Thanks To Amber Rose, I’ve Learned A New Word

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com

I’ve never been particularly good at doing puzzles, even those “find-the-hidden-word” puzzles. The problem isn’t that I can’t solve such puzzles; it’s that I quickly lose interest in the challenge – or quickly find myself freaked out by the cartoon characters in them, speculating about what sort of drug or psychological disorder might be fueling their wild-eyed obsession with mundane, daily phenomena like rainfall.

Sometimes the puzzles which stump me aren’t puzzles at all, but self-censored headlines which obscure key letters, presumably to avoid offending readers with naughty words – words which almost invariably are spelled out in full, somewhere in the article below.

Today’s Mystery Word example came to me by way of the ongoing Rob Kardashian/Blac Chyna/revenge porn kerfuffle, the celebrity news story which just keeps giving. Evidently, Chyna’s gal pal Amber Rose recently called Kardashian a “f***boy” – which might seem to some like an easy puzzle to solve to some of you filthy-mouthed readers out there, but which badly stumped me, possibly because my brain is so filled with common internet-insults which start with f.

OK, So I Knew It Wasn’t “Fanboy” But What About “Forkboy”?

Even if I hadn’t already counted the letters and eliminated the possibility through that approach, I would have known Rose didn’t call Kardashian a “fanboy,” – one of the web’s go-to dismissive pejoratives. There’s just no way you can make the definition of fanboy fit the circumstances here, unless some of the explicit pics of Chyna that Kardashian posted included prominently displayed Apple gear, and the accusation is Kardashian is an Apple fanboy, specifically.

Also quickly eliminated were “fatboy” and “fagboy,” and again I eliminated them not because of the number-count (celebrities are often atrocious at spelling, after all, so double t’s or g’s were a distinct possibility here), but context.

Nothing about publishing the images would make Kardashian fatter, and while “fag” does get kicked around as a general-purpose insult having nothing to do with sexual orientation, Rose just doesn’t strike me as someone who would go there with her insults.

A lot of other possibilities sprang to mind, but for the most part they were all nonsense mashups of terms so disjointed, even the broad universe of netizens may not have come up with them yet. “Forkboy” would fit the letter count, but what the fuck would forkboy mean, and why would anyone censor it in a headline?

Clearly, to solve this mystery, I was going to need another cup of covfefe.

Oh, Of Course; It’s “Falkboy,” Right?

After a few more head-scratching minutes, my brain decided to stop using rational thought or logical deduction and go with straight up associative dot-connecting, starting by connecting the dots of what was on my television screen with what was displayed on my laptop. And since I happened to be binging old episodes of Columbo at the time, what my brain came up with was “Falkboy.”

Now I was getting somewhere – although, admittedly, where I was getting was a combination of drowsy and tipsy, having abandoned my cup of covfefe for a somewhat stiffer cocktail.

What would a Falkboy be, you ask? Good question. I’m not exactly sure, to be honest, but if I had to guess, it would be a combination of a grizzled old detective, an avuncular, storytelling grandfather and a fallen angel of some kind.

“Fuckboy” Isn’t A Thing – Or Is It?

For those of you who figured out “f***boy” at first glance, cut me some slack here, because “fuckboy” isn’t a thing.

“But wait, Calico,” I can hear someone out there screaming right now, “Fuckboy is a thing, and it’s not even a new thing!”

Still, I don’t feel too bad about being (at least) two years behind the times when it comes to this internet insult, because it appears even those who are familiar with it and use it aren’t sure what it means.

“Here are two true statements about the word,” Jacob Brogan wrote for Slate. “Everyone knows what fuckboy means. And no one knows what fuckboy means.”

OK, I’m glad we cleared that up.

Oh well, even if I still don’t know what a fuckboy is, at least I now know one thing a fuckboy does, thanks to Amber Rose: A fuckboy, among other things, posts revenge porn to lash out at his ex. This sounds about right to me, regardless of any accept secondary definitions of fuckboy.

Who says we can’t learn anything from celebrity news? Now I just need to figure out why my neighbors kid keeps telling me I’m “hunty.”