6 Signs Of a Toxic Friendship

We've all had That One Friend.  Someone we think is the greatest person we know.  Until a year or two later when we're suddenly doing everything in our power to get the fuck away from them, but still in some ways we're too afraid to cut them loose.  Hell, you may have one of those "friends" right now.  Or think you do.  But because they've become so good at gaslighting you, you're not really sure anymore.  Maybe you're the crazy one.

Well, based on having to kick my fair share of toxic assholes out of my life, I've observed six hallmarks of abusive behavior.  Red flags that should immediately set off your internal Bullshit Alarm if people you know exhibit these traits.

Obviously it's not comprehensive.  There are, unfortunately, far too many ways to be an asshole.  But it's a start:


1. Everything Is a World-Ending Crisis. Everything.

The thing to understand about Toxic Assholes is they don't see their friends as people.  They collect friends the way normal people collect stamps, shot glasses, and Pokémon.  Friends are things they brag about having and show off to the neighbors to make themselves seem like far better people than they really are.

Of course, when you treat people like shit, eventually they're going to figure it out and dump your ass.  So how do you keep them from wising up?  Keep 'em tired.  Keep them mentally exhausted by making your life a constant wagon-train of emergencies.

For normal people, there are generally two types of emergency.  Either somebody needs immediate medical attention, or somebody is about to lose their home/family/life savings/entire financial future/etc.  In other words, the word "emergency" means something, and that something is "I need help NOW or I'm irrevocably boned."

For the Toxic Asshole, "emergency" simply means "you're ignoring me."

Because for the Toxic Asshole, not being the center of your life 24/7/365.25 means that you're the one shot glass/stamp/Pokémon/etc. in their collection that is out of place, and you need corrected.  And because "emergency" means something else entirely to the rest of us, they will use that to their advantage in order to guilt you back into line.

When I say "everything is an emergency" to these people, I really do mean everything.  Package didn't arrive when the tracker said it would?  EMERGENCY.  Someone's insulted their favorite TV show/movie/actor/musician?  EMERGENCY.  Their take-out place got the order wrong?  EMERGENCY, DAMMIT!

You get the idea.

And the thing is, they know these aren't actual emergencies.  But they will use them as an excuse for "having a panic attack" and needing you to talk them down.  And how will you know this?  Because if you even suggest the idea of calling a crisis hotline or even using a service like IMAlive or 7 Cups of Tea (both excellent depression and anxiety resources), they will insist they've tried those services and they don't really work and they just really need you to talk to them. Often laced with thinly veiled threats of ending the friendship (or worse) if you don't -- or can't -- comply.

For the rest of us, friendship is about mutual caring, respect, trust, and just generally liking being around other people.  For the Toxic Asshole, friendship is purely about ego.  They want to be able to brag about having friends without making the effort to be a person worthy of them.

Everything that ever goes wrong is an emergency to them, because it gives them an excuse to demand every spare moment you have, and if you decline to fork it over, you end up looking like the asshole.  Either way -- at least in their minds -- they win.

2. Your Feelings Are Never As Important As Theirs (Or Important At All, Really)

When the rest of us are helping a friend through a rough time, or when a friend comes to us with a legit problem, we put the focus on them and their feelings.  It's just natural for true friends to be empathetic and help each other out.  Not so with the Toxic Asshole, who may or may not pay lipservice to your needs, but in the end will refocus the situation to be all about them.

Because if you have time to think about your own pain, you may discover eventually that they are the source of it.

The Toxic Asshole, when confronted with your need for help, will suddenly have an issue of their own that is far more pressing than yours.  An "emergency" that you must help them through.  Purely as a diversion from your own needs, wants, and desires, because to them, it's dangerous for you to have anything of your own since it might pull you out of line with their agenda.

As an example of what this phenomenon looks like, I was talking to the most recent Toxic Asshole I had to remove from my life (before I finally got the guts to break away from them) about a depressive fit I was having that made me disappear for a few days.  Her response was to tell me how much my absence had affected her, had triggered her depression.  With some not-so-subtle hints and threats that Bad Shit Would Happen if I ever did it again.

She was fully aware that I was in a very fragile place mentally, and still proceeded to lay a guilt trip on me about being away for a few days.  It's one of the many reasons we're not friends anymore.

Why?  Because she could not let me have my own pain.  She could not let me have my own problems, my own bad day.  Because that meant I was my own person, and not a tool for her amusement.

But when the shoe is on the other foot...

3. It's OK If They Do It (Everyone Else Gets Crucified)

...Well.  It's different then.

You remember that kid you used to play with at recess, who would change the rules of the game just so they could do shit you weren't allowed to in order to score more points?  Well, the Toxic Asshole is the adult version.  And instead of kickball, you're playing Risk: Social Life Edition.  But otherwise, it's the same M.O.: they can break the rules, but not you.

In my case, the Toxic Asshole I dealt with was allowed to demand every waking moment of my time to deal with crisis after crisis.  But if anybody so much as tried to talk about a problem of their own with her, they were asking far too much.  Because she would then fake a panic attack or depressive episode to get out of the conversation.

She was also allowed to make other people's problems all about her, but if anybody else did that, they were manipulative and abusive.  She was allowed to make cryptic talk about hurting herself purely to glean sympathy from others, but if other people deigned to talk about their problems just because they had nowhere else to go, they were attention whores.  She could create a whole other social media account to bitch about specific people while still pretending to be friends with them, but if anyone talked about her behind her back, they were cowards (and manipulators/abusers).  She can make cracks about the weight and sexual orientation of people she doesn't like, and it's not fat-shaming or homophobic purely because she's doing it.

The Toxic Asshole labors under the notion that every terrible thing they do is excusable or justified, but they are the only ones allowed to use such excuses or justifications.  The rules they judge everyone else by do not apply to their own actions.

You remember Engywook's description of the Magic Mirror Gate from The Neverending Story?  If not, here's a little walk down Wasted Childhood Lane:

Kind people find that they are cruel. Brave men discover that they are really cowards. Confronted with their true selves, most men run away screaming.

The Toxic Asshole refuses to confront their true self, and creating loopholes in the rules just for them and nobody else is but one way of avoiding the Magic Mirror Gate (and thus, the Southern Oracle and the final piece of info they need to complete their quest).

But that's not going to last forever, because people are, by and large, not as stupid as the Toxic Asshole imagines.  Sooner or later, they're going to wise up and figure out what's going on.  And our Asshole is more than prepared for this eventuality because...

4. Everything Is Your Fault

In case you haven't guessed, I'm a pop-culture freak.  The more obscure, the more it's up my alley.  And the 2008 indie film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising illustrates my next point perfectly.  If you've never seen it (and you really should), the gist is that the crew lost the campaign from the first film, and resident douchebag Cass demands a replay because he insists there is no game he can't win.  Because one of the band's players is unavailable, they don't have the full quorum needed to restart.  Cass recruits his ex-girlfriend Joanna as the final player, with the obvious intent to humiliate her and win the game because he assumes she's going to be a terrible, terrible newbie at it.  Unfortunately for him she's a math-and-logic whiz, and being both a girl at a table full of geeks and not a douchebag, his plan backfires when she wins over the entire crew.  Cass doesn't take it well (scene starts at 1:27:08 if you want to skip ahead):

Sound like any "friends" you might have?

When people start to get too suspicious of the Toxic Asshole's intentions, this is when they pull out one of their more devious tricks: the scapegoat.

Just like Cass in that meltdown, if you don't comply with the rules and allow them their loopholes, suddenly you are the one who is cheating.  You are the one who's making the game not fun.  You are the incompetent player.  They might've flipped the table and ragequit, but it's all your fault for pissing them off.

Narcissistic projection is one of the more effective tools in the Toxic Asshole's arsenal.  The one I dealt with flat-out accused her ex-girlfriend of things she did herself.  It's yet another way to preserve their ideal selves and not have to face the music.  If people start seeing through the hypocrisy, they just find some other donkey to pin the tail on.

And it works especially well because once a victim is stuck with the blame for everything, it's far easier to get them to accept responsibility for it, whether they're at fault or not.  Which will serve to draw them deeper into the web (and consequently, it'll be that much tougher to get out).

