is waif
THE RISE OF THE E-BOY
When I was twelve I signed up for my first Tumblr account. I had no idea what the website was or what you did on it, but, the things I found expanded my middle school mind and idea of style as I scrolled through images of girls with black side- swept bangs, Kandi bracelets, heavy winged eyeliner, and graphic t-shirts. Next thing I knew, I would be searching “My Chemical Romance emo playlist” on YouTube and begging my mom to let me go shopping at Hot Topic for t-shirts of bands I barely listened to. For me, social media shaped and encouraged my wanna-be emo phase, the “it” trend of the time. The popular people on those sites, who I looked up to and wanted to be like, all followed the trend, so I followed suit.
Now, much older than twelve, as I shamelessly scroll through the app TikTok, I see a new fashion trend/lifestyle appearing. It’s reminiscent of the emo style I worshipped as a preteen, but slightly different. Instead of boys and girls donning bangs that almost completely covered half their face and are held in place by copious amounts of hairspray, these girls and guys have an almost lighter, yet just as edgy look.
"I had already embarrassed/ exposed myself for being an avid TikTok watcher enough to my e-boy friends who do not identify as an e-boy. I needed to talk directly to a real one."
It’s called being a “e-boy” or “e-girl.” TikTok is to being a e-boy/girl as Tumblr was to being emo/scene; it was the birthplace and uprising point of the fashion trend/counter culture.
TikTok is an app originally started, so it seems, to be a voice over/mini music video maker; users can create videos of themselves with their original audio, another user’s audio, or a song in the background. Many consider it the replacement to the Vine app. As I scroll through my “For You” page a plethora of videos featuring mainly e-boys fill my page. For those not hip to TikTok terminology, the For You page acts as your homepage where the most popular videos appear alongside videos the app’s algorithm believes you’ll enjoy. Typically, these boys have middle-parted dark hair, wear layers upon layers of black vintage- looking clothing, and accessorize with chain necklaces and wallet chains.
In contrast to the emo trend, it seems like one can’t buy the clothing for the part at just any store. Whereas when I, and plenty of other young teens, were attempting to be emo in 2012, it was a simple stop at HotTopic for band tees, dark pants, and plastic bracelets.
Yes, in my research, e-boys/girls have a similar formula to the outfits they wear on the daily; the trend encourages people to find their own originality. Instead of buying chain necklaces online, plenty of e-boys have created TikToks explaining how to DIY your own lock and chain necklace. Users on the site also create videos of “e- clothing” they thrifted, curating their own one-of-a-kind look. It’s a trend where, at the end of the day, everyone is attempting to possess the same vibe/ uniform style, but teens find their own less commercial route to getting there. Emo was all about commercial, despite being a counter culture. After all, half of the appearance involved wearing bands’ graphic t-shirts and using strictly Manic Panic hair dye.
Being an e-boy/girl is something that has begun to transcend just the TikTok app. As I walk around my school’s campus, I see and personally know plenty of guys who could fit the “e-boy” style description. However, the few times I’ve discussed their fashion expression with them and labeled them with the TikTok term, they’re confused. They’ve never heard that word before and were simply dressing as themselves. Although, to be noted many of these guys rarely shop at “fast fashion” stores and primarily shop at vintage and thrift stores (which does follow, unbeknownst to them, the e-boy trend.). Beyond that, I suppose the only similarity between these people are their (sometimes) slightly pretentious nature and weird choice in cigarettes. Just because they all dress similarly does not reflect a uniform personality, as the “e-boys” I know in real life are starkly different people.
Even beyond real life, as I dive into other realms of social media, like my Instagram Explore page, I am bombarded with images of e-boys and e-girls alike. Many of them have tens of thousands of instagram followers despite not being musicians or models or even YouTubers. This leads me to believe that their followings come from their participation in the e-boy/girl trend. The influence of the popularity of e-boy/girls on instagram has definitely crept into the posting of people from my hometown. The few high school sophomores I follow all post instagram photos with a similar editing style and vibe as the famous “e” influencers whose accounts I checked out. Further solidifying in my mind that being an e-girl/ boy is the “it” trend right now, the people who fall into the niche are considered some of the most popular and attractive online at the moment. It’s no wonder that younger people want their social media to emulate the style of theirs in hopes of the same attention and, dare I say, clout. High schoolers look up to these influencers and think they’re cool; everyone at least subconsciously makes attempts to be like those they idolize. Or maybe they simply think the e-boy/girl style is cool. I personally respect the creativity beyond the style, but am not drawn to be like the users at the forefront of the trend, so I don’t know the teenage rationale behind being an e-girl for sure.
