Scumbag Steve
Where it came from
A Reddit advice-animal from early 2011, built on a 2006 photo of Boston teenager Blake Boston standing in a doorway in a backwards fur-trimmed hat.
A kid stands in a doorway in a sideways fur-lined hat, looking directly at you like he's about to ask for a ride and then never pay you back. The format is two lines of text describing some genuinely inconsiderate move: top line sets it up, bottom line delivers the betrayal. "Borrows your charger / unplugs your phone to use it." "Hosts a party at your place / leaves before cleanup." Steve is every roommate, coworker, and friend-of-a-friend who has ever wronged you.
It was one of the marquee advice animals of the 2011 image-macro boom, back when Reddit ran the whole genre. The signature move was the green "Scumbag" hat — people started Photoshopping his fur cap onto anything to instantly brand it as the worst possible version of itself. Scumbag Brain, Scumbag OS, Scumbag Steve's hat on a tax form. The hat outgrew the guy.
It's dead. Advice animals as a format cratered hard a few years later and Steve went down with the ship. You'll only see him now in nostalgia posts about the old internet, dug up whenever somebody wants to remember when memes were two lines of Impact font on a doorway photo.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