5. You Are Responsible For Their Emotions

One thing you will never hear a Toxic Asshole say is "I was/got angry/annoyed/etc."  Instead, their refrain will be "she/he pissed me off/annoyed me/etc."  Because one of the hallmarks of toxic and abusive behavior is making other people responsible for their moods.  It's one of the most insidious things in their playbook, because it accomplishes two goals: 1) absolving the Toxic Asshole of responsibility for themselves, and 2) laying a guilt trip on the particular minion they're trying to keep in line.

We all experience incidents where someone else's behavior is profoundly annoying/enraging/hurtful.  But the effect it has on us -- our emotions -- are still ours.  People who are not Toxic Assholes realize this on some level, and thus even when we are annoyed/angry/etc., we have ways of coping with it that don't drag other people kicking and screaming into the picture.

The Toxic Asshole refuses to use such coping mechanisms.  Everything they do that's been said so far -- the constant emergencies, devaluing others' feelings, moving the goalposts to benefit themselves, and projecting their unacceptable behaviors onto others -- is all leading up to this, to making other people responsible for what they feel.

The particular Toxic Asshole in my life would fake suicide attempts and ideation to get attention, and then blame anyone who ignored her for why she felt awful.  It was her way of guilting people into hanging around her, by taking advantage of their empathy and holding the fear of what she would do to herself if they left over their heads.  This was especially effective on people like me, who had seriously considered and attempted suicide before.  And frankly, those are exactly the kind of people she targets.  The vulnerable.  Those who have been abused at least once, and are thus prone to re-victimization.  Especially those who have been emotionally violated.

Because people who have suffered abuse are pliable in that regard.  They can be convinced to hold themselves responsible pretty easily, because someone else has already planted that seed.  Someone else has already held them responsible for things they have no control over.  Someone else has already used them as a scapegoat.  To the rest of the world, that's messed the hell up.  To the abused, that's just life.

And to the Toxic Asshole, that makes a mark ripe for the sniping.  They're like a broken vase.  Even if they've been repaired as much as possible, the cracks are still there.  And those cracks are weak points.  Hit them just right, and the whole thing will shatter all over again.

With the Toxic Asshole, nearly all of their friends will have this quality.  See, while the Toxic Asshole is frighteningly good at what they do, they're also incredibly lazy.  It's a rare thing when they choose a mark that has never been subject to the kind of tactics they use (and may therefore be perfectly capable of resisting them and telling the Toxic Asshole to get bent).  Because it's way easier to break a vase that's been repaired than to shatter a brand new one.

6. Standing Up For Yourself Is Treason

So what happens when the mark has finally had all they can take, and refuses to play the dutiful boot-licking emotional whipping boy?

Oh, bitch it is on, then.

In the twisted world of narcissistic abusers, standing up to them is their kryptonite.  Nothing will make a Toxic Asshole lose their shit quite like being challenged, and coming to the realization that all the gaslighting, manipulation, and guilt-tripping skills they've so carefully honed over the years no longer work.

That for all intents and purposes, they've lost.

At that point, the mask comes off and like the Grand High Witch, they're revealed for the pickled, maggot-ridden sack of putrefication they are.

That's when they'll either start the smear campaign against you by contacting all your friends and loved ones and telling them what a crazy bitch you are, or if they're too cowardly for that (like mine was), they'll go retreating back to their sycophantic fan club for the attention and sympathy fix that you're no longer providing.

And like any addict, they'll immediately start looking for a new source (provided they didn't have one lined up already, and many of them do).

See, your average well-adjusted person does not need constant attention.  Your average well-adjusted person understands boundaries, and understands that simply being their friend doesn't entitle them to every spare moment you have.  Nor does it make you their personal stress ball that they can squeeze every time they need to let off steam.  An average well-adjusted person will see their friends as people rather than as appliances, tools, and characters in a TV show they control.

This is because the average well-adjusted person has confidence in themselves and their ability to be decent human beings, such that they don't have to seek constant reassurance from everyone.  They're satisfied with who they are, enough that they don't need to warp reality into their own personal Holodeck.

Toxic Assholes, on the other hand, are thoroughly empty people.  They have confidence in spades, but it's confidence in the same way aspartame is sweet.

Having a friendship with a Toxic Asshole is like starring in a movie helmed by the most nightmarish director you've ever had to work with.  The script changes without warning, and your role is being constantly rewritten to suit their needs.  At first you'll be cast as the loyal sidekick.  If you get fed up and walk off the set, you'll get written out as a supervillain, for two reasons:

1) it absolves the Toxic Asshole of all responsibility

2) it makes an example of you to the rest of the film crew, detailing exactly what kind of treatment they can expect if they ever step out of line.

In my case, the Toxic Asshole I was friends with for entirely too long started devaluing and discarding me the minute I began withdrawing from her.  I went from being the friend she went running to whenever an "emergency" presented itself to being berated for not being available and then finally talked up as the person who ruined her life.  Purely because I was too emotionally exhausted to care and finally started taking my life back.

That's really the greatest tell for whether you have a Toxic Asshole on your hands.  What happens when you try to set -- and more importantly, enforce -- healthy boundaries.  If someone has an exaggeratedly awful reaction to being told "no?"  That's your giant neon sign that they're a Toxic Asshole and you need to get out.

Because what it's taken me so long to realize is that normal people don't fucking do this.

Normal people don't flip their shit when you tell them not to bug you so you can get work done/go grocery shopping/bathe/use the bathroom/etc.  Normal people don't flat-out ignore your "no" and keep pestering you even after you've said you'll be unavailable.  Normal people don't threaten to hurt and kill themselves when they don't get their way.  Normal people don't make you feel guilty, anxious, and worthless for having your own needs.

Standing up to a Toxic Asshole is the scariest goddamn thing you will ever do.  Because you've been conditioned to fear losing their friendship and approval.  You've been conditioned to value their opinion more than your own.  They trained you as such in order to feed their ego.

But as scary as it is, it's also worth it.  Because once you realize that their "friendship" is hollow, artificial, one-sided, and absolutely worth losing, the happier you'll be.

Mental Health Awareness Week: Depression Is Not Sadness

Depression isn't sadness.  Not even deep sadness.  In fact, take the deepest sadness and grief and anguish you could possibly imagine, and that would be an improvement.

Why?  Because even sadness and grief and anguish mean you still feel something.

Depression is having a steady supply of novocaine pumped into your skull where your brain should be.

Depression is the feeling that your body is a ten-ton weight you're dragging around.

Depression is not having the energy to attempt suicide.

Depression is looking at a plate of your favorite food and picking at it even though you're so hungry your stomach lining is trying to eat itself.

Depression is feeling like everything inside you has already died and you're just passing the time until your body catches on.

Depression is not even caring whether or not you care.

Depression is deliberately injuring yourself because even pain is better than nothing.

Depression is not being able to sleep past 5AM unless you've been awake longer than 20 hours prior.

Depression is not even sleeping so much as being occasionally unconscious.

Depression is whenever people talk about the future, you feel left out because you don't have one.

Depression is Hell.

5 Horrible Things You Learn From Surviving a Suicide Attempt

I was on my way home from work one day and feeling like frozen, thawed, and then partially reheated shit when I walked out in front of a speeding bus.

The driver fortunately had good enough reflexes not to hit my ass, so I’m still alive and unharmed and able to write this article for your entertainment. The way we talk about suicide as a society -- everything from the Saw franchise to the speculation regarding Robin Williams’ death last August -- makes it seem as though killing yourself is like becoming a Jedi. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’

That...is really the furthest thing from the truth. There are plenty of tries, with varying degrees of seriousness. And as long as you’re still alive and you still feel like parboiled shit, you’re at risk for trying again and eventually getting it right. Because even though suicide has been around as long as we have as a species, we still have a very poor understanding of what it takes for self-preservation, the strongest force in biology, to fail. Mostly because suicide is one of those things where people who succeed can’t exactly come back and tell us what the fuck happened.

But for people who fail at it? Well, read on.

1. Suicide Is Rarely Planned (At Least Not in Great Detail)

One of the reasons suicide shocks people is because we like to think that a decision as huge as ending your life isn’t the kind of thing people do on a whim. You think ahead, you plan what you want done with your body, who gets your collection of Star Trek memorabilia, etc. All the stuff that we think about when we’re planning our deaths. But most people who are thinking that far ahead are rational enough to not consider suicide (unless they know they’re dying anyway due to an illness or injury, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish).

