

In a piece for the New York Times, Taylor Lorenz explained the phenomenon of Los Angeles mansions housing TikTokers who capitalize on one another’s clout to generate more for the whole. Now, however, “e-boy” is perhaps a lacking term for an increasingly visible brand of influencer: the teen creator collective. When the term became a meme in the fall of 2018, it mostly referred to an aesthetic: As I explained in a piece last summer, e-girl and e-boy style takes inspiration from skate culture, hip-hop, anime, cosplay, BDSM, goth, and the ’90s the e-boy look often involves decorative chains and Chandler Bing polos underneath a mop of middle-parted hair dyed shades of purple or green. Management companies like Vivid and TalentX are stacked with teen clients whose claim to fame is millions of TikTok fans with supernatural cheekbones and a sellable personality.Ī post shared by Noen Eubanks on at 1:03pm PDTĮ-boyhood, it seems, is now a viable career path. Meanwhile, the fashion brand Céline recently recruited Noen Eubanks, an 18-year-old TikToker with 7.5 million followers, to be the new face of its campaign. On January 13, the Hollywood Reporter confirmed that 17-year-old Chase Hudson, an e-boy with more than 9 million TikTok followers, and his LA creative collective Hype House had signed with one of the world’s biggest talent agencies, WME, for modeling, music, film, and more. Now they’re breaking out of the internet and scoring lucrative deals in the fashion and entertainment spheres.

E-boys and e-girls, the subculture of young, hot, and online teens who went viral last year on TikTok, are known mostly for making irony-steeped videos of themselves in their bedrooms wearing tragically hip outfits composed of thrifted clothes. They’re e-boys, and they’re quickly becoming part of an industry with the potential to rival the boy bands of yore. They do dance, with varying degrees of talent, but even that isn’t what they’re really famous for. They don’t act, unless acting includes contorting one’s face into a smoldering pout. The newest objects of teen crushes don’t sing - that is, unless you count lip-syncing.
