Games Assholes Play

"I guess there's just two kinds of people- my kind of people, and assholes." - Connie Marble

One thing never seems to change. The world is filled with assholes. No matter where you go, where you live, what groups you ally yourselves with, the world is filled with assholes.

Some definition seems in order. There's a difference between creeps and assholes. Creeps are quiet, unnerving, and you just want them to go away. They are relatively few and far between. Assholes are loud, obnoxious, and they can stick around if they want as long as they change. Sometimes people wear the "asshole" label as a badge of honor. These people are possibly the biggest assholes of all. Calling yourself an asshole and being proud of it is sort of like calling yourself a rapist and thinking it's something worth telling mom about.

In the spirit of helping assholes to change, I have compiled this handy list of signs that you, your friends, and your associates may be assholes. Consider this a public service.

Assholes Believe in God

It's not so much the belief in the Invisible Sky Monster that distinguishes assholes, though you'll certainly find legions of assholes in the pews of your preferred denomination on any given Sunday. No, what distinguishes the asshole from your run of the mill religious son of a bitch is the desire to believe in something more than themselves in the face of all competing evidence. Pagans have their metaphors, occultists have their science, deists have their appreciation of nature, shamans have their magickal thinking. Assholes stand reason on its head and argue that the mere existence of a stream through a mountain indicates the existence of a supernatural personage. Often times this leads assholes to senseless acts for altruism for other assholes which neither deserve nor appreciate them.

Assholes Are Perfect

Assholes never seem to do anything wrong. They're incredibly adept at perfection. No matter how many times you point out to them where they've fucked up they always have another person or a set of circumstances to blame. No matter how many times they get basic facts wrong they still shoot their mouth off like they're the bloody Pope in Rome, infallible on all matters period, the end, full stop. The most obvious sign of an asshole is that when you confront them on their stupidity, failure, or creativity with the facts their first reaction is to generally get angry and defensive. They don't even appreciate the rudimentary effort you're taking to make them not look like an asshole in the future.

Assholes Share Old Memes

I'm trying not to be a dick here (totally different from an asshole, and not out of bounds in many situations dealing with assholes. Sometimes when you encounter an asshole the only response is to be a dick and fuck them). I understand that not everyone can exist at the Luciferean memetic vanguard like your present writer. That's why I perform a public service in the form of disseminating my vanguard memes to the masses in a myriad of media. There's nothing wrong with not knowing about something. But what there is something not just painfully irritating, but downright wrong about is sharing old memes like you're the first person in the world to hear about them. We all know this person. They start talking about something, you politely interject that you know what they're talking about and they then proceed to go ahead and tell you about it anyway even though you started being bored with it at least 100 years before they knew what the fuck it was. What fucking assholes!

Assholes Write Poetry

"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits." - Robert A. Heinlein

You're not T.S. Elliot. You're not Ezra Pound. You're not Bukowski. You're not even Richard fucking Braughtigan. You're just some asshole who thinks that arranging his mundane thoughts in the most pretentious way possible makes you look deep, interesting and mysterious. You're wrong. It doesn't. It just makes you look like an asshole.

Assholes Don't Do Anything

Of course not. It would give you the opportunity to point out that they're an asshole. They gripe, moan, bitch, complain, but never create an alternative for people to vote thumbs up or thumbs down on.

Assholes Think They're Smart

You know this guy. He quotes lots of stuff he hasn't actually read. He talks about concepts that he doesn't understand. He probably spends a lot of time creating art in various media for the purpose of inflicting his painful ignorance and stupidity on the rest of the world. Assholes never tire of the sound of their own voice, but the bigger the audience the better. They love pontificating at length about a mish-mash of half-digested concepts like the asshole in tenth grade who knew a little bit about everything and ended up looking really smart. Assholes never progress beyond this point because synthesis of real knowledge will put their smug self satisfaction in peril.

Assholes Don't Like Anything

The thing about an asshole is you can give them a cocaine-filled pinata made of solid gold and they'll bitch about how they wanted one in the shape of a dog and not a burro. Assholes will always find a reason to complain, no matter how good the situation for them. You take twenty people out to the titty bar and there will always be one complaining about the color of the stripper's thong.

Assholes Blame You

Perhaps the fastest way to pick an asshole out of a crowd is to not like them. Their reaction isn't accepting that there might be something about themselves that rubs you the wrong way. It isn't that you can't like everyone. It isn't that you don't know them well enough or that they didn't put their best foot forward. It isn't that they don't care about your opinion of them. The assholes finds out that you're not interested in intellectual intercourse and companionship and blames you for being an asshole. You need to ignore their glaring personality deficiencies, total lack of social skills, and psychic vampirism and just be best friends.

Your Homework

Everyone reading this knows at least one asshole. You're probably even friends with this person. Give a call and let them know exactly how they're being an asshole. Not only will it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, it will also make the world a brighter place by lowering the asshole quotient. Then sit down in front of the mirror and ask yourself how am I an asshole?