The reality is that for a lot of people, the decision to kill themselves gets made in the same way college students decide to get a tattoo (including copious amounts of alcohol). The whole “this is fucking permanent” thing doesn’t really register, except in the final moments before the noose tightens/you hit the water/the car crashes/the last pill goes down your throat/the gun goes off.

In my case? I just didn’t give a shit what happened anymore as long as I wasn’t going to be around to deal with it. I hadn’t been planning to walk in front of that bus until I actually did it. My thought process literally went something like this: There’s a bus coming. If I don’t stop walking it’ll kill me. Oh well.

It was only afterward, when everyone in a 10-foot radius was freaking the fuck out because holy shit some girl we ride with every day almost got clipped by a bus, that I realized what had even happened. And I went along with the assumption that I hadn’t been paying attention because it’s easier to admit you’re a fucking idiot than admit to being depressed. But that’s a rant for another day. Point is, I didn’t plan months in advance that I was going to walk in front of a city bus and end it all. I made that decision quite literally on the fifteen-minute bus ride over there. It was a spur-of-the-moment choice when I was at rock bottom, still digging, didn’t think I had anyone around to stop me, and I was past caring.

2. People Will Doubt You’re Suicidal If You Don’t Seem Depressed Enough

The other reason suicide deaths come as such a shock to many people is because due to pervasive stereotypes about mental illness, we have these horribly inaccurate preconceived notions about what a depressed or suicidal person looks and acts like. We imagine the Myspace teen holed up in his room blogging about bartending in the dark while A Simple Plan blares in the background.

We never consider that our brother who manages to drag his ass out of bed every day to get to work may be thinking of ending it all because he hates his job but it’s the only place that would hire him, and he’s buried under a mountain of student loan debt that his children will be paying off when he’s 90. We never consider that our sister who is bubbly and funny and sweet and dorky just wants to make the world forget about her because she can’t see that her company is appreciated, and feels as though the world would be a much better place if she was no longer in it.

People with depression learn to be very good at hiding their pain. Often because when we do bring it up, we invite all of the stigma associated with it. We’re lazy. We complain too much. We’re too negative. We need to just get the fuck over it and make ourselves useful. So we learn quickly that it’s easier to put up and shut up.

When the bus missed me, everyone on the street -- people I rode with regularly -- just assumed I hadn’t been paying attention. I got told how lucky I was. How “God gave you another chance today.” I got asked what the hell I was doing. And all the while I wanted to just scream at them “IT WAS DELIBERATE, YOU STUPID FUCKS, STOP RUBBING MY FACE IN IT!”

But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to get hauled off in a squad car down to a psych ward for treatment I can’t afford. And also because telling well-meaning people who are happy you’re not a stain on the pavement to stop being glad you’re alive is kind of a dick move.

But the point is that I didn’t look like the classic preconceived image of a depressed person. I didn’t look or act like someone who was fed up enough with her life to walk in front of a three-ton speeding death bullet on purpose and give absolutely zero fucks. So the thought that “hey, this girl might’ve been trying to get herself killed” never crossed their minds. And there’s no reason it really should, either. Because in the world of people who aren’t depressed, who the fuck even does that? It’s easier and less painful to just assume I’m some dipshit who didn’t see the bus coming. And from my point of view, it was easier and less painful for me not to correct them.

3. You Will Hate Yourself For Failing

After I had assured everyone at the scene with blatant lies that I was okay, I waited for them to catch their buses and leave, then spent about twenty minutes sitting on a bench and crying. Not from the shock of holy fuck I almost died. I was crying because I felt even more worthless because shit, killing yourself is easy and I’m such a complete fuck-up I couldn’t even do that right.

I was mad at myself for not succeeding. And I couldn’t simply do it again right that second because now people were on alert, and I’d have less of a chance than I did before with the element of surprise.

Life is not like the Saw films, where the title character survives a suicidal car wreck to come out with a new outlook on life and a drive to make people mutilate themselves in order to prove how much they don’t want to die. I survived a suicide attempt to turn around and hate myself and life even more than I did before. I felt like a coward, for choosing a passive method and not being brave enough to just do it.

And that’s all part of depression. Of finding every stupid thing you’ve done and/or failed at and believing those deeds to be all you’re capable of. Like the Dementors from the Harry Potter series (which Rowling totally intended as a metaphor for her own battle with the disorder). A depressed person could literally find the cure for AIDS and win a Nobel Prize and they would still feel stupid and worthless and hopeless because of the one time they tried to make an omelette and burned it so badly they had to throw out pan and all.

“But that’s irrational!”, you would say. And you’d be correct. Of course it’s irrational. That’s why it’s a mental illness.

4. You Will Hate Other People For Wanting to Help You

Besides myself, I also hated the driver for not hitting me. And the people who were asking if I was okay. Nevermind that these people were genuinely far more concerned for my life than I was at that moment and really did just want to help. I hated them for not letting me die like I wanted. For making me fail.

That’s another part of why seeking help for depression is so fucking difficult. I’ve often likened it to that kid who used to poke you in the back of the neck with a pencil in math class. Only now he’s using an icepick. It’s a little inner head-voice that is constantly telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are. And eventually you develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome towards it by agreeing with it just to shut it up for a while. And every time someone tries to do something to make you feel better, even as small as giving you a compliment, up pops that voice again. Feeding you a line about their true motives, and that they couldn’t possibly legit care about you because who the fuck does that? And once again, you start agreeing to make it shut up. And you begin to resent the very people trying to help you because you think they’re wasting their time on a lost cause like you. You don’t want help. You just want to die.

It’s a little like having an abusive spouse. Only that spouse lives in your head and you have to stand by and defend them because you have nobody else. And again, that’s another function of depression. It isolates you. It makes you feel detached from the world at large, like you don’t belong with other people. And you start to hate anyone who tries to get past the barbed wire, electrified fencing, ten-foot-thick steel walls, gun turrets, and lasers that your abusive head-spouse has set up to keep everyone out so they can have you all to themselves.

Because how dare these people talk bad about your beau. Even when he’s metaphorically (and sometimes literally) beating the shit out of you.

5. Getting Help Is the Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do (But It's Worth It)

The thing about life is that we’re all living on borrowed time. When you’re suicidal, you feel like you will never make enough to pay back the loan, so fuck it, you may as well just declare bankruptcy and call it a day. And because Depression Logic is working on your brain like an infomercial works on your grandmother at two in the morning, that certainly seems like a good idea at the time.

And like the infomercial, the product is a total ripoff and you can’t return it.

Getting help is hard. Because literally everything in you is going to fight against getting better. That abusive head-spouse has been a part of you for so long that you feel like you won’t even know who you are anymore if you get rid of it. But that’s the thing: you really can’t get rid of it, not completely. And any healthcare professional who claims to be able to ‘fix’ your depression needs to be reported to the state board to get their license revoked. No amount of medication or talk therapy is going to rewire your brain chemistry to make you not depressed anymore. The goal of mental healthcare is management, not a cure.

And what you have to learn to do when managing depression is to ignore the voice or make it shut up without capitulating to it. It’s giving the abusive head-spouse his own room with the door walled shut and ignoring his screaming about what a bitch you are for keeping him cooped up like that (alternating with crocodile tears and blatantly false promises to not call you a bitch anymore if you let him out). And sometimes, even with help, that voice is still going to be hard to ignore.

If you want a new lease on life, you have to make a down payment. And by the time you get around to taking out that loan, your credit is shot. So your down payment and fees for the first few months (maybe years) are going to be through the goddamn roof. But unlike that piece of junk on the infomercial, a new life is worth every last red cent. And it does eventually get easier to make the payments each month. Though some months will be more difficult than others. Even with treatment, there will be relapses (which is what happened to me).

The hardest part is filling out that initial application because it means admitting just how shitty you feel. When I first started receiving treatment, my general physician had to wheedle it out of me. All the signs were there; but until I admitted to what was happening and stopped blaming my razor scars on my cat, his hands were tied.

I had to want to get better. I had to say I wasn’t going to take my abusive head-spouse back anymore. I had to make that decision entirely on my own. And it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life because it meant standing up for myself, against myself.

That’s really what depression is in the end. You are literally battling your own mind. Every day. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go back to sleep. The part of you that wants to live is fighting the part of you that wants to die. Occasionally, that second part gets the upper hand.

Surviving a suicide attempt isn’t the failure it feels like at first. What it really means is that you still have some fight left in you. There is still a part of you that isn’t quite ready to give up yet. A part of you that hasn’t lost all hope. That self-preservation instinct is still there.

