Endless Thread - MEMES, Pt. 2: Scumbag Steve

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

If there is an OG meme in which a human is the star, Scumbag Steve is it. He spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011 as a universal representation of dudes who are the worst. And, like any person grappling with immediate internet fame, Blake Boston — the man behind Scumbag Steve — tried to capitalize: merch, rap songs, public appearances. But the full story of what happened to Blake — and his family — has never been told. The Scumbag Steve meme became a bargaining chip in a custody battle, a complicating factor in meeting his birth mother, the cause of fights with extended family members, a source of anxiety attacks, and an echo of trauma. In this episode, we go past the origin story of Scumbag Steve and learn about Blake’s real struggles with PTSD and abuse — and how trauma has brought him and his mother, Susan Boston, even closer. 

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Heads up, this episode briefly mentions the sexual assault of a minor. If you're concerned about hearing that, check out one of our other episodes. Okay, here's the show. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. When he pulls up the long driveway of his parents' house in the Boston suburb of Millis, Blake Boston, yes, that is his last name, appears to live up to our expectations. He gets out of his white Mercedes SUV, lights a Newport cigarette almost immediately,

and starts gesturing with a pointer finger on the same hand where he's fisting a large dunk in coffee with the ease of someone who is used to gesturing with a large dunk in their hand. Blake is gesturing into his mom's garage, where a small burgeoning forest of new marijuana plants are turning into teenagers with the help of large black felt pots. Pot in the pots. There's mom. Blake's immediately friendly, open, and fun.

He's got a thick golden beard, thick forearms covered in tattoos. Thank you. That's so nice to meet. We go around the back to enter the family home from the Immaculate Deck, and Blake's sons bound up. One asks if he can help us put our recording kit together. The other announces they're about to go save some tadpoles. Rescue tadpoles?

Is it an adult thing to do? Blake's mom, Susan, is not exactly a shrinking violet either. Why don't we go with me? Oh, you want to go here? What feels best for you? She and her son Blake and her grandsons seem clearly cut from the same cloth, even if technically they aren't. Today's interview is Susan's Mother's Day present. But first, she has some questions.

You're not going to make us look like assholes, right? No, that's up to you. No. You need to behave. No, the thing is you need to behave. You need to behave. Spoiler, nobody in this conversation is going to behave. Susan did try to make sure that at least Ben behaved as any mother would.

All right, don't spill your water on all this stuff. I'll try not to you. Emery and I are here trying not to spill the glasses of ice water that Susan gave us in a kitchen that is beautiful and full of flowers. And we're here with Susan and her son because Blake, after months of DMing with us, has agreed to do yet another interview about what happened to him.

He has done many interviews. My name is Blake Boston, aka Scumback Steve. Scumback Steve is a meat, so he's like a character. Me being a typical guy I was kind of hiding the hurt feelings with anger, and someone saw that and was like, oh, that dude looks like a scumbat. But not many with his mom, and not many where he's talked about some of the things that fill out the picture beyond the image his mom posted online that became a meme and turned into a years-long, obsessive, internet-induced anxiety attack for both of them.

Today, Blake and Susan Boston are going to talk more openly about what happened, an interview with public radio that is a bit of a departure from their usual Mother's Day routine. Is it true that for previous Mother's Days you used to ask Blake to steal some flowers? Is that true? Yes, it is. And I find that, you know, it's nature. I mean, okay, it is in somebody's yard, but, you know, you would think. It was like drive by. She literally drive me around.

So we lived in Medfield at the time. So we would literally drive around, what do you call this, North Fork County, I guess you'd call it. And there would be like five, six different towns. And by the time we were done, she'd have a bouquet of all different colored lilacs. Literally, probably if you bought it at the store, it'd be like a $300 bouquet because it was so large. I bought her flowers one time.

I bought her lilacs. And I was mad I gave him a silent treatment. I was like, this is something, this is a tradition that we need to do all the time. But he would get some, one guy chased us. And he's like, Mom, floor it. And I was like, I would be the driver. Yeah, that was the year I was on probation

and you made me do it. I was like, mom, You're going to get me arrested. Oh, all the time. This is, so I feel like you're already answering this question, but like, how would you describe your relationship to each other? I don't really like them. I don't even remember her name. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Blake and Susan finish each other's stories, each other's sentences, each other's jokes. You couldn't find two peas more in a pod. But a lot of close parent-child relationships are forged in the fires of trauma. And if you're lucky, the love and humor and struggle that can come after that trauma. So it also makes sense because Blake Boston and his mom have some trauma. Some of it unrelated to the meme. Some of it very related to the meme. Like sticks and stones to break your bones, but words have never hurt you.