Either way, I wanted to understand it better. I wanted to know how exactly this trend began and if it truly was birthed from the depths of TikTok, or maybe this is just a branch of emo I missed out on. So I turned back to instagram in hopes to find someone who understood firsthand its rise. Thanks to the Instagram search function I was able to search “TikTok eboys” and find the account @daily.eboys which repost TikToks of users on the app who present as e- boys. I trusted this Instagram account’s judgment with the rest of my journalistic career as I, like a mad man, emailed its featured users. I had already embarrassed/ exposed myself for being an avid TikTok watcher enough to my e-boy friends who do not identify as an e-boy. I needed to talk directly to a real one.
Thankfully, I got in contact with Jorge Garay who agreed to fill me in and educate me on the uprising of the TikTok e-boy trend from the eyes of a creator on the app. As I’m writing this, Jorge’s TikTok @jeyejeygardi (which is also his Instagram handle) has almost 950k followers with many of his videos being TikTok “viral.” He appears to fit into some vein of the e-boy trend and agreed to answer a few of my questions about his personal style and the “e” culture on TikTok.
Me: What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your TikTok background?
Jorge: My name is Jorge Garay, also known as JeyJey Gardi (@jeyjeygardi on Tiktok), I’m from Barcelona, Spain. And I started uploading videos to Tiktok in October of 2018, but it wasn’t until February 2019 when I started getting noticed.
Me: How would you define your own personal style?
Jorge: My style is more based in a mixture of different styles that I mostly see online (principally on TikTok). I wouldn’t like to define my style by a category, but if I had to I would define myself into a soft boi or a soft e-boy.
Me: What influences did you have in creating this style?
Jorge: I started really using this style with the "soft season” (that started in march 2019) in TikTok where most e-boys started to change their looks to a more summer season. I was one of the first in incorporating that style but that style was not mine. I got inspired, like many others, by Blake (also known as @weirdfl3x in his social media). He is the one who started the movement "soft boi” and its a different movement to the e-boy one (with some similarities) in that it’s also very popular on Tiktok. So basically, Blake created the movement, but like every trend on the app, I think everyone gets a little bit inspired by others, so I think I got inspired by the different styles lot of other people on the app.
Me: Would you label yourself as someone who falls into the category of e-boy?
Jorge: I know, outside TikTok, the meaning of e-boy is often related to internet-boy or f-boy or similars and that that applies to almost every boy on social media. For the majority of my fans of TikTok, I am not seen as an e-boy, I am often more related to the term ‘soft boi,’ but outside the app, I know there’s people who call me an e-boy and I don’t have any trouble with that. I personally would not consider myself an e- boy, I would rather prefer the term soft boi, even though I don’t think I would consider myself in any specific category.
Me: What stylistic attributes do you think are necessary to be considered an e-boy/e-girl?
Jorge: The style of e-boys and e- girls have been changing with the app. At first it all started with e- girls also related with "thot internet girls,” but it changed quickly, and from a meme passed to a style almost every girl used that consisted in layering (shirts over long shirts), black hearts in the face, blush and dark clothes and a lot of compliments in general. Then started appearing the term e-boys, they almost used the same style (layering and dark colors) and they added chains and a more darker and edgy part to the movement. Now, lately, with the soft movement there’s the also the same style, but now with more soft colors, even tho there’s people who continue with the first idea. So I guess it’s more into the choice of to the person.
Me: What do you think about the e-boy trend currently on the rise via apps like Tik Tok? Do you think it’s really a mass trend or more-so a niche style gaining popularity because of the app?
Jorge: From my point of view, I think this is mostly positive and that it’s helping people to create their unique style from what they see and what they like, and I think Tiktok it’s helping blow up all the creative ideas of people, and I think TikTok is the perfect [avenue] for this movement and others because it encourages creativity and originality inside the app. At first, it started as a style inside TikTok and may be inspired by other styles, but right now it’s really starting to be a massive trend, and not just on Tiktok (it was already) but also outside the app like for example on Instagram. So I really believe it’s already a mass trend and a movement that has started something new.
So, I guess at the end of the day being an e-boy/girl is somewhat of a trend, but is mainly an encouragement for boys and girls online to find new ways to express themselves through the use of fashion. TikTok is simply the starting platform for the e movement just like sites like Tumblr helped propel scene/emo culture for me. And if that’s not a beautiful thing I don’t know what is.
A big thank you again to Jorge for agreeing to answer my inquiries about being an e-boy and I can only hope that karma and the readers of this piece can repay him by helping him get to one million on TikTok: @jeyjeygardi