City Boy Summer

About

City Boy Summer, also known as "Hot Boy Summer* is 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.

Origin

City Boy Summer was launched in response to "Hot Girl Summer" launched by Meghan Thee Stallion. 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." For example, Twitter user @GatorPA_^[1] tweeted in anticipation of Future's album, saying it would make summer 2019 a "City Boy Summer" (shown below).

The movement may be in response to a song called "Act Up" by the group City Girls, which features lyrics about seeing men essentially for money and challenging those who "act up" around them.^[2] On July 6th, 2019, Urban Dictionary user Roxayyyy^[3] posted a definition for the term that referenced the girl group, calling it "an alternative for the term that girls use “city girl summer” referencing to the girl group ‘city girls’. Meaning having a good time/partying."

Spread

While Urban Dictionary defines the term using the "good time/partying," in practice, City Boy Summer began to take on a mean-spirited connotation, as it was used to celebrate examples of men one-upping women. For example, after the song "Act Up" grew popular, it inspired remixes in which men rapped over the beat, flipping the gender of the song and insulting women. On July 7th, 2019, Twitter user @MoBambaSon posted a video set to one of those remixes, calling it the "City Boy Summer Anthem," gaining over 500 retweets and 1,000 likes (shown below).

Other examples of popular tweets using the phrase showed examples of men pulling pranks or acting meanly towards women. On July 7th, 2019, Twitter user @LocDoutWeeD35th^[4] tweeted a text screenshot of a man ordering pizza for his girlfriend to her office but making her pay for it, captioning it "CityBoyz for the win again #CityBoyz" (shown below, left). Twitter user @HoesWnt_MOORE^[5] tweeted a reaction image in which a man looks happily at an Uber he called and cancelled on a woman he hooked up with, giving it the hashtag "#CityBoyz" (shown below, right).

There is also an element of "scoring" in the meme, as if City Boy Summer was in competition with Hot Girl Summer. Examples of this include a tweet by @SeepinCJ^[8] and @KrisRokkk^[9] (shown below). The spread of the phrase was covered by Daily Dot^[6] and StayHipp.^[7]

Others have used "Hot Boy Summer" in a more joking way.^[10] For example, user @SorryMomDotGov posted several pictures of Bobby Hill from King of the Hill, gaining over 9,000 retweets and 24,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @thelifeoflogn posted a picture of Hulk Hogan DJ-ing with the phrase (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References