But they do. Hi, I'm Susan Boston. And I live in Millis. Dogtown. No. All right. That's awful because somebody will listen to it. I never heard that turn.

Okay. Someone's like, there's that freaking Sue Boston over there talking trash. They're gonna call me in the stairs. Get down here, please. No, I'm Susan Boston and I live in Massachusetts. And I'm a mom and a grandmother and a wife. How about you, Blake, now that you can speak? Well, Cynthia asked.

My name is Blake Boston, aka. Boston, aka Scumbagg Steve, and I am a loving father, cooked by profession slash musician. And I'm just, you know, doing my thing, raising my kids, having a good time while doing it, you know. Don't forget your fiancé. That would have been a complete... Take two. I'm Scumbag Amory. I'm Scumbag Benny, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR. station. And today, we're talking to a true OG meme and his mom who talk a lot, sometimes at the same time. They did me so bad. They did me so dirty. Okay, whatever. They even at, even at, wait, I don't remember this one thing. This is why you don't do an interview with your mom. Okay, listen to me. Now, when we refer to Blake Boston, who conveniently happens to have that last name while sounding like this. Why make their hands? Why make their heads? jobs harder. Let's make this as smooth as possible. When we refer to him as an OG meme, it's because Scumbag Steve turned 10 this year,

which is like a century in internet years, and he's remained ubiquitous. In our last episode, we learned about Kilroy was here, a meme that physically made the rounds around the world during World War II. But Scumbag Steve was among the first modern-day memes, reaching all corners of the globe simultaneously, instantly, because the internet. And if some time during the last decade you have stumbled across the scumbag Steve photo, which you probably have, showing a random, teenage, rosy-cheeked kid wearing a crooked backwards baseball hat, a fur-trimmed coat, a gold chain, scraggly facial heron, and aloof stare, you've probably also seen some of the captions it has been given by strangers on the internet. Captions that are scumbaggish.

Things like pukes on something disappears. Can I borrow a dollar to snort this with? Pocket's dollar. Drive slowly in the left lane. Speeds up when you try to pass him. Grandpa gets surgery. Steals his pain meds. And if you've looked at that photo of Blake Boston

and thought some of those captions might be true, many things will surprise you over the course of this episode. Many things, but not everything. What was Blake like as a little kid? Well, as a little kid, he was horrible. He was... Blake was adopted as an infant. Note to everybody, do not conceive a baby in the back of a muscle car, because I'm the result.

Susan says Blake was a true mischief maker, hyperactive, predictably unpredictable, a riot and a parental panic attack all in one. I remember one time we went to the Boston home show, and I said to my parents, parents go to the other end because you could go in and go out. There's no way he'll get lost, but he wants to go through by himself. So he went through. I come around to the other side and my parents are looking. I'm like, where is he? Where is he? He freaking climbed out the window and started going beeline to where they were selling like candy. And I was, I thought he was gone. I was like, This is, he's the type of kid that I was at one point thinking of having a leash on him. Everywhere we went, he was the kid that everybody loved.

Everybody thought it was hysterical and caused me like just so much angst. You have no idea. But I adored him. Blake was a handful. And Susan brought in professional help pretty early on. Well, my first ever therapy session was after I got bitten the eye by a dog. Bit in the eye? Yeah.

He was identifying with the dog instead of the victim. So I had to take him to this therapist, his play therapist, because he was biting all the kids at the preschool. Blake was only four years old at the time. He had to have facial reconstructive surgery. But instead of becoming afraid of dogs as a result, Blake started acting like one around his classmates. Growling.

Growling. He was the dog. And so my brother-in-law had explained to me. Instead of punching people, I'd, like, claw at them, like, I was a freaking leopard. He said, in trauma with kids that age, he said, sometimes they're going to identify either as a victim, you know, and be afraid of dogs or whatever. Or they're rarely, but sometimes it does happen. They become the dog. And he became the dog.