That’s the exact opposite of failure; it’s the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Love Conquers All

It's the law of the land, now: marriage is a right for all, not just a privilege of heterosexual people.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear in a 5-4 decision that banning a couple from marrying purely because their genitals match is the absolute bollocks that we've all known it as.  As a lesbian, this means a lot.  As a kid, I always said that "I don't ever want to get married." What I meant but didn't feel free to say at the time was "I don't ever want to get married to a man."  SCOTUS has now ruled that I can marry a woman instead, no matter what state I live in, and every other state in the country must recognize it.  That's huge.

Besides the obvious squeeing because equal rights fucking finally, I'd also like to take this time to assuage the right-wing butthurt out there of what marriage equality does and doesn't mean:

1) No, you will not be required to host a same-sex wedding in your church.

I know the very idea may blow your mind to itty bitty pieces, but churches are not a requirement of legal marriage, and there are a fuckton of people who get married every day without ever setting foot in one.  Marriage equality is referring specifically to having the law recognize a couple as married.  What the decision requires is for every court in every county in every state in the country to issue a marriage license regardless of the couple's sex, and for every other court in every other county in every other state in the country to acknowledge that the couple is married, regardless of the couple's sex.

2) No, you can't marry dogs and children.

In order to legally marry, both parties must be legally elligible to enter a contract.  Meaning that both must be of consenting age (minimum varies by state, and requires parental consent/witness if a minor), and must be of sound mind (basically the rules of elligibility for entering a contract, period).  Children and dogs fulfill neither of these requirements, ergo nobody can marry them.

3) No, this decision does not legalize incest.

Here's the part where that whole "equal protection" thing comes into play.  Incest prohibitions treat everybody equally.  If you are prohibited from marrying because of incest, it doesn't matter who you are.  What makes it discrimination is when the rule only applies to some people but not to others.

Saying you can't marry your sister is like saying you can't buy a ham sandwich at a kosher deli.  Nobody can marry their sister, and nobody can buy a ham sandwich at a kosher deli.  If nobody can do it, it's not discrimination, purely because the rule applies to everyone.  Ergo, that law isn't going away anytime soon (nevermind that incestuous relationships are inherently non-consensual, so you're not even comparing apples to other fruit, here).

In the case of same-sex marriage, what makes it discrimination is the denial of a marriage license that would otherwise be granted if the exact same couple was heterosexual.

And now for the more fun part.  What this ruling does mean is that gay couples now receive the same benefits that straight ones do.  Here are just a few of those benefits, and the ramifications of more people having them:

- Next-of-kin rights.  Previously, if one half of a gay couple suffered an illness or injury that rendered them comatose, unless they had an advanced directive written out, their partner did not have the right to make a medical decision such as pulling them off a respirator.  What this meant is that the family who kicked them out of the house for being gay could now force them to live as a vegetable, even when their partner of 30+ years knows they wouldn't have wanted such a thing.  And if the injured/ill half of the couple landed in ICU, the partner of 30+ years wouldn't even be allowed to visit them.

Now that gay couples can marry, you don't have this problem.  The person who ideally knows them best -- the person they vowed to spend the rest of their life with -- can step in and make the decision they know is right.

- Immigration.  Gay couples wherein one party is a U.S. citizen now have an avenue for gaining permanent resident or citizenship status for the other half, since they can now marry.

- Joint tax filing.  Gay couples can now file a joint tax return and enjoy all the tax breaks straight couples get.  This means gay couples can improve their financial station by tying the knot, which means economic stimulus since they'll have more money than they did while single.

- Spousal privilege in court. Communication between spouses is inadmissible in criminal and civil court proceedings.

And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Bottom line is that history got made today, and lots of lives are being made better for it.  The tide has turned.  It's not going back.  You can either swim with it or drown, and frankly we're too busy picking out china patterns to care which one you choose.

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Not as Miserable as You Think

I should really just call this David Wong is a Fucking Idiot, Part 2 of a Series.  It's short, sweet, to the point.  When I called him a repeat offender of a doucheking in my last post about him, it's precisely because of articles like the one I'm about to rip apart here.  For today's shitshow, we have this little gem from 2007: "7 Ways the 21st Century is Making You Miserable."  Again, presumably because "When I Was Your Age We Had to Walk Barefoot in the Snow Both Ways" and "How Do I Set This Fucking DVR to Record All of Mad Men, Dammit?!" were too long.

First, I wish to make it perfectly clear that as a technophile, I fucking love the 21st century.  I love all of the crazy shit we're able to do with phones, computers, and the internet.  When I can ask my phone for directions instead of a gas station attendant and actually get directions I can understand, when I can talk to somebody halfway across the world who is living the events I'm seeing on the news and get real-world perspective, when I can do all the research I need for a project in a single evening instead of having to wait for someone to return the book I need to the library, it's a great time to be alive.  So obviously, this post is going to be somewhat biased toward the "technology is fucking awesome" side.

But I also want to make it clear that I'm writing about the 21st century from a completely opposite perspective that Wong did.  Wong is a straight white guy (that pretends to be Chinese-American on the internet) who is just hitting that age when men feel the need to buy overpriced sportscars so they can re-live their 20s, while I'm a gay woman who is just hitting the age where she's trying to get her shit together and stay out of Old Economy Steve's basement.  I love the 21st century because technology and changing social norms have granted me the ability to rant like this.  Wong hates the 21st century because people are starting to value the opinions of straight middle-aged white guys less and less.

The difference in these perspectives is immediately apparent when Wong opens his article with a lamentation that 25% of us would fail the "Naked Photo Test" -- that being the number of people you would trust with a lewd photo of yourself.

Maybe you've heard of a little phenomenon called "revenge porn."  If you haven't, let me explain it as plainly as I can:

1) Girl meets Boy
2) Girl dates Boy
3) Boy asks for nude photos
4) Girl sends nude photos because they've been dating for years and she trusts Boy
5) Girl and Boy have a fight, break up
6) Nude photos Girl sent Boy end up on porn sites because Boy is an asshole
7) ???
8) Profit

Revenge porn has been around since Hustler started their "Beaver Hunters" section in the 1980s (and got sued for it).  And even as far back as 2000, it was a thing on Usenet.  So 1) I'd be interested to know how many of that 25% who wouldn't trust anybody with a nude photo happen to be female, and 2) anyone lamenting that people don't trust others with naked photos is kind of an entitled douchebag anyway, because you don't get to dictate how trusting other people should be with their private shit.

And that's only the beginning.  His real lamentation is that we have fewer and fewer close friends today than we did years ago.  And to be honest, that's such a bullshit statement because "close friend" is a 100% subjective term.  To David Wong, a close friend is someone he can send a nude photo to and not have it wind up on StudMuncher.com.  For a straight white guy, this is not a very high bar at all.  To me, a close friend is someone whom I can tell that I've been struggling with suicidal thoughts since I was eight years old, and they won't spout some horrible ignorant platitude at me.

So without further ado, the 21st century is less miserable than you think because...

1. You Have Fewer Annoying Strangers In Your Life

Wong's argument here is that technology which lets us avoid annoying people makes us less able to deal with the ones we do run into, and being forced to deal with these idiots makes us miserable.  That when people did have more annoyances in their lives, they were happier somehow because they were able to ignore it.

The problem with this logic is that again, as a straight white guy, the annoyances he's describing are laughably petty: a fat lady who can't operate a shopping cart.  A toddler kicking in his seat at the theatre.  A confused cashier at Blockbuster.  The smelly old man at the doctor's office.  Shrill voices.  Clunky jokes.  Body odor.  Squeaky shoes, for fuck's sake.

I wish those were the kinds of annoyances that I use my iPhone to filter out.

Instead, I use my phone to avoid the creepy old guy on the bus trying to hit on me.  The religious nut trying to convert me to Mormonism.  The teenage girls muttering in quiet tones about my weight.  The middle-aged douchebag telling me to "smile more."  The old woman telling me I'm a slut for wearing stretch pants in public.

And I'm white.  People who don't have the good fortune to be born white use their technology to filter out even worse bullshit.  If all it takes to send David Wong on a screaming crotch-punching spree is a pair of squeaky shoes, I think that says more about his ability to tolerate strangers.

