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October 20, 2006

Douchebaggery and Why You Should Make Sure to Burn that Embarassing Letter you Wrote Your Girlfriend at Age 14

Not to get all nostalgic and maudlin, but I remember a time when ecoparasitic novelty site Gawker.com used to point their rusty scabbard towards the foibles of real life celebrities, or at least the Hiltonites who stand upon a shaky tautology of their own fame. But with a daily 30-post minimum, Team Gawker needed to lower the limbo stick - I know, let's go around jamming ballpoint pens into the necks of those who write about famous people in famous magazines. Now picking on the mainstream media is a bit too 2006, so it is time to to bring out the big guns and point them about 45 degrees under the floorboards: normal people. Wait, before we do that, we are getting word that fake-satirist Nick Sylvester apparently is copyediting pieces for a website - we will let you know which one as soon as possible.

But back to real people. I know, let's call them "douchebags." Interns, college students, young employees, young lawyers - anybody and everyone - if they have ever done something embarrassing in their youth, I dunno, pretentious behavior, hollow boasting, acting self-important out of a profound sense of insecurity, you know, the stuff young people do? Let's take advantage of the fact that our modern age of Internet living produces a paper trail and then provide our readers with examples of these young people douchebags' "douchebaggery." Then we can collect an even larger readership and sell that to our advertisers, who thankfully, also want to reach the "we hate sadly deluded normal people" demographics.

There was something grossly unsatisfying about attacking celebrities. We may find such glee in securing their public humiliation, but that same night we got a peek at a candid upskirt, they go in their fancy cars to fancy bars and get to drink these kinds of Grey Goose we haven't even heard of. (Those big round icecubes too, I bet.) At best, we can only bring down the aggregate benefits of fame to 0! Zero! I have been waiting twenty-five years to get to 0!

Attacking real people on the other hand - who do not even choose to be famous or have their past private materials be subject to wide readership - that is where the gold is. These guys start at 0, and our swivel chair roundhouse kick knocks them down a couple of legions. That will teach you to email your friends in a casual manner, normal people. We're just sorry that the ever-increasing speed of information on the Net will make your public embarrassment only last a few measly days. By the way, do you have any annoying friends that you can introduce us to for next week?

Listen, Gawker. When I was a kid, there was the guy in my class who made up all this stuff. Way more than Aleksey Vayner. In fact, I am pretty sure this guy claimed to have kicked Vayner's ass at both real and virtual kickboxing. (This was pre-Virtual Reality, mind you.) I can send you some notes he wrote to me once about having a computer that could play Super Mario Bros. back in 1990. And I am pretty sure his mother wrote the paper on the U.S. Civil War that won him first place in the 5th grade essay contest. What do you say? Call me?

Posted by marxy at October 20, 2006 12:41 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Adamu at October 20, 2006 3:58 PM

Posted by: Jrim at October 20, 2006 10:00 PM

Posted by: check at October 20, 2006 10:34 PM