Susan says therapy helped her son a lot. But as he got older, nothing could stop this teenage boy from being, well, a teenage boy. Oh, then forget about when I found out about jackass. I would literally, April Fool's was my day. I put jello in her toilet, saran-wrapped her toilet. I put a, it was so funny. I got her one day. I put it, obviously not used condom, but I put soap in it so it made it look used.

That's disgusting. That's too much. We did it. NPR! We did it. We did it. Don't feed. This became a common refrain throughout our conversation with Blake and Susan.

Every time her son said something outrageous, not safe for work, or for broadcast, Susan would yell. What do you think half those books? NPR! Do you not realize half the romance books out there are more traffic in the porno? Have you read those romance novels? We should admit, a four-year-old biting other school kids, covering your mother's toilet with saran wrap, this is real-life scumbag material, or at least future scumbag material,

right? But Susan, as you may have guessed from the whole Mother's Day flower-stealing ritual, she's pulled off some shenanigans of her own. You're forgetting the whole point where you dress up and put on a fake beard and all cold disguised so you could watch me perform. That was pretty funny.

She did that a lot of time. Blake has pretty much always wanted to be a musician. He started playing in bands in high school. And yes, one time, a friend of his helped sneak Susan into one of his shows so she could cheer him on without, you know, being the mom at the show.

He put a whole beard on me in a du rag. We saw that picture. And I was dressed in like these big things chain, like a big thing. And I was like walking in. He never even saw me until I had like, didn't I have a camera or something? I was on stage and I almost stopped rapping because I was like, aw. Susan has done many things out of love for Blake that have ended up being kind of mortifying for him. But the most mortifying of all is the reason the scumbag Steve meme exists.

You know, do we have to really like rub it in? The story goes like this. In 2006, around the time Blake was playing shows with his high school band, Susan was getting into photography. I thought it was so cool. Okay, I thought I was, and they would humor me because I'd use the same filter and I'd just do it blue, red, lightning coming through. And I'd be like, look at this.

And he'd like, good mom, keep at it, keep at it. While they're downstairs, probably making out with girls. We'd do it a lot more than this. What are they would be. wanted to support Blake's musical endeavors beyond just showing up to his shows in a beard. She thought he needed some promo photos. So one day,

as Blake is trying to leave the house, she snaps a picture of him in the doorway. He wasn't ready for it, but it was a pretty good shot, she thought. And I said to him, give me your MySpace. And he's like, Mom, I'm like, you've got to do all this stuff. You have to promote yourself. So he's like, gave me the thing. I'm putting the pictures up. Including a picture that would turn

Blake Boston into Scumbag Steve. But not for a while, which makes the origins of Scumbag Steve all the more mysterious. Susan posted the photo on Myspace in 2006, but it didn't take off as a meme until January 2011 when it popped off among Reddit users. Within days, someone had made a website scumbagsteve.com. Blake and Susan have no idea who started the meme. They barely knew what a meme was at the time. All I know is he keeps calling it. He goes, I'm a me, me, me. I'm like, it's not French, Blake.

I didn't know what the... Let's not talk about accents, because every time we go to Dunkin' Donuts, you and your quaffon. I know. Oh, he would always... A girl from school called Blake to tell him he was all over Reddit

and 4chan. Two sites he also wasn't familiar with, which made processing the meme and its prominence a little complicated. People would be like, oh, you're front page down Reddit again this, week. I'd be like, so. But then there were, there'll be other people, like, we'd go to your mom's house,

and then there would be your sister, like a distant cousin, not your sister, but a distant cousin saying, oh, I don't think he should come. He's been stealing Pac-Man. Payment. And I'm like, first of all, I've never blown coke a day in my life. You know what I mean? I don't do hot drugs. I smoke weeds, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol. I've taken mushrooms, like, twice. But they didn't. They couldn't decipher. But I don't do hot drugs. So this was because someone had put a caption on the picture that had to do with like stealing drugs. But one of the things that I will tell you is that when we used to go up,

go on the internet and we'd see them, we would be in hysterics. Oh, yeah. Totally hysterics. Until then, every once in a while, then we'd look at each other and say, oh, whoa,

whoa, whoa. So do you remember any of the captions that you thought were funny? Oh, what the hell was it? Stills your keys, spends 20 minutes helping you look for them. Oh, sleeps on your couch,

steals all the change inside the cushions. Did any of these resonate with you? The lighter one did. A couple of them did. I still do that now because I'll go on a night of drinking and I'll go out with one lighter and I'll wake up the next morning with three. I don't even mean to me as what's called an advice animal meme. Basically, their close-up pictures of animals and humans

with basic captions on them suggest. a certain character archetype. But over time, iterations of the silly stuff started to get pretty upsetting, captions that had to do with mistreating and taking advantage of women, which Blake and Susan say isn't him. Those hurt. Those were horrible.

