Straight-Boy Swooning Over the East Villains TikTok Crew

I hate to admit it, but I have a soft spot for hard-drinking, blindly confident straight men. I’ve lived with them, I’ve been best friends with them, I’ve slept with them, and yes, a couple of them have fallen in love with me, too. And so of course I was intrigued when I heard about a gang of TikTok bros in their mid-20s who have decided to call themselves the “East Villains.” You’re probably not aware of them, but maybe you know the type. The East Villains spend their days posting tenderhearted video diaries of their charmed lives in New York City with captions like “Weekend in the Life of a 26 Year Old in NYC,” in which they show themselves getting dressed (important because, you know, they start out undressed), meandering about downtown, going to work at their tech or fashion-adjacent jobs, skateboarding (shirtless), wearing overalls (shirtless), getting tatted, and getting drunk. They live on the Lower East Side or in the East Village and hail from places like Minneapolis, Hartford, and Jacksonville Beach. Think what you will about their Harry Styles–lite fashion sense, but something about their soft masculinity, silly outfits (see: cowboy hats, bandannas, bleached hair, silk scarves, painted nails, sleeveless tops, statement necklaces), and bulging arms and thighs full of patchwork tattoos really does it for me.

Today in Republicans being cartoonishly evil: they removed $35 monthly cap on insulin prices from a landmark bill that passed the Senate. There’s a full moon in Aquarius on Thursday — find out what that means for your weekly horoscope. Trying to understand Nathan Fielder’s wild HBO show The Rehearsal requires serious mental dexterity. Florida will pay you $2,500 to go catch Burmese pythons. America’s greatest obstacle to climate progress has finally fallen. Prey, the new installment in the Predator franchise, is awesome. It’d be even more awesome if they’d filmed it in Comanche instead of English. Alert, alert: Ottessa Moshfegh is on Depop. And see lots of good dogs catch waves in the World Dog Surfing Championships.

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