About

City Boy is a slang term used to describe men who don't let women stand in their way of money, success or living life how they want. The term originates from 2019's City Boy Summer trend and became popularized on TikTok in June 2022 through compilation videos where men are shown refusing women's advances, admitting to cheating on their girlfriends and acting in similarly "toxic" ways towards women.

Origin

City Boy Summer

The slang term "city boy" originates from City Boy Summer, a male-centric counterpart to Hot Girl Summer, though where Hot Girl Summer tends to celebrate female solidarity and good looks, City Boy Summer tends to focus on men acting mean-spiritedly towards women, particularly ones they are dating or seeing socially. Tweets about "City Boy Summer" began seeing spread starting around June 6th, 2019, after rapper Future announced a new album to be released on June 7th. Twitter users felt the music would provide a "city boy summer" alternative to Meghan Thee Stallion's song "Fever."

The slang term "city boy" was defined on Urban Dictionary^[1] on July 15th, 2019. The top-voted definition reads, "A male who is living his very best life and chasing the bag at all times without letting Hot Girls or any female get in the way." The term has been further popularized online by the Instagram^[2] page @cityboys, boasting over 1.2 million followers, which frequently posts content where men pwn or act coldly to women.

Spread

In June 2022, TikTokers began posting videos of men acting meant-spiritedly towards or brushing off women, including videos of men refusing women's advances and men admitting to cheating on women, to the hashtags "#cityboy" and "#cityboys." The videos often feature several reaction memes that show support for the men and portray them as "savages" at the ends of the video clips. For example, on June 20th, TikToker^[3] @thaboyzbible posted a video of a man in the gym refusing to take a woman's Snapchat name under both hashtags, gaining over 8.3 million views in a week (shown below).

On June 23rd, the TikTok^[4][5] account @cityboyyyyycityboyyy posted its first video, sharing a tweet about how Dr. Seuss' wife committed suicide after finding out he was cheating on her, adding the reaction clips, gaining over 1.3 million views in four days (shown below, left). On June 25th, the same TikToker posted a video of a woman talking about getting cheated on using the clips, gaining over 5 million views in two days (shown below, right).

Related Memes

City Boy! City Boy!

City Boy! City Boy! refers to a scene from Gravity Falls where Deputy Durland mockingly yells, "City boy! City boy!" at Dipper. The scene comes from a 2012 episode of the show and went viral as a reaction meme on TikTok in 2022 as a reference to the slang term "city boy."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References