I don't like those. There's a certain line you don't cross. But Blake had no control over when the line was crossed, who was crossing it, and who was seeing all of these means. And if the line between Blake Boston and Scumbag Steve was getting blurry for even his family members, who thought he might be stealing pain meds because of a caption online? What did the rest of the world think of him?

You know, I'd go try to go on dates, and then girls wouldn't want to date me because they'd be like, oh, well, you're just going to try to have sex with my best friend. And I'm like, what are you talking about? This is our first date. Yeah, a lot of people could not... They could not separate it. They couldn't remember?

No, I lost a lot of my high school friends around this area. Huh. And a lot of them stopped talking. talking to me and, you know, thought that I was that person. Wow. Susan went full mama bear. Just like she'd done at Blake's shows in high school, she wanted to cheerlead for her son.

So she waded in to the various online forums where a scumbag Steve was circulating to try to set the record straight. I was new to everything, okay, had no knowledge of the internet, no knowledge of Reddit, and I literally thought that I could rescue his record. rescue his reputation. And I was on there all night. I'd be writing something in that. I'd sign in as Blake Boston's real mom or something like that.

And they'd say, hi, Blake. What are you trying to do? Or like, and I... They just assumed it was him... Oh, yeah, trying to... Susan's attempts to defend Blake, heartfelt as they were, were, of course, futile. And really, she never had a chance.

Because Blake's random, unknown face didn't just go viral. Going viral is brief. Everybody talks about it for a day and then mostly never again. But as any internet cat knows, memes can have nine lives, nine thousand lives, nine million lives. And suddenly, Blake had been catapulted not just into a new level of recognition, but into a new identity as a scumbag. And if you have seen this thing, you have to admit the image is perfect. You have to admit, the image is perfect. you immediately want to caption it yourself. It is an amazing canvas upon which to let loose your own ridicule of scumbaggery. It became so iconic that it inspired spin-offs.

His backwards hat, just the hat, could be placed on any image to denote shady activity. Someone stuck it on a map of the U.S. to criticize Guantanamo, for instance. And unlike most of the other memes from the advice animal genre, Scumbag Steve is alive and well. Remember our meme chorus, the group of experts we talk to about memes more generally? Well, as the meme chorus explains, the most iconic memes are the ones that perfectly, uniquely, instantly capture an intangible idea. In this case, scumbag. The main innovation is they're very immediate.

They're really ways in which we structure and then create a shorthand for a whole whole. set of ideas. If you want to convey a certain message online, you know that you can use a certain meme and people will get it. So here's Blake, in his early 20s with his whole life seemingly ahead of him, and all of a sudden, he's a scumbag in the eyes of just about everyone. His options were limited at this point, but if he couldn't discard the scumbag Steve label, he could lean into it. Not unlike the dog attack from when he was young, instead of becoming the victim, Blake became the thing you'd think he'd shy away from. Susan watched him become the dog all over again.

And he'd like go to these performances acting like a complete asshole. Oh yeah, New York City walking down the street, punching limos while they're driving by, they beep at me because I'm jaywalking and I'll just punch the limo. Yeah, I mean, thinking that was my job because I was there as scumbags to Steve. And I'd be like, but it's not you. And he's like, Mom, I got to either go with this or not. And for a while, Blake went with it. He thought it might be good for his music career.

He posted music videos on YouTube that seemed to fully embrace the identity the internet had given him. Who's been smoking up all your weed? Scumback Steve, Scumback Steve. And who keeps ripping out your girlfriend's weave? Scumback Steve, Scumback Steve. Who showed up and drank all your beer? Scumback Steve, scumback Steve. And how'd you get puke on your brand new gear?

