Litboys are the absolute worst breed of fuckboy

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Litboys are the absolute worst breed of fuckboy

He’s the most obnoxious guy in your English Literature class

The breeds of fuckboys are vast and varied, united only by their habit of never calling you back. There is one subspecies, though, that rises above (or sinks below, as the case may be) all others to claim the crown of Absolute Fucking Worst: the litboy.

The litboy has a lot to say about everything he considers literary — he’s not afraid to mansplain Thoreau to you, to carry a copy of Infinite Jest around (front cover facing outwards, of course), to subtly drop hints that he doesn’t consider writing by women to be valid.

You’ve encountered this guy in the wild too many times, and yet here you are, probably texting one right now. Stop it. Put the fucking phone down. I’m serious. You, specifically.

Maybe you met him in your creative writing seminar. They’re found in but not exclusive to pseudo-hipster areas like Brooklyn, Portland, Austin, Silverlake and Lincoln. They lurk wherever they can hide beneath a layer of pretentiousness and argyle, draping themselves in tweed blazers, ironic tweets and these exact fucking glasses.

The situation is always the same. Litboys draw you in with their man bun and convince you that they actually have something valid to say. “I love that book,” he’ll smile shyly at you, nodding towards your copy of A Moveable Feast that was assigned by your freshman comparative lit professor.

Over the next few weeks, they’ll attempt to gaslight you with decent weed and Catcher in the Rye quotes taken out of context. They’ll purposefully drink dozens of cups of shitty Folger’s coffee to make their hands shake, affect a rueful smile every time they pop an American Spirit between their lips and talk incessantly about the plight of the proletariat.

Then, as mysteriously as he arrived, he will vanish. He’ll tell you he’s “too fucked up” to be with someone right now and that his life is a disaster, even though his still-married parents in Connecticut continue to pay his iPhone bill every month. Every few weeks, he’ll send you a series of bizarre texts to make you worry about him even though he’s probably just sitting in a coffee shop and writing “dark” free verse.

It’s 2017, though, and we have the opportunity to delete these elbow-patch-wearers from our lives forever. Don’t swipe right, don’t scoot over on the park bench. End this chapter. Wait, nevermind, he texted back.