What Is the City Boy Meme?

📺The Origin: Gravity Falls (2012)

The City Boy meme comes from the Disney animated series Gravity Falls, which aired from 2012 to 2016. The specific clip is from Season 1, Episode 3, titled "Headhunters," which aired on June 30th, 2012.

In this scene, Deputy Durland (a comedic, bumbling deputy played for laughs) mocks Dipper Pines, one of the show's main characters who has come from the city to spend summer in Gravity Falls, Oregon. When Dipper tries to solve a mystery, Durland dramatically points at him and yells:

"City Boy! City Boy!"

The clip was uploaded to YouTube in July 2016 and gained over 147,000 views before the TikTok explosion.

💬The Slang: What Does "City Boy" Mean?

Separately from the Gravity Falls clip, "City Boy" emerged as slang in mid-2019 as the male counterpart to Megan Thee Stallion's "Hot Girl Summer." The term was defined on Urban Dictionary on July 15th, 2019.

Key characteristics of "City Boy" behavior include:

• Prioritizing goals over romantic relationships
• "Chasing the bag" (pursuing money and success)
• Acting stoic or "cold" in interpersonal situations
• Being unapologetically focused on personal success

The Instagram page @cityboys (with 1.2M+ followers) helped popularize this meaning by posting content of men "owning" situations or acting dismissively toward women while focused on success.

🚀The TikTok Explosion (2022)

The magic happened in June 2022 when TikTok users combined the Gravity Falls clip with the "City Boy" slang. The clip became a reaction meme, typically placed after videos showing men:

• Refusing to give out their contact information
• Choosing money or career over dates
• Acting "toxic" or cold in relationship situations
• Making unexpectedly pragmatic relationship decisions

One of the earliest viral examples (June 20th, 2022) featured a man refusing to give a woman his Snapchat, followed by the "City Boy! City Boy!" reaction. This post gained 7.1 million views in just five days.

🔥The 2026 Resurgence

In early January 2026, the City Boy meme experienced a massive resurgence on TikTok. The format came roaring back with new examples flooding For You Pages across the platform.

Notably, TikToker @ryanwmpugh, who had posted about the meme's prevalence in 2022, posted a follow-up in January 2026 noting that it was happening again four years later. This meta-commentary on the meme's return received over 292,500 likes.

🎯How to Use the City Boy Meme

The City Boy meme is typically used in these contexts:

🏙️City Boy vs. Country Boy

Part of the meme's humor comes from the cultural contrast between "City Boy" and "Country Boy" archetypes:

Much of the humor in City Boy memes comes from this contrast, especially when a "City Boy" fails in rural situations or when unexpected people exhibit "City Boy" behavior.