Nice guys finish last. Or do they?
Reality dating series “FBoy Island” (premiering Thursday, July 29 on HBO Max) sends three women to a lavish villa in the Cayman Islands where they’re joined by 24 men. The twist: twelve of them are “nice guys” who are there to find love, and 12 are self-proclaimed “FBoys” — a derogatory term, short for f–kboy, for men who just want to sleep around — there to manipulate the girls in order to win a cash prize if they make it to the end.
The ladies, of course, aren’t told who’s who. And it’s pretty hard to pick out the players: All the guys pretty much have ripped abs and suspiciously charming smiles.
Should you trust a self-proclaimed “accredited investor” with selfies all over his Instagram feed? Or a Wall Streeter who wears a blazer to the beach?
Contestant Sarah Emig, a 25-year-old social media manager from Chicago, considers herself an expert in the finer points of FBoys.
“I categorize [FBoys] into three different types,” Emig told The Post. There’s “the narcissist, or the pretty boy. That’s someone who is only with you because it looks good for him, and as soon as you aren’t useful to him, then he’ll drop you.”
Then, she said, there’s “the bitch boy. This is someone who will perform all the duties of a boyfriend but when it comes time to actually make a commitment, he doesn’t do it. The final type is the actual FBoy, and that’s someone who gets a power play off of messing with women and feels it’s necessary to lie and manipulate to get girls into bed.”
Emig is joined by Nakia Renee, 29, a stylist, and CJ Franco, 30, a content creator, both from Los Angeles.
On the show, they mingle with the men at parties, handing out bracelets to signify which ones they’d like to get to know better. Later, they embark on solo dates, similar to how “The Bachelor” operates. After that, they periodically go through elimination rounds to send some guys home as they try to figure out which guy fits into which category of “Nice Guy” or “FBoy.”
Franco said she’s keeping it simple. “I think the strategy that works best is expecting people to treat me nicely… Anything that went away from that, I avoided.”
Renee went in with a different outlook. “I kind of wanted to focus on action more than words,” she said. “Anyone can say that they’re a nice person. It’s really how they act.”
The show’s host, comedian Nikki Glaser, admitted that at times she was jealous of the contestants.
When producers initially reached out, “I thought they wanted me to be one of the girls,” Glaser, 37, told The Post. I was like ‘Oh, my gosh, I’ve always wanted to be ‘The Bachelorette!’ ”
When she found out she was being called in to host, “It was like getting friend-zoned by a show,” she said. “But I got to watch all the drama go down in real time. And I also got to talk to the girls and advise them and make fun of the guys. It was my dream job.”
Glaser, who often talks about dating in her stand-up and on her podcast, said being immersed in the comedy club scene has uniquely prepared her to call out the cads.
“When my best friends who are guys do squirrelly things to women they’ve dated, I go, ‘I know you’re not a bad person — why do you shut down like a laptop after sex?’ So just knowing a lot of male comics and having these discussions at tables in the Comedy Cellar [has let me] be able to get into the psyche of FBoys who don’t even know that they’re FBoys.”
Glaser said that the show made her take a look at her own relationships, too.
“It is a fool’s errand to try to change someone. However, kryptonite to an FBoy is a woman who respects herself and won’t allow someone to mistreat her … that is so attractive to an FBoy because [deep down] they want love and things they can’t have.”
Franco also holds out hope that even the worst-behaving FBoys are reformable.
“I think a lot of the FBoys are like un-renovated houses,” she said. “Great bones, a lot going for them, but it will take a lot of money and time to fix that up.”