Oh, yeah, that's me. The party's going on. Doors did open for Blake. He got to perform at South by Southwest in 2013. He was invited to internet conventions like RaffleCon where he was received like a celebrity. He appeared on WWE. But there were doors threatening to close, too.

When the meme blew up, Susan was in the process of contacting Blake's birth mother, whom he had never met but always wanted to. Blake had always struggled. with what he calls a void in his heart, a question for his birth mother. Why didn't you want me? Susan had tried to raise someone Blake's birth mother

would be proud of. And then, all of a sudden, right when they were reaching out to introduce Blake to his birth mother, he'd become internationally known as a scumbag. Would she even answer their messages now? I was crestfallen. I was like, they're going to think,

her whole family, the embarrassment actually of it, and that being not who he is at all, But how do you explain something like that? I didn't know if they knew what a meme was. I mean, we certainly did it. You know, there were so many things that were built into that. Including the fact that Blake himself was a parent now. And his alter ego, scumbag, Steve, just happened to be spreading in the middle of a custody battle with the mother of his children.

More or less, her angle was, oh, yeah, he's a scumbag and he's outdoing all these crazy drugs and this and that. Where it's not the case, you know. Like I said before, like, I don't use drugs, really. You know, marijuana, but I don't really consider that a drug. Okay, enough for the marijuana. You know? So it's like, here it is. And, like, that kind of messes with me, too.

Because, like, I've tried always hard to stay away from crap like that. Because, you know, I've not personally dealt with addiction, but, like, a lot of my friends have. And I've lost some friends because of addiction. So, like, that alone just kind of touches me the wrong way. And you have a limited amount of time to stand in front of a judge to say who you are and how you can be a great parent. and why it's right for your children to be with you. And if you can imagine the fear of going in there

and thinking that limited amount of time is when somebody holds up his picture with all these sayings on them over and over and over again or here. Go on Google, Google his name. There's 7 million, over 7 million memes of him. So how do you explain that to somebody that's not you know, aware of what a meme is and when it was so vital to his character and in his life.

I knew that if this went that far and he ended up losing his children over a meme, I don't know how we would have come back from that. It's pretty unusual for the father instead of the mother to end up with custody of kids in a divorce. And neither Blake nor Susan want to talk very much about what happened and why. They're still afraid of what might happen. Apparently, there was a whole reality show following Blake and his family around that MTV shot and piloted. And Blake's ex, the mother of his boys, got that project deep-sixed. But what we can say is that Blake has had full custody of his boys for six years now.

And he credits them for helping him get through some darker moments, some of which have been brought on by the meme, times when the world's vision of who Blake was felt suffocating. which he will admit, even while in the same breath, he's almost trying to brush it off. There are times where, you know, I'd get a little too drunk because of it, and then I'd freak out and, like, scream at the top of my lungs or, like, throw a little hissy fit. But there have been other low moments, brought on by something else entirely. Where, you know, I'd be sitting in the house and I'll go through a little mental episode

where I just become, like, really exhausted or just, like, get really sad for no reason. And, like, randomly my kids hug me from time to time, just, like, come up and say, Daddy, I love you, or you're the best father. So it, like, snaps me out like that. So I just also hold on to that stuff, too. That's part of PTSD. Yeah. This something else entirely is something fans of the meme have no idea about.

Something that he's finally starting to talk about with his mom, the person closest to him. So I called her at, like, two in the morning one morning, and I was like, I got to tell you something. And I was like, do you remember way back in the day? And she was like, Blake, I already know. And she started crying. And I started crying. More in a few. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully, make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions,

the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. Creative Studio. I'll admit that I don't know exactly how to ask this.

So I might be insensitive. I might tumble over my words here. I'm offended. But it seems... I am too. Good, good. If that's where we're starting from, we're in a good place. Oh, God. Oh, God.

No, I'm... There's a reason I'm tripping over myself here. Every once in a while, in an interview, you're hit with something you didn't see coming. Something that tints the lens through which you see a person's story. Ben and I had already spent an hour and a half with Blake and his mom, Susan, when he told us that for many more years than he's dealt with being a meme, he suffered from PTSD. So I was molested at two different points in my life, once when I was about five,

and once when I was about 15, 14. Wow. An employee. Or a boss. Boss, yeah. Groomdom. We're not mentioning names. We're not mentioning where I worked.