Furthermore, the "happier time" he's hearkening back to is "fifty years ago."  So in 2007, that would've been 1957.  Let me tell you a little bit about 1957.  The reason it seemed like a time when people were more tolerant of annoying strangers is because up through roughly the mid-60s, the U.S. was a culture of fake politeness that didn't tell annoying strangers that they were being fucking annoying.  People dealt with the horror that was post-World War II by simply pretending bad shit didn't happen.  It was all manners and niceties and putting on the cheerful face to hide just how much you actually wanted to punch that guy in the crotch.  You didn't talk about your problems.  You kept up appearances.  You maintained that idyllic veneer of Norman Rockwell paintings no matter what.

Not to mention people old enough to remember 1957 would be pushing their 70s-90s today.  If you poll them now?  Of course they're going to say life was better back then.  They still had their own teeth and didn't need dialysis and weren't punching in phone numbers of friends they forgot were dead.

Plus, the economy was in a lot of ways better (at least for white people).  A family of four could make it on a single income, and the job didn't require more than high school education (often not even that).  Today, because of stagnating wages and even the shittiest jobs requiring at least a 2-year degree, people are forced to go into shitloads of college debt -- which can't even be discharged in bankruptcy -- for a job that can barely support one person, nevermind a family.  But that isn't technology's fault.  That's the fault of sheer corporate greed.

Anyway, with the 1960s counterculture movement came the notion of foregoing the turd polish and being honest.  It was now both okay and encouraged to tell your out-of-town relatives that they'll need to book a hotel this trip because you do not feel like having them invade your house for a week.  You could now tell that asshole at work to quit showing you pictures of her kids and asking when you're popping out your own because you don't fucking care and it's none of her goddamned business.

People weren't any more tolerant back then.  They just pretended to be, because it was bad form to tell people to stop pissing you off.

Today, with smartphones and hand-held gaming consoles and iPods and e-readers, we're able to get to and from work and endure layovers at the airport (and flights) and not get harangued as much by random annoying strangers.  Because to most people, being engrossed by an electronic device is visual shorthand for "don't fucking bother me."  Not being bothered as often by creepy-ass people makes me the absolute opposite of miserable.

2. You May Have Fewer Friends, But They're Better Friends

Here, Wong makes basically the same stupid argument as above, but with the twist that putting up with annoying people got you more friends.  Somehow.  He doesn't really explain that very well, except to say that "technology is bad."

And again, having more friends doesn't mean people back then had more close friends.  People didn't share their dark, horrible secrets with each other, not even their so-called "best friends."  Apparently in David Wong's world, just tolerating somebody makes them a friend.  Right after lamenting that we don't tolerate people enough to send them nudes.  Which is it?  You can't claim people don't have enough friends these days if you're constantly moving the goalposts that define "friend."

It also bears mentioning that again, what Wong is classifying as an "annoying friend" is only annoying in that petty straight-white-guy way.  The example he gives of an "annoying" friend?  Someone who listens to different music than you.

Really?  If that's the most annoying friend you've ever had to deal with, I'd say you're doing pretty fucking well for yourself, Mr. Straight White Guy.

Try having friends who regularly made sexual comments and jokes about your body.  Or who didn't just not share your interests but belittled you for having them.  Or who teased you about being a lesbian before you even knew what the word meant (which made it so much fun when you had to accept later that they were right).

The 21st century doesn't just allow people to find those with common interests.  The internet provides a nice cloak of anonymity and the ability to literally change your identity with a few mouse clicks.  As such, people are often more open and honest about themselves online than they are face-to-face, because there are fewer reasons to lie.

People lie when they feel threatened, mostly.  When they fear what others might think if they knew the truth.  That social filter that Wong detests so much?  That's actually working in our favor online.  If people don't like the truth or judge us harshly for the truth?  We can avoid them, rather easily.  We can almost guarantee that we never have to hear from these Judgey McJudgersons ever again.  Being able to filter out that threat gives us less incentive to lie.

Which means that the friends we do make this way end up being better friends.  Because they are friends with us rather than with the well-adjusted act we put on.

Case-in-point: none of the (very few) meatspace friends ("meatspace" being the edgy new term for "not the internet") that I have ever made have been particularly close.  Most of them I don't really talk to anymore after figuring out they were kind of huge dicks.  And the ones I do still talk to are kept at arm's length.  I still put on the well-adjusted act, and there is deeply personal shit I will not tell them for my own sanity.

The best friends I have ever made can all be counted on one hand and I have met them all through the internet.  I've been talking to these people for over a decade in some instances without ever knowing what they even look like.  I have told them the deeply personal shit I don't tell the meatspace crew.  They know the type of person I really am and they haven't run away screaming, and that means way more to me than having a bunch of "friends" who are utterly fucking clueless.

3. There Are More And Better Ways to Communicate (Including Texting)

In this point, Wong contends that if 40% of an e-mail is misunderstood, then that means text is an inferior form of communication because most of our cues are nonverbal.  There are a few problems with this.  Not the least of which is that the article he quoted for that 40% study was in The Christian Science Monitor.  You know, the same people who look to prayer to heal cancer rather than a hospital?  Yeah, those guys.  And the study was not even in regard to the e-mail medium itself, but how racism and sexism affect how people read e-mails.  Thing is, nonverbal cues are just as easy to misinterpret because emotions are inherently unstable and fickle anyway.

Just as an exercise, read the following sentence:

"I didn't say you stole my money."

Now read it again, and place the emphasis on a different word.  It's the same fucking sentence, but it will have seven different meanings depending on which word is stressed.  Back when I worked in Call Center Hell, where the only form of communication was your voice, this was noted as something to be careful of.  Tone and inflection can very easily set off an already agitated customer purely because they're viewing your emotional cues through their own red-hazed brain.  Likewise, we are quite capable of giving off the impression that we're angry, stressed, or scared even when we aren't.  Especially when patterns of abuse have skewed the way we interpret nonverbal cues.  And this doesn't even count people on the autism spectrum, for whom nonverbal cues are inherently useless.

The idea that you can't properly convey emotion through text is fucking insane.  If that were true, we wouldn't have books at all.  We have not only a myriad of punctuation marks and formatting to tell us exactly how a sentence is intended to be read, but we have connotations of words themselves that convey emotion.  That's kind of what writing is.

Which of course begs the question: if writing is such a bad way to communicate, then why did we invent it in the first place?  And why have we been increasingly relying on it for 5,000 years?

See, inventions don't hang around that long unless they serve a need.  And the need that writing serves as a form of communication is twofold: record and privacy.  The brain is actually pretty shit at remembering details, and has a nasty habit of making up its own to fill in the blanks.  So we invented writing as a way to keep our shit straight.  We're much better communicators when we have a record to refer back to and keep our messages consistent.

Face-to-face also has the disadvantage of conveying information (badly) to third parties who may be watching and listening.  One perusal through Overheard in New York should demonstrate why this can be a bad thing.  Writing it down and giving the message to somebody keeps it relatively private.  This is why coded messages all throughout history have been passed along largely through writing and inscription rather than orally.

The problem is not that texting is a shitty form of communication; it's that people are shitty communicators, and writing is a skill that's being taught less effectively in schools than it used to be (because steady budget cuts and stagnating pay have driven the good teachers into careers where they can put food back on the table).

But it's especially telling that the example Wong uses as a reason texting sucks is a friend of his not wanting any of the chili he made, and (if he isn't exaggerating) Wong getting so offended that he didn't speak to him for six months.  Because this pretty much illustrates just how bad Wong is at following his own advice.

Even if "no, thank you" is a phrase said friend uses sarcastically a lot and you are really that proud of your culinary skills, how close can you possibly be as friends that you can't tell he's not being sarcastic this time?  And that you would drop communication altogether for half a year over a bowl of fucking chili?

Oh, but Wong then admits that he did that because he was already in a bad mood when he read that text.  So really, he made a ridiculous snap judgement about someone he supposedly called a friend, and then blamed texting for it.  It's almost like this was one of those "annoying friends" he says we're supposed to have more of, that he got pissed off at for a stupid, petty Straight White Guy reason, but it's just easier to blame newfangled technology than admit when you're being a douchebag.

