram, naming Jon B and Jack Harlow as the reference points.

2021-03-26

Twitter user @KaraBTweets reposts the clip, which hits roughly 4.9 million views in three days.

2021-03-27

Hanks shares Instagram Stories with WBS rules, including no plaid shirts and no Sperry Top-Siders.

2021-03-27

Twitter users like @DylanTop5, @gaysex420 and @jacob__posts recast Larry David, Glenn Howerton and David Lynch as alternative WBS mascots.

2021-03-28

The Cut, BET, PopBuzz and The Daily Dot publish stories on the catchphrase and the backlash.

2024-04-19