UBC students and community members have expressed varying opinions of the university following the “Sad Boy Sam” incident.
In what is now known as “The Incident,” an unknown (but certified) sad boy of unplaceable age and origin sat crying in front of the Nest, gaining the attention of both current and future students. Dubbed “Sad Boy Sam,” or SBS for short, he was first reported at 11 p.m. Monday mumbling to Simon and Garfunkel songs, with tears silently streaming down his face.
“I don’t know what the heck was going on in that man’s life, but he was really going through it,” said sixth-year student Paula Noteworthy. “And that’s saying a lot coming from me, cause I’m in philosophy.”
Students have described sighting SBS as “a direct vector of second-hand stress,” and “complete utter bamboozlement.” In another case, a student could only respond with “shiiiiiitt.”
By Wednesday morning, SBS’s music had shifted to songs by The Cure as he began garnering an audience.
By this time, it was Noteworthy's third pass by SBS.
“It was like a natural disaster that you see on TV. It was so terrible but was just too hard to look away,” she said. “It’s like, I’m standing there about to go to my 9 a.m. ‘Existential Crises Through The Ages’ class and then the next thing I know, it is 24 hours later and SBS is still crying,” she said. “And I’m still watching.”
Noteworthy was not alone in her fascination. By Thursday afternoon, SBS garnered a small crowd of students and professors, equally drawn into the turmoil.
Then disaster struck.
On Saturday at 10 a.m., Susy Goodman, a UBC student ambassador of 3 years, was walking her tour group toward Main Mall when she heard a noise.
“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “It was like a mix between a screech and a fart and a sob … anyway whatever [the noise] was, it made me stop in my tracks.”
It was SBS, who had progressed from mumbling to full out sob singing “Boys Don’t Cry.”
As parents of the potential students on the guided UBC tour recoiled in shock, the keen high school students themselves pulled out their phones to film SBS. Within 20 minutes of the incident, a video titled “the wasteland of a human inhabiting UBC” went viral, making it to explain!, Nice, Girlbossmopolitan and even The Main Maller.
“What kind of school ruins a person to the point of-of-of-of-of-of-of this?” asked a mother who was accompanying her daughter, Matilda on the UBC campus tour.
Matilda’s other mother expressed similar sentiments, though the teen girl herself reported it to be “so fucking hilarious. But also, after seeing that there is no way am I ever coming to this school.”
Steve, a grade nine student who was on the tour also expressed strong feelings about the incident.
“What was even sadder than the Sad Boy himself, was the fact that people were just standing there watching him with empty eyes! Like I honestly think they should replace the definition of ‘pathetic’ in the Oxford Dictionary with a photo of SBS’s crowd,” said Steve in a shirt of Chewbacca dabbing and while trying to show off his perfect-score report card that he keeps in his back pocket.
On Reddit, students are crediting The Incident to the university’s mismanagement. But in an elusive Ubyssey interview, Sad Boy Sam revealed what made him act so dramatically.
“Oh, that? I was crying because my tomato plant of five years died,” said Sad Boy Sam. “And now I can never love again.”
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