The reason texting, IM, and e-mail make us less miserable is because we now have yet another form of communication, and one that we don't feel pressured to answer right away.  You can put away messages up on IM if you're busy doing stuff or just don't feel like talking.  You don't have to answer a text or an e-mail as soon as you receive it.  There are no awkward silences to worry about.  Communication through writing is a godsend for introverts because we can take all the time we need to recharge between interactions so that we're not cranky as fuck because we want some alone time for a few hours.  Having that option has made a whole lot of people way less miserable and lonely.

4. Online Company Lets You Know You Aren't Alone

Here, Wong tries to tie all three previous points together with a little bow of smug superiority: because we're communicating badly and only to the few people that don't annoy us, that makes us lonelier.  Somehow.  His reasoning seems to be that because you can't convey emotion through text, you filter everything through your own shitty mood instead.

But as said before, you most certainly can convey emotion through text if you know what you're doing.  It's especially weird for a writer to say that you can't effectively communicate emotion through words alone.  You would think somebody whose livelihood depends on such an ability would realize just how fucking stupid he sounds.

The reality is that online interaction, especially mobile, has exploded in the last decade because it fills a need.  People work crazy hours.  They have families to take care of.  Many just don't have time for good old-fashioned hanging out in person.  Face-to-face outings are becoming more of a luxury from a bygone era in which one full-time job could provide for a family of four.  Now with people's schedules all over the place, texting and e-mailing are the preferred methods of keeping in touch because you can respond at your leisure.

Fine, so you can't both get the same night off work to go see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.  Instead, you can see it separately and squee at each other.  Which is pretty much the same thing you'd be doing if you met up to see it in person anyway.

Either way, the important thing about online company is that it's company.  Like I've said before, the friends I've made online have made me feel less alone than anyone I've ever met in meatspace.  These are friends who have talked me out of a mental breakdown at two in the morning.  Friends who have simply checked in on me when they hadn't heard from me in a couple days (and I've done the same for them).  Friends who let me know that there are real, living, breathing people out there who give enough of a shit about me to ask if I'm all right.

That is more than any meatspace friend has ever done for me.

Even if we don't necessarily talk every day, we still see each other in our buddy lists.  We see that we're logged on, and not seeing that name there for an unusal amount of time makes us concerned for each other.  We know we aren't alone, and we know there are people out there who care.

Gee, it's almost as if it's easier for Wong to blame technology for loneliness rather than a complete lack of people skills...

5. We Get Criticized Now More Than Ever Because We're Encouraged to Be Honest

Remember what I said before about 1950s culture being all about the politeness and not telling your friends and family when they're pissing you off?  Yeah, we're revisiting that again.  It's funny that Wong should make this point about not being criticized enough in the 21st century as opposed to past decades, because the reverse is reality: not criticizing people is at the heart of old-timey culture.  "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

And of course, here's the hilarious irony, straight from Wong's own mouth:

"And none of it mattered, because none of those people knew me well enough to really hit the target. I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little."

No shit, Sherlock.  That much is fucking obvious.  Because if you had any real friendships built on real honesty and real criticism, you wouldn't be talking like such a complete fucking tool.  You wouldn't be making the most mundane, stupid problems into world-ending crises.  You wouldn't be wanting to go on a screaming crotch-punching spree over a stranger's body odor.  You would realize that maybe, just maybe, it's you who is miserable in the 21st century because you choose to be.

And yes, this goes right back to being Mr. Straight White Guy.  People have been loath to criticize straight white guys for much.  See, when women act like straight white guys, they get death and rape threats hurled at them from all over the world.  When brown people act like straight white guys, they get shot and choked to death by police officers who shouldn't have badges.

When a straight white guy acts like a straight white guy, he gets to hold seminars telling other straight white guys how to assault women, and gets paid handsomely for it.

So the fact that David Wong hasn't been criticized much in his life is less a product of 21st century technology and more to do with him being born into the most fortunate demographic in the country.

E-mail and texting are actually the perfect tools for incisive, brutal honesty, because the person you're sending them to can't shout you down and punch you in the head for saying shit they don't want to hear, but desperately need to.  You are free to speak your mind without interruption.  Sure, they can delete them.  They can just not read them.  But guess what?

They can do the same fucking thing in a face-to-face or phone conversation.  They can hang up.  They can walk away.

And the thing is?  With e-mail and text, people are actually more likely to take it in than ignore it.  Or at least that's been my experience.  Precisely because they aren't being put on the spot.  They have time to read it.  More importantly, because of that recordkeeping ability that I mentioned earlier, they've had time to re-read it, to stew and simmer and anguish over it until they finally came back to me a week later and said "you know what, you're absolutely right."

Because often their first reaction is going to be to go on the defensive, and when you're in real-time, that gut reaction of "how dare you" is all you have.  You don't have time to settle the fuck down before you're expected to respond.

And that's really one of the reasons people are far more honest with each other today that they were in 1957.  If you wanted to give someone a piece of your mind back then, you had three choices: 1) write a letter, which required you to spend money for paper, ink, and postage, 2) phone or telegram, in the days before free nationwide long-distance, or 3) in-person confrontation, which risked everything from getting beaten bloody to simply getting shouted at so you can't get a word in edgewise.  Besides the old-timey notion of pretending nothing's wrong and hoping one day it will actually be true, it also cost money, time, and the chance of incurring bodily harm to tell somebody they were being a shithead.

Today?  We have lost our patience for bullshit, and e-mail and texting don't really cost you anything extra, and the person you're telling off can't beat the tar out of you for doing so.  And if they break off the friendship?  Their loss.  So there's far less reason to keep our grievances to ourselves.  We aren't suffering from a lack of the ability to suffer fools.  We're simply less tolerant of shitty behavior, and less afraid to say when we've had enough.

6. There is Way More to Be Outraged About, and We're Better Informed of It

Here, Wong essentially sweeps every major event of the past 20 years under the rug because people in 1957 had it worse, but somehow seemed to tolerate it better.  Which means we're miserable about nothing today because we're told to be miserable by the news we consume.

Again, he's missing the bigger picture because he's viewing the decade through the rosy pink nostalgia goggles of Grease and I Love Lucy and every musical Rogers and Hammerstein ever wrote.

This ability to suffer horrible tragedies while seeming to not be outraged by much of anything is again fueled by the 1950s training to keep up appearances and pretend everything is fine.  It's also funny that he mentions Vietnam, but completely forgets about the shitloads of protests against it.  Including the one where the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four unarmed college students.

Instead, what example of purposeful bad news does he use?  Conflicting reviews of Fall Out Boy.  Not even facts, but an opinion.  That only a straight white guy would get outraged over.

Not the tanking economy and burgeoning global credit crisis.  Not the epic clusterfuck that was the handling of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.  Not the commuter train bombings in Mumbai.  Not anything remotely relevant that was going on in the world at the time.

It's almost as if because David Wong doesn't think the current bad news is worth being outraged over because it doesn't affect him personally, nobody else should be outraged over it, either.  And if they are, it's only because they're sheeple who have it so good that they have to find ways to be miserable now.  Which, you know, kind of negates all his previous points about how everything was better in the 1950s.

Even in 2007, we had the war in Iraq, which unlike World War II, was both completely unnecessary and making literally half the world angry at us.  And unlike Vietnam, we knew the weapons of mass destruction were a fucking lie and we ran in there anyway.  And we knew that the Bush administration had absolutely no plan to get out once we were in.  And we knew it was quite literally a war for fun and profit.  We did it anyway.

So yes, people were pissed off and rightly so.

We aren't "victims" of an "outrage machine."  We simply have a lot more to be pissed off about.  We did in 2007, and we have even more now.  And we know more because unlike in 1957, we don't depend on the ad-driven media to give us our news while they fight for ratings.  We have social media that can tell us exactly what is happening on the ground, from people who are living it.

We aren't pretending everything is fine anymore when we know it's not.  We're no longer lying to ourselves about the state the world is in because we can no longer afford to, and we're out of excuses.

And why does this make us less miserable?  For the same reason an abused child finally telling their school counselor about their shitty home life is less miserable: keeping up that facade of happy-go-lucky when your existence is anything but is draining.  Physically and mentally.

We don't have to do that anymore.  The ability to speak our minds and let the world know just how angry we are and that we're not going to take it anymore is cathartic.  Therapeutic.  We aren't bound by a culture of bullshit to pretend we're fine anymore.  Moreover, admitting things are bad is the first step to changing them.  It makes us feel we can actually do something about our problems besides endure them gracefully.