We're not mentioning any of that. And when you were five, that was someone else. That was the rate of so my mom took me to Home Depot and it was the first time I ever went to the bathroom by myself and I was all proud. And some freaking knucklehead walked in after me and yeah, it's pretty bad. But I lied about it too because I didn't want anybody to know what happened. Yeah. So he got away with it. Well, he didn't really.

I mean, he did get away with him. They caught him. But when they asked me if he did anything to me, I said no. Well, you were a little kid and that was awful. Yeah. Oh, man. Blake didn't tell his mom about what happened to him at his high school job until about six years ago when he was 25.

It was right after I got full custody of both my kids, I started having really bad night terrors about exactly what happened. And sometimes it was the first time, sometimes it was the second. But I would feel everything that was happening like it was happening in that time. When he became a parent, when I became a parent, like full-time parent, I guess, instead of, you know, half and half. So he called Susan in the middle of the night, and confirmed what she had had an inkling about,

even though she didn't know what was going on at the time. Something was up. I just felt it in my gut. When I'm 15 years old and after we're closed, he's buying everybody beers, and we're smoking cigarettes inside the restaurant, and we're all getting drunk and having, like, weird-ass stuff. I don't know. Yeah, and I'd be like...

We all thought it was cool because we're under age. Here he is. He's, like, rolling joints for everybody who smoked weed and, like, we're taking shots, and, like, we all thought we were cool because we were hanging out with an older guy. And he was grooming him. So back to the question I was having a hard time articulating.

It seems like this whole scumbag Steve thing, like you said, you can't control the internet. So this just feels like something that was out of your control. And as a mother, when you feel like something is happening that is out of your control and you don't know, you're trying and trying and trying to protect your son, but you don't know how to protect your son. And it sounds like this wasn't the first time that something. bad had happened to your son. Yeah. Where you don't know how to protect, you don't, you don't know what to do for him. Right.

And you've got to understand that, you know, when he had that situation happen, which I just say, the molestation. Just say it. I know, you're right. He, which is really good, like that you can say it just like that. It took me 25 years. Okay. But when he, so that, you know, was that a trigger?

You know, having had that prior experience? probably and so and honestly that's where my husband was so good because he'd be like this is this that was that okay you trying to protect your son so diligently is not going to change the past and it's not the same thing you can't give it the same weight so yeah was it blurred yeah but it was blurred in some regards and maybe that's why I was so trying to correct it But, you know, I don't know. Maybe I've never really actually thought about it in those terms, whether it was multi-layered and triggers from before.

Could have been. Do you think it was? Probably. Probably had a lot to do with it. Yeah, I never even thought of that, really. Part of the reason we wanted to talk to Blake and his mom together is because at least when it came to the meme, scumbag Steve, it wasn't just Blake's reputation that was being drag.

I was challenged as a mother. Like, am I not doing the right thing? And that was something I prided myself on, that I, that, you know, our relationship. And it was like, you're telling me I didn't protect my son now? It seemed like everyone in Susan's life had an opinion about how she was handling things. And she wasn't always sure when and how to try to shut them all up. But I feel like eventually you kind of took my side of, or my way of thinking about it, where it's like, you know, you can say anything you want to, but that doesn't make it true.

So if you really want to feel that way, then I just won't talk to you anymore. And she's said that to people. If you really think this is how I raised my son, then don't call me again. Yeah. I can't do it with everybody. Sounds like he was lucky to have you. Well, I was lucky to have him in that regard, too, because you, you know, he'd, like, I'd be looking at it. And I'd go, oh, God, look at this one.

This kid said that you did this. And I'd be, like, writing on Nine gag and read it like an idiot. No, he isn't. I'm his mother. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, Bob, you're here again. You're full of shit. And he'd be like, Mom, go with it. Just laughing out.

