Explaining the UK's 'TikTok Fuccbois'

You're three dates in with a Hot Guy – so hot, you don’t even have to tell your mates “he looks better in person”. He's invited you round for dinner and everything's going great. The food is palatable and he won't stop complimenting you. You're mid-way through eating when he says he just needs to go to the toilet. After about ten minutes, you start wondering what's taking so long. Wait… why can you hear Popp Hunna’s “Adderall” playing through the wall?

Getting up to investigate, you find him in the hallway. Oblivious to your presence, he’s dancing and recording himself on his phone, lip-syncing and gently making love to his camera. Suddenly, it all makes sense. This guy, who seemed OK – normal, even! – is a TikTok fuckboi. And you? You will never come before “the fans”.

The love-child of the softboi and the E-boy, the TikTok fuckboi is more online than his predecessors, but not so pretentious he’ll shame you for not having a favourite Wes Anderson film (this is because he’s too young to know who Wes Anderson is). The TikTok fuckboi, influenced by his cheesy American cousins, like Noah Beck and Josh Richards, is also not as depressive – this Surrey-based monster’s facial muscles still ache from the weeks he spent mastering the “seductive smile”.

His fashion choices are oddly eclectic, borrowing from every style that came before him. There are many chains, all aimed to amplify his Hotness and make him look older than his 18 to 24 years. He wears the chains so he can text you “and then you’ll grab my chain x” at 2AM. Among those chains, he might even layer a few unexpected accessories, like a shell or a pearl necklace, because he is a feminist (and has seen how much everyone fawns over Harry Styles).

His love for flashy things isn’t as obvious as the Boohoo man’s, but he still splashes his student loan on an Off-White hoodie. In a ploy to appeal to the widest audience possible, the TikTok fuckboi straddles various aesthetics. One day he’ll wear a baggy grey tracksuit with a North Face puffa. Next, he’ll clash a bold designer print with a vintage tour T-shirt of a band he heard of two weeks ago. The rest of the, time he’s topless. How else is he meant to show off his unbelievably chiselled body?

Maintaining peak physique is vital for all the thirst traps he posts across his various social platforms. The Gen Z king may be studying at uni, but he’s ready to pack his bags and head for the nearest hype house as soon as he gets signed to an influencer agency. And that’s the key thing here: the TikTok fuckboi may look like he’s doing everything to find “the one”, but in reality he’s looking for fame in the form of a modelling contract.

His entire aesthetic screams #sponcon. Like most people his age, he angles the camera from below his face when filming or taking pictures, to maximise the contours of his jaw. His curly noodle hair is always perfectly trimmed and his teeth are so straight and bright, he doesn’t even need to travel to Turkey to have them filed down.

As an astute young man with limited job opportunities in the post-austerity economy, he knows he needs to diversify his streams of income before he’s replaced by someone else who looks exactly like him, but with a few more dance moves. With no Love Island to catapult his career overnight, he’s putting in the shift with the almost-viral content. And he’s already making more money than you by promoting clothing brands that are definitely not money laundering schemes launched by C-list celebrities.

When he’s not seamlessly catching the woah to the latest TikTok trend, he makes videos with captions like “if this letter is in your name… Your gunna be WIFED in 2025....” and spends the entirety of the clip licking his lips. Or he’ll record himself answering questions like “does it matter if your girlfriend's body count is really high?” and “what would you do if she leaked on your bed?”, but he’ll do it quietly so he doesn’t wake up his parents who are sleeping next door.

It might seem laughable to some, but his fans dig it. “U hella cut btw”, one girl comments on his videos. “GORG”, another one types. It’s easy to understand why these Gen Zs have become the height of desirability in 2020 – muscly guys doing stupid dances without a care in the world is a hot reproduction of stereotypical masculinity, without all the toxic stuff that normally accompanies it. Perhaps in 20 years, our woke hero will find some recognition for being decades ahead of his time.

This guy is the literal definition of horny on main, while simultaneously being strangely sexless. Don’t fall for his icy blue eyes and poreless, filtered skin. Double-tapping on his videos is fine, but it’s best to keep your interactions to 60 seconds maximum on the For You page.

@thediyora