7. We're Finally Taking Mental Illness Seriously (Unlike This Asshole)

So according to David Wong, we're more miserable today because due to the ability to have friends that are not local or at the very least don't know exactly where you live and can this dig through your trash for your printed work schedule, we don't have to be burdened by their mundane problems.  And that makes us literally worth less as people.  It doesn't matter if we're there to talk them out of a suicidal funk at four in the morning, if we don't have to drive them to work, we mean less as a friend (it also bears mentioning before I go any further, that this reasoning is going to quite literally fly in the face of everything he says next).

I'm not even sure where to start with this mountain of bullshit and Straight White Guy Problems.  Except to say that if fixing computers or being interrupted from a marathon of your favorite TV show is a bigger issue to you than being talked out of suicide, can I have your life?

This goes right along with his "make assholes like me think you're a better person" article in that his solution is that you can only learn to like yourself when you do stuff that makes you worthy to other people.  And in David Wong's world, that means fixing his computer.

But here's the rub: he unwittingly admits his entire reasoning is bullshit right here:

You can't bullshit yourself. If I think Todd over here is worthless for sitting in his room all day, drinking Pabst and playing video games one-handed because he's masturbating with the other one, what will I think of myself if I do the same thing?

Well yes, douchebag.  And the trick is to stop thinking people are worthless just because they spend their time doing shit you don't approve of.  When you label any pastime or preference as something that devalues a person, you are creating a way to hate yourself if your tastes happen to change.  And yes, there is a difference between thinking the act is worthless, and thinking the person is.  Case-in-point: I think organized sports are pretty worthless.  But athletes are still people, and thus they still have inherent value, just like everybody else.  In David Wong's world, value as a person is defined purely by how useful he finds you.  Something the worst people in the history of the world -- Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot -- adopted into national policy at various times, and the results were not pretty.

His solution to combat this feeling of worthlessness?  Not counseling.  Not medication.  Just "doing stuff."  Being "useful."  In fact, he flat-out says counseling is useless if you don't make yourself useful and likable to other people.  If you don't do something with a "tangible result."

So wait a sec...  Wouldn't "doing something" include fixing your own fucking computer?  Or finding other ways to amuse and feed yourself rather than dropping in on your friends unannounced and nagging them for their sandwiches?  Taking the bus to work instead of bugging people for car rides?

But that's not the worst of it.  The worst of it is his insistence that we're miserable because we don't work enough on things that we can see.  That we don't struggle to survive by having to hunt and gather our own food.  That office jobs make us miserable because we don't get anything physical out of it.

No, that isn't why office jobs make us miserable.  Office jobs make us miserable only when we feel undervalued by our bosses.  When we feel we aren't getting enough in return for what we do (not just pay, either, but even acknowledgement of a job well done).  And when our bosses implement company policies that make it frustrating as fuck to do the work we're required to.

Yes, accomplishment is great.  But I wasn't miserable doing call center and retail because it wasn't anything physical (retail was actually very physical).  I was miserable because I had to lick the boots of and wait hand and foot on asshole customers, and apologize and take the blame for shit that wasn't my fault while getting paid a near-starvation wage.

People don't cut themselves just to make their pain and healing real.  There are as many reasons for self-injury as there are self-injurers.  For some, it is the physical manifestation of pain that has no name.  For others, it's to punish themselves for feeling things they think they aren't supposed to.  And for still others, it's a way they ground themselves out of dissociation and remind themselves they're still alive, still people.

Thing is, suicidal teens and self-injurers have been around forever.  We just didn't fucking talk about it the way we do now.  Because 1950s culture said we weren't allowed to.

See, 1957 was only five years after the publishing of the DSM-I, the first standardized manual on mental illness.  And while the DSM-I is absolutely horrible by today's standards, it was still better than what came before it, which was essentially "stop whining and do something with your life."

Which is exactly what David Wong is advocating.

While our mental health system is still a far cry from adequate, people are less miserable today because these problems are finally getting taken seriously.  Because we have a better understanding of them than we did fifty years ago.

Modern technology has given us myriad ways to break out of the pit of self-hatred.  Hell, there's even counseling chat services out there (perfect for people who can't talk on the phone because they're physically disabled or they just have terrible anxiety about it).  We have new ways to make friends we would never meet otherwise.  We're not expected to put up with toxic bullshit anymore.  We're allowed to tell people what kind of day we've actually had instead of pretending it was fine when it wasn't.  Moreover, this same technology has allowed people who aren't straight white men to be heard over the droning, petty complaints that privileged fucks define their world by.

The reason David Wong is miserable in the 21st century is because he is the exact type of toxic douchebag and annoying friend and stranger that we invented iPods and tablets and smartphones and Nintendo DS and PlayStation Vita to filter out.  And because he's miserable, he assumes everyone else must be miserable, too.  And if they're not, he's going to try and convince them that they are because he's just the kind of shithead who can't stand anyone else having fun when he isn't.

See, technology is an inanimate object.  It can't make anybody miserable.  People like David Wong choose to be miserable despite all these advances because they're pining for a decade they didn't even live in, where nobody questioned their privilege.

It's not us that need to get out and reconnect with the world.  It's David Wong and everyone like him who need to get out of 1957 and accept that straight white guys just aren't as important as they used to be.  And that that's made everyone else a lot happier.

6 Simple Truths That Will Actually Make You a Better Person

For the most part, I love Cracked.com.  It's a funny, pseudo-informative timewaster that makes my lunch break at work awesome and therefore the rest of my day more awesome.  But occasionally, they post an article by some self-important doucheking who thinks he's discovered the secret of the universe that just makes me wonder how someone can have their head that far up their own ass and not suffocate.

Recently, I rediscovered one of these self-indulgent tubesocks by one David Wong (a repeat offender of a doucheking) called 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person.  Presumably because "6 Pieces of Terrible Misguided Philosophy That Will Make Assholes Like David Wong Think You're a Better Person" and "I Missed the Entire Point of That Movie I Keep Praising" were too long.

The whole steaming pile of Ayn Rand-inspired nonsense reads like the manifesto of a Reformed Nice Guy who decided that rather than complain about the assholes who get all the hot women and good jobs, he'll just become the asshole he thinks pretty girls date and rich men hire.  That's only "self-improvement" if being a rich sociopath with no real friends and a trophy wife is your ultimate goal in life (and really, what else do you expect from a pasty white dude who pretends to be Chinese-American on the internet?).

If that's not your goal, then every point he makes in that article is shitty advice that's going to leave you even more friendless and miserable with a bunch of meaningless "successes" that will not give you even a stitch of satisfaction in your life.

Instead, here is some actual advice on how to be a better person in the truest sense of the term:

1. Human Nature Is Selfish, But You Can Be Better Than That

We have all heard at some point the adage that "kindness is its own reward."  When we're kids, teenagers, and self-righteous Nice Guys, we tend to interpret that statement as "kindness is its own reward because people will reward you when you're kind."  This mentality is what separates children from adults, and Nice Guys from the women they want to fuck.

Because it misses the entire point.  "Kindness is its own reward" doesn't mean that you will be rewarded for being nice.  At least not by other people.  The true reward for kindness is the feeling you get when something you've done has made another person happy.

There was a doctor in my city who died a few years ago, but while he was alive, every Christmas he transformed the front lawn of his house into a literal winter wonderland of animatronics, fake snow (because Florida), and literally thousands of Christmas lights.  He spent what had to be thousands of dollars and man-hours putting it together.  It was a real treat as a kid to drive past it and try to figure out what he added every year.

He did this for no other reason than to create something beautiful for the neighborhood.  He never expected a thank you.  He never charged admission to make back the cost of putting on the display.  The most he did was stand out there and watch the reactions of people.  The only money he ever asked for was donations from the passersby to the American Heart Association.

On the flip side, in Wong's article, he mentions the "speech that changed his life" as coming from Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross.  A speech that he keeps referring to throughout the piece by repeating that one line from it: "If you want to work here, close."

Like "kindness is its own reward," Wong also misses the entire point of the film, and why the play won the Pulitzer and Tony Awards.  Glengarry Glen Ross was written in 1984, at the height of the Reaganomics-driven corporate cutthroat economy.  Mamet, when he wrote it, intended it to expose the inherent cruelty of such a system on the people it employs.  Much the same way Wall Street did.