Remember? I'll say, okay, I'll try. A through-and-through scumbag wouldn't help his mom process anxiety like this. So, yeah, Blake Boston, especially if you know scumbag Steve, is not really who you would expect him to be. It took a while for Blake to get to this point. Years of therapy, friends lost, a reputation compromised, all because strangers online found a picture on MySpace

and decided he was Scumbag Steve. Do you wish that you weren't? No. I love it. Now I love it. But it's cool because now I'm on cameo, so I do cameos from time to time and, you know, starting a new band, so I'm going to hopefully piggyback of a little bit of Scumbag Steve

to get a little bit of buzz for the band. So there's a lot of positive things going on. I guess because of it. Earlier this year, Blake was able to cash in on his online alter ego in a way that never would have been possible when the meme came out 10 years ago. He sold the OG MySpace scumbag photo as an NFT, aka a non-fundable token, aka he just doesn't own the original image anymore. The transaction was in cryptocurrency, 30 Ethereum, which at the time we're recording this,

is hovering at around $100,000 in worth. Not bad for a picture he never asked to be taken and one that had potential to take his kids away at one point. And then, you know, I still have the hat and I'll just throw it on from time to time and I'll, like, walk outside to take the trash out in my apartment complex, and everyone's like... You get recognized still today?

More or less when I'm in character. Like, if I, you know, I also have my own t-shirt that has class at noon sleeps till 4 p.m. with my picture on it. I'll wear that sometimes. And it's funny. Blake has a level of clarity and agency over his memehood now that he didn't have before. He gets to decide when he wants to embrace scumbag Steve

and when he just wants to be Blake. And maybe more importantly to him now, just dad. Honestly, my kids, they kept me straight. I still carry, you know, newborn pictures of my sons in my wallet, so I'll pull that out. Because that makes sure, that's where you know who you are. When you're a father or a parent, he knows who he is for his children. You know, and that's stronger than any mean.

Definitely. Susan's kid kept her straight, too, as she and Blake rode out the scumbag storm together. He booed her with the same realization that buoyed him. People are going to say what they want to say about you. You can't change the way other people, especially if people are bullies, naturally bullies. You can't change what they do. You can change your mind state. See, that's what...

It's like Tai Chi, man. I got all that figured out. Yeah. No, seriously. That kind of mind frame, because I could not take away being, you know, a mother within the mean situation.

There wasn't, but he did it for me. He separated it. And that was a lot to expect from somebody that was being called Scumback Steve worldwide to expect him to be there for me.

So I love you and thank you. Thank you. Well, let's not get no mushy now. Okay, we'll cry. Next up, the bait and switch meme at the center of a billion YouTube views, countless email link jokes, and a song that might just have special musical powers. And the guy who claims to have started it all. I have documented evidence of me doing it as a prank months before it became a thing.

We'll roll that into your feed in a week. Endless thread is a production. of WBUR in Boston. You should 100% be joining our email list if you want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, pictures of My Bunny, or Ben's Dungeons and Dragons characters. Do that by going to wbUR.org slash endless thread. Also, we really, really, really, really want to know your nomination for the best or most real or most underrated meme.

Call us 857-244-0-3-3-3-3-3-3-7-4-4-0-3. That is 857-2440338. We look forward to hearing your meme ideas. Or you can record a voice memo, actually, and send it to Endless Thread at WBUR.org. We might just dive into the meme you tell us about, and we might use your voicemail in the show. Our meme series would be very hello fellow kids without the help of our meme chorus. The singers in that chorus? Joan Donovan is research director at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center. Sarah Laola teaches about digital culture and design at Coastal Carolina University. Gianluca Strangini studies online security, disinformation, and hate speech at Boston University. Amanda Brennan has the extremely cool title of Internet Librarian. Kenyatta Cheese co-founded the site Know Your Meme, and Don Caldwell is editor-in-chief.

Please go find their work and benefit from their meme genius. Our series and our show is made by producers Nora Sacks and Dean Russell. We are co-hosted by myself, Amory Severson. And myself, Ben Brock Johnson. This episode was edited by Maureen McMurray. Mixing and sound design by Paul Vicus. Original music composed for this episode also by Paul Vicus. Special thanks to an additional production work from Josh Swartz, Grace Tatter, Frank Hernandez,

Kristen Torres, Sophie Codner, and Rachel Carlson. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and the international fruit basket. What is that? You know, that's the world that we're living in, the international fruit basket. That's us. Okay. All right.

If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet or the international food basket that you want to tell us about, hit us up email endless thread at wb ur.org stay cool forever call her crying and like this is how close we are as a relationship I'm like mom mom my penis isn't working she stops crying she hangs up on me and calls the doctor she calls me that he calls me back she's like don't ever take that shit again