Scumbag Steve meme
✓ Brand-safe. The meme's format is generally applicable to relatable, minor annoyances, making it safe for most brands when captions are carefully chosen.
What does the Scumbag Steve meme mean?
Scumbag Steve is an image macro series featuring a young man wearing a sideways baseball cap and a fur-lined hood, used to depict common socially unacceptable or selfish behaviors.
Is the Scumbag Steve meme dead?
Less than it was. Scumbag Steve is fading: its rate of reads of its Wikipedia article has slowed by more than 15% compared with the period before. Its current rate is 11% of its peak, which came in the period ending May 1, 2021.
The Wikipedia article on Scumbag Steve was read 125 times in November 2026, and 202,336 times since July 2015. Its busiest measured month ended May 1, 2021 at 185 reads per day.
Stats
| Busiest month | April 2021 (5,556 reads) |
| Reads, last 12 months | 21,835 |
| Reads, 12 months before | 20,504 |
| Change year on year | +6% |
| All-time reads since July 2015 | 202,336 |
| Current rate vs peak | 11% of the peak in the period ending May 1, 2021 |
Scumbag Steve captions for businesses
| real estate | Shows up to viewing / Asks if they can just live in the garage for free |
| dentists | Doesn't floss all year / Asks why their gums are bleeding |
| restaurants | Orders a complicated dish / Asks for 10 substitutions |
| fitness studios | Skips warm-up and cool-down / Complains about being sore |
| software startups | Demands a custom feature / Refuses to pay for it |
| coffee shops | Orders an espresso / Asks for it in a venti cup with room for milk |
| hair salons | Shows a picture of a celebrity haircut / Expects exact same results with completely different hair type |
| accountants | Waits until April 14th / Asks why their refund isn't instant |
More questions
Can a business post the Scumbag Steve meme?
Usually, yes. The meme's format is generally applicable to relatable, minor annoyances, making it safe for most brands when captions are carefully chosen. memeidea's brand-safety calls are AI-assisted suggestions, so check how the format is being used this week before posting.
What is a good Scumbag Steve caption for a business?
For real estate: “Shows up to viewing / Asks if they can just live in the garage for free”. For dentists: “Doesn't floss all year / Asks why their gums are bleeding”. For restaurants: “Orders a complicated dish / Asks for 10 substitutions”. More captions are in the table above.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Scumbag Steve: article and page-view counts (Wikimedia API)
- Know Your Meme: origin and spread
- memeidea method: how stages and momentum are measured
