He’s joined every business club on campus, runs a startup, and cruises around his frat while effortlessly breezing through his economics and computer science classes. Could he be one of those legendary Haas and EECS double majors? This guy—let’s call him Andy—speaks like a future leader (when he is not chanting some frat anthem while chugging a “bitch” cup). His confidence is accentuated by the 6’2 stature of a Greek god that even a razor-sharp suit can’t completely hide.
Andy is obviously quite the catch—in fact some may say he is the 100-pound herring in a school where every other person is hyper-qualified and overachieving—but on top of that he has the looks of an underwear model, knocking the Berkeley goggles right off of anyone who may cross his path.
Just last week I witnessed this same living legend cower in shame and embarrassment as I ran into him at GBC. Few things were as satisfying as staring him down and watching him evasively look away as if being confronted by his mother who had just found his hidden stash of condoms. I had the unfortunate pleasure of being well-acquainted with Andy last semester in Astro class and when I saw him, anger rose up like lava, ushering in animalistic urges to give him what he deserved for leading me.
Andy is of a profile which is all too familiar here at Cal. He is brilliant and overachieving and will likely end up being your boss one day. But he also falls under a very specific classification of ‘fuckboy’—to put it quite bluntly—which is almost unique to UC Berkeley.
They represent the flip side of the 90% of Cal students, who actually personify the polar opposite: imposter syndrome. This is a common ailment amongst Cal students, myself included, in which students inflate their resumé with activities and achievements to survive in the Cal competition. Imposter syndrome evolves from feeling inadequate, and is often self-destructive. This is very much a concerning epidemic—however, the other issue is when those like Andy develop a distorted sense of ego and superiority to peers.
Yes, there are elitists who are not fuckboys and fuckboys who most definitely suffer from imposter syndrome. But my experience at Cal has made me see a correlation between the ever-upping standards of exceptionality amongst Cal students, and the way they treat others—particularly in the context of courtship.
Those like Andy feel entitled to the respect and the dumbfounded awe of their peers, letting their accolades and their image—not their character speak for them. What makes them fuckboys by the strict, traditional definition of the term is that they succeed at reeling in girls (or guys) and then have no qualms leading them on until they decide that it is time to move on to the next chick. The second I stopped unduly drooling over Andy, he decided he wanted nothing more to do with me. Or who knows, maybe my LinkedIn profile was not perked enough or my body was not in good enough shape to compete with the sorority girl he so desired. He felt like he was entitled to my feelings (without reciprocation) just because he thought that the image he built up of himself commanded automatic respect. And when I refused to give him what he wanted, he hastily backed out.
Whether these cocky pricks contribute to imposter syndrome by making peers feel sub-par and girls feel unwanted is debatable. However, there is a strange correlation between those whose pride and sense of self is crushed and those whose pride is surged by the competition at Berkeley.
It is true that a lot of fuckboys are truly just insecure at heart. However, the desire to achieve often gives students a quantifiable sense of self. Things like GPA, the meat on a resume, the number of connections built at a networking event, and fraternity tiers often define a Cal student’s self-worth. This can lead to depression amongst the students who just cannot handle the artifice aside from the fact that they cannot live up to these ever-upping standards.
Others take pride in their quantifiable self-worth and seem to not mind—or rather bask in the dehumanization of all this. The number of girls they can reel in is but another number for them to take pride in. It is an easy, instant approval rating. My good friend recounted to me how her date had spent much of their time together boasting about his achievements as the head of two startups and a CS major and then later had the audacity to tell her that she could probably never do better than him. After she rightfully expelled him in disgust, he had no shame in continuing to make further advances, texting her at three in the morning requesting to meet up.
One thing you have to give fuckboys credit for, however, is being masters of manipulation. In other words, they play “the game” and do it damn well. A friend of mine in a sorority detailed the ins and outs of fuckboy-ery. She defines a fuckboy as someone who “very convincingly plays around with other’s feelings only to attain a certain end goal often involving sex.” Typical of their behavior pattern is ghosting—a phenomenon in which things appear to be going swell until all of a sudden the fuckboy in question disappears from your life so that you are left to either take the hint or be ruthlessly blocked on all social media. In addition, they more often than not are overconfident and suffer from FOMO. They want to overcompensate for the years they will be locked down in monogamy by getting as much action as possible in the four ephemeral years of college.
Image: Captured Writer
I am definitely not the first person to have fallen victim to a fuckboy. In fact, falling for one is a rookie mistake which every newbie makes and then learns from after the first one or two—or ten—if they are the type who can’t help but be addicted to ‘bad boys’. After all, can’t we all relate to the very wise Taylor Swift when she states in her lyrics to Blank Space: “Cause you know I love the players/ And you love the game”?
Ultimately, we know that guys like these are not worth our time and effort or even a split-second’s worth of thought. Fuckboys, whether easily spottable in the dead giveaway of pastel shorts and a Hawaiian t-shirt or more subtly disguised as the nice guy you might be sitting next to in class, will be an inescapable part of our college experience. But we are all here to learn and grow. Not a single person here is better than anyone else and ultimately the only people worth giving a shit about are those who respect you for your character and whose character you respect in return.
Cover image: Tom Chapman, all photos under Creative Commons Licensing
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