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    ‘The Boys’: No One Is Doing Social Media Like the

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    ‘The Boys’: No One Is Doing Social Media Like the

    Whether you’re an avid viewer of The Boys or not, chances are you’ve come in contact with the series via social media. A notable example would be Homelander’s (Antony Starr) shocked, then delighted visage at the applause he received after he killed a protestor at his rally in the Season 3 finale. It quickly made the rounds on Twitter as a meme to express relief at having gotten away with something.

    But besides the many reaction GIFs and photos from the series’ main antagonist (and there are a lot), The Boys uses social media to its advantage when it comes to marketing the series. None of this is more embodied in their Vought International Twitter account, modeled after the series’ malevolent conglomerate.

    The Boys is a satirization of the superhero genre by having corporations not only create superheroes, but also monetize them. The result is The Seven, a team of “supes” who are regarded more as celebrities than heroes and are given pretty much free rein to commit horrible acts, so long as Vought is there to cover them up. The Seven and Vought seem to be unstoppable — that is, until a group of vigilantes (The Boys) come along and are determined to put a stop to them.

    Because Vought is a media conglomerate in The Boys universe, it is a smart move on the part of the series to use social media to expound upon its themes such as corporate greed and corruption and how celebrity is weaponized to mask accountability. It is also an excellent way to hype up the next season in a tongue-in-cheek manner characteristic of The Boys.

    After Season 3, Vought International seems to be working overtime to save face before Season 4 of The Boys premieres. To hold you over until then, here are some of our favorite social media posts from the superpowered Prime series.

    Voughtify Recapped

    In a play on the annual Spotify Wrapped (a celebrated day on social media), A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) presents the corporation’s own version of a music streaming service’s (Voughtify) top tracks of the year. A-Train lists the tracks with a self-centered showmanship. The top three songs are “all A-Train originals, baby,” with snippets of music videos for “Hide Your Girlfriend,” “Run Through Your Heart,” and “Faster.” If A-Train can do one thing, it’s relentlessly reassure everyone that he is still the fastest person alive.

    The clip is also clever in how it demonstrates Vought’s layered PR strategies. A-Train offers the late Supersonic (Miles Gaston Villanueva) his condolences when his track “Rock My Kiss” ranks at number five. He then remarks in a media-trained manner that “drugs are the worst.” This statement reveals Vought’s despicable attempts to hide the circumstances of Supersonic’s death behind the character’s own substance abuse issues. Of course, this Voughtify Recapped is just another way for the conglomerate to distract and detract from the number one person who could (and might, now that she’s joined The Boys) come after both Homelander and Vought for Supersonic’s death: Annie, formerly Starlight (Erin Moriarty).

    “Deep Thoughts With The Deep”

    Next to Homelander, The Seven’s sycophantic sea creature communicator The Deep (Chace Crawford) is one of the more memeable characters of the series. Vought International published a series of tweets featuring clips called “Deep Thoughts With The Deep” as a way to advertise for the supe’s upcoming memoir “Deeper and Deeper.” The clips show The Deep stating asinine musings such as “For many years, we’ve watched TV. But now, TV is watching us.” The silly ruminations are made hilarious when they are followed by a dramatic black and white slideshow of The Deep making his most pensive and brooding faces as underwater bubble effects overlay it.

    These posts are not only entertaining, but also revealing of The Deep’s character. Though he can be extremely manipulative to those around him, he is also deeply (pun intended) insecure about his intelligence and constantly tries to prove himself. Crawford also gets to show off his comedic chops.

    A “Powerfvl” Magazine Cover

    Vought International loves celebrating the big and little things, especially when it includes making a profit off of it. Gracing the cover of a spoof on a JCPenney catalog is Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie), with Vought International using her status as the first woman CEO of the corporation to sell their pantsuits. In her role as CEO and as a character, Ashley is ruthless and deceptive. She lacks compassion, prioritizes Vought’s image and panders to narcissistic and disturbed Homelander. The caption’s use of cheesy puns like “mompreneur” and “shero,” along with the self-aggrandizing magazine cover, is The Boys‘ way of playing on the theme of corporate greed and monetization of social movements like feminism. The irony is stark considering Vought’s sexist and misogynistic history with characters like Starlight, Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), and Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten).

    A Q1 Earnings (and Season 3) Recap

    Ashley makes her return in that bright orange “pantsvit” (with an extended contract!) to cover Vought’s Q1 earnings and address messes from the previous season. In an effort to be transparent in the face of numerous scandals, the clip emulates the damage control corporations conduct using vague phrasing in an excessively positive, forthright tone. Vought is patting themselves on the back for their “transparency” while aiming to protect the company at all costs. For them, this means spreading flat out lies.

    Though Ashley assures “Vought — and our heroes — have never been stronger,” the global conglomerate has a long road ahead of them in Season 4 of The Boys. With Black Noir dead (sorry, “on a critical mission overseas”), Starlight ousted and branded a “traitor,” and Queen Maeve presumed dead, Season 4 is primed to introduce more supes to The Seven.

    A Very “Boy” Twitter Exchange with Vought

    The Boys‘ social media isn’t all Vought-centric; they let the ragtag team of vigilantes take their shots at the corporation as well. In a tweet that seems to have come from team leader Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the account calls out Ashley and Vought’s stream of corruption. While this account is a more standard example of a social media page for the series, it nevertheless plays up the characters of the show’s namesake by giving them a presence in the social media sphere with which it can challenge Vought.

    Soldier Boy’s Cover of “Rapture” by Blondie

    At least Vought is consistent in how they’ve marketed their supes over the years. Soldier Boy’s (Jensen Ackles) rendition of the 1980 Blondie song “Rapture” appeared in the episode “A Glorious Five-Year Plan.” The supe sang it as a celebrity guest on the show Solid Gold, and The Boys‘ social media took full advantage of it. It was uploaded to Vought International’s YouTube page, garnering over 10 million views. Soldier Boy even received a response from Blondie themselves. Unsurprisingly, there is just something so entertaining about watching grainy footage of Jensen Ackles in superhero getup perform with backup dancers in excessively ’80s leotards.

    A Behind-the-Scenes Look of American Hero

    Leave it to Vought to make a reality competition show out of the search for the next member of The Seven, and expect The Boys social media to go meta with it by making a behind-the-scenes video of a reality competition show within the greater series. In a bid to get more people to subscribe to Vought+, Vought International films a behind-the-scenes tour of the mansion where American Hero is shot. It was a show in the third season where Supersonic was chosen as the new member of The Seven for a brief moment. It reinforces the idea in The Boys that Vought markets The Seven as celebrities more so than heroic citizens, which undercuts the purpose of superheroes. It is pretty cool to see where The Deep gets his swim laps in, though.

    “Liquid Death” Ad

    The “pure mountain water” brand recruits The Deep to be their Chief Sustainability Associate and advertise their new, state of the art aluminum cans. From grimacing as he pulls a condom out of a fish’s mouth to committing to the script even as burning plastic enters his and child actors’ lungs (“It burns when I breathe!”), Crawford performs with hilarious affect. The ad is once again a demonstration of corporate greed by profiting off of environmental issues, while also continuing to pollute the environment.

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