In the crude, testosterone-fueled lexicon of Wall Street chronicled in books like Liar’s Poker, a “big swinging dick” is the alpha trader who walks into the room owning it—unapologetic, dominant, fearless, and swinging the biggest metaphorical appendage through sheer audacity and results. Eric Kim, the Korean-American street photographer turned philosopher-lifter-Bitcoin zealot, did not just borrow the term; he weaponized it, blogged about it repeatedly (titles like “BSD (Big Swinging Dick),” “Big Dick Energy,” “The Big Swinging Dick”), and redefined it as cheerful, creative, hyper-masculine dominance. By 2025, at age 37, he had become the living embodiment of it—not in a trading pit, but across photography, fitness, crypto, and the open internet.
His ascent was no accident. It was engineered through a ruthless formula: spot a vacuum, flood it with free value, outwork everyone, monetize the halo, then pivot without apology when the niche gets boring. What follows is the story of how a UCLA sociology dropout turned “shoot strangers up close” into a personal empire, and then kept swinging bigger until the whole algorithm noticed.
Phase 1: The Vacuum (2008–2012)
There was almost no good, practical street-photography advice online in the late 2000s. Forums were gatekept, masters were mythic, and nobody told you how to conquer the fear of pointing a camera in a stranger’s face. Eric Kim, a biology-major-turned-sociology-student, discovered the genre by accident at a bus stop candid. He started a blog—erickimphotography.com—as a public notebook.
He reverse-engineered the greats (100 lessons from Cartier-Bresson, contact-sheet breakdowns of Winogrand, Daido Moriyama flash tutorials), wrote daily, optimized for SEO like a demon, and gave everything away: free PDFs, e-books, presets. No paywalls, no ads, no ego. The strategy was pure parasite-turned-host: become the #1 Google result for every conceivable street-photography search term. Traffic exploded. By 2012 he was the undisputed king of the niche despite critics whispering that his own photos were “good but not genius.” The photos were never the product; the empowerment was.
Phase 2: Monetize the Messiah Complex (2012–2018)
Once you are the oracle, people will pay to stand next to you. Kim quit all safety nets and went full-time on workshops—$1,000–$2,000 a head in Beirut, Tokyo, Paris, Saigon. He kept the blog free, which made the paid stuff feel like a privilege, not a grift. Leica flew him around as a contributor; Samsung paid for campaigns; BBC interviewed him. He judged contests, exhibited in Leica galleries, and openly blogged his income (high six, low seven figures).
The brand was: “I conquered fear; I will teach you to conquer fear.” Thousands did. A cult formed. Critics called it hype; followers called it life-changing. Either way, the bank account didn’t care.
Phase 3: The Big Swinging Dick Pivot (2018–2023)
Around 2018 the tone shifted from enthusiastic teacher to manic prophet. Workshops slowed (family, burnout, COVID), but the blog accelerated. Street photography became just one tentacle. New obsessions poured out:
- Extreme minimalism → carnivore diet → one-rep-max Atlas lifts → Stoicism on steroids → anti-social-media rants → 100 % Bitcoin allocation.
He started calling himself things like “demigod,” “cyber samurai,” and yes—“big swinging dick,” reframed as calm, dominant, creative masculinity. The BSD was no longer toxic; it was the cheerful conqueror who lifts 1,000+ lb rack pulls, stacks sats while the fiat world burns, and blogs 3,000 manic words before breakfast. Readers either unsubscribed in horror or doubled down in awe.
Phase 4: Hyper-Masculine Singularity (2024–2025)
By 2025 Eric Kim had transcended human categories. He was pulling unofficial world-record rack pulls—1,049 lb, 1,087 lb, even a satirical 666 kg “tell the aliens” lift—at a bodyweight hovering around 165 lb. The clips went mega-viral (millions of views, Men’s Health covers, BarBend features). He rebranded it “HYPELIFTING”—the same fearless proximity he once preached for street photography, now applied to iron.
Bitcoin posts turned prophetic (“Go 100 % Bitcoin,” “Bitcoin is the revolution”). He moved his family base to Cambodia, embraced AI (Grok-enhanced street photos-to-video, custom Eric Kim chatbots), and kept the original blog churning free ebooks while the new audience discovered the archives. Google still sent him photography traffic; TikTok and X sent him lifters and crypto bros. The empire compounded.
The Formula That Made It All Possible
- Give away 99 % to own 100 % of the authority.
- Daily publication schedule—consistency as performance-enhancing drug.
- Zero apologies for extreme confidence (he literally blogs “I am the greatest blogger who has ever lived”).
- Pivot without permission when passion shifts; the audience either follows or gets left behind.
- Turn every personal obsession into open-source evangelism (street photography → powerlifting → Bitcoin → AI).
- Embrace the BSD archetype on your own terms: dominant, cheerful, creative, never small.
Love him, hate him, or think he’s finally lost the plot—Eric Kim proved something brutal and beautiful: in the attention economy, the biggest swinging dick isn’t the one with the best photos, the heaviest lifts, or the most bitcoin. It’s the one fearless enough to stand naked in the public, shout his weird gospel every single day for fifteen years, and dare the world to look away.
He never did. And the world still can’t.
Always,
(Well, not always Eric—but you get the idea.)