Like Gordon Gekko, Alec Baldwin's character is not the guy you're supposed to emulate or even like.  His infamous speech that "motivators" like Wong keep quoting was meant to showcase the sociopathic nature of corporate philosophy, and the actions of the real estate agents -- everything from lying to bribery -- was meant to illustrate exactly what kind of shit happens when money, success, and power become more important than basic human decency.  And that desperate people can be driven to do terrible things when their livelihoods are at stake, and those in power see them only as "assets," no different from the fax machine or a box of paper clips.

When you use people as tools, when you only do good things for them with the expectation that they will reward you with the very same deeds later, you are not "improving" yourself in any sense.  Because, like Williamson in the play, the people you're using will figure out how much of an asshole you are, and they will not want to work there.

People don't want to merely "close."  That is, work and take home a paycheck.  They want to do what they love doing already and get paid for it.  One of the biggest reasons customers stop dealing with a company is "perceived indifference."  That is, the customer's perception that the company sees them only as a source of revenue and doesn't care about their needs.  The same largely holds true for employees.  The biggest reason employees leave a company is much the same; they feel their employer doesn't care about their needs as a worker, and sees them only as a warm body in the cubicle.

This doesn't just apply to the workplace, either.  If you wouldn't want to be friends with a guy who sees you as nothing but a source of beer money and bad jokes, then don't be the guy who is friends with other people solely for their beer money and bad jokes.

If you want to be a better person, the truth is surprisingly simple: treat kindness as its own reward.  Make other people happy whenever you can.

Why?  Because.

2. You Can't Fake Empathy, So Don't Try

It's butt o'clock in the morning.  You have to be awake in two hours to get ready for work.  Your cellphone blares to life.  The display says the name of one of your good-but-not-really-close friends.  This friend never calls you at this hour, so you know it's gotta be important.  But you're also half asleep and you really want to finish those last two hours before your alarm goes off doing literally anything but comforting someone else.

But you pick up the phone anyway, because friend.

Stop.  For godsakes, stop.

Do not pick up the phone.  Do not answer that call.  You will be doing nobody any favors.  Not your friend.  Not yourself.

The reason is because what you're about to do is the same thing every customer service agent is trained to do: use fake empathy.  Your friend could have called customer care for their cellphone company and gotten the same quality of emotional support you're about to provide.

You cannot fake empathy.  Customers can usually tell when you don't really give a shit about their problems.  Friends, no matter how not-close, are even better at picking that up.  Do not answer the phone for anybody before dawn unless you really care what they're about to say.

In the same vein, never ask your friends "how are you?" or "how was your day?" if you're not prepared to hear something other than a reflexive "I'm fine, thanks."  It will make shit awkward in a hurry when it becomes clear that you don't actually care about their answer; you just suck at social interaction and are parroting what you see everyone else do.

Only offer to be a shoulder to cry on if you like getting snot on your shirt collar.  Doing otherwise does nothing but undermine people's trust in you (because they know you're bullshitting), and make the person who asked you for help in the first place feel guilty for doing so.

Stop pretending to care.  Only say you care and you want to listen if you actually do.  Be honest about yourself and your feelings.

3. Assholes Are Made, Not Born

In Wong's article, he called Blake's speech in Glengarry Glen Ross the "greatest scene in the history of movies."  As evidence of this, he cites that Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that role, and it's the only scene he's in.  This is patently false, by the way; Al Pacino was actually nominated for the award from that film.  But this is Cracked.  Not exactly known for journalistic integrity, and nobody ever said a New York Times bestselling author had to be factually accurate (just look at Dan Brown).

But let's indulge David Wong's delusion for a moment and pretend he's right.  By similar logic, Anthony Hopkins was only on screen for 16 minutes in The Silence of the Lambs and he actually won Best Actor for it.  That doesn't mean Hannibal Lecter belongs on a motivational poster.  This is why when choosing fictional role models, you need to show a little more discretion than who won an Academy Award (and, you know, not make shit up).

If I had to pick that one scene in media that changed my life, it would without a doubt be the scene in Les Misérables when the Bishop of Digne tells the police that he gave Valjean the silverware (which Valjean stole from him) to spare him a trip back to prison, and throws in two very expensive candlesticks because why the fuck not:

I'm only using the 2012 movie version because the internet wasn't a thing yet when I saw the musical back in 1991.  Like Alec Baldwin's character, the Bishop is in exactly one scene.  Like Alec Baldwin's character, he motivates Valjean to become the hero of the story.  Unlike Alec Baldwin's character, he does it through compassion, kindness, and mercy rather than verbal abuse.

Here is a man of the Church who gave some stranger off the street a warm bed to sleep in and food and wine, and his hospitality gets repaid by the stranger then robbing his ass blind.  He could have easily sought -- and would have been well within his right -- to teach Valjean a lesson and turn him in and get his silver back.  After all, "thou shalt not steal" is totally one of the Commandments, right?  But he doesn't.  The Bishop instead lies to the police (also against the Commandment about not bearing false witness), and then makes good on it by actually giving him the silver and candlesticks.  And the only thing the Bishop asks in return is for Valjean to use the money to turn his life around.

To little ten-year-old me sitting in that theatre watching, that was the most powerful thing I had ever seen in fiction, before or since.

Because what the Bishop knew is that people are not born assholes.  They are made into assholes by the fucked up shit they have to learn in order to survive.  And by not learning good and healthy ways of dealing with the world.

Having grown up in 19th century France, Valjean would have learned early that when you're broke, sometimes stealing is a necessity.  That's what he went to jail for in the first place: stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving child.  All the law had taught him was that no good deed goes unpunished, which was why he kept trying to escape and why years kept getting added onto his sentence.  Then when he was finally paroled, his status as an ex-con made him such a social outcast that the Bishop was literally the first person in the film to not treat him like a goddamned leper.  So it was small wonder that his first instinct was to take advantage and grab what he could.

But again, the Bishop realized this.  Which was why he did what he did, figuring that a little compassion and empathy would go a lot farther than another turn on the chain gang.

And guess what?  He was right.

Because just as assholes are made, so can they be unmade.

And no, this doesn't only happen in fiction.  In October of 2013, a similar thing happened to a real person.  Policewoman gets called to a grocery store because of a woman shoplifting.  After questioning, the woman reveals she was shoplifting because she had no food for her children.  Because the amount is so little -- under $300 -- the cop can choose whether to arrest her or not.  Rather than have her taken into custody, the cop instead buys her a week's worth of food and helps her get it back to her house, and only elects to issue her a court summons and a misdemeanor charge (which won't hinder her getting employment).  And the only thing she asks is for the woman to help someone else out.

And then there's this one from 2008.  Kid tries to rob you at knifepoint?  Give him your wallet.  Then offer your coat.  Then offer to get him dinner and talk to him.  Find out that he's really not a bad kid; he just never learned how to be a good one.  You get your wallet back.  Ask for nothing but his knife in return so that he can't hurt someone else with it.  He gives it to you, and you hand him $20.  While you may not ever see him again so you don't know if he took it to heart like Valjean, you've certainly done more to set him on the right path than prison ever would have.

So the lesson here?  Use your discretion, of course, but do nice shit for people whenever you can.  Because if assholes learned how to be assholes by watching assholes, they can also learn how to be good people by watching good people.  Be the good person for them to watch.

4. Love Is Not a Checklist

Ever wonder why movie stars spend such ridiculous sums of money on clothes?  Like if they make more cash than your annual salary in the minute it takes you to use the bathroom in the morning, why are they going to blow it all on obscenely expensive clothes?  I mean, they're spending $5,000 on a dress when they could literally get 250 dresses at Target for the same price.

The reason they spend that kind of money on clothes is because yo, when was the last time you went clothes-shopping at Target? How long did it take you to find an outfit that didn't cling to everything you wanted to hide about yourself?

The reason they spend that kind of money on clothes is the same reason tailoring is a specialized art that takes years to learn while the clothes on the rack at Target and K-Mart are made by machines.  Mass-produced clothes may fit, but they won't fit well.  If you want clothes specifically to make your very unique body look as good as possible?  You need someone to design them for you and no one else.

Dating advice is like the dress rack at Wal-Mart: it tries to fit everybody at once by treating them all the same, and in the process just makes everybody look and feel terrible.  And the sizes always lie.

Further on in the article, Wong tries to tie his Alec Baldwin nonsense to dating.  While he does raise one good point -- if "nice" is the only way you can describe yourself, that's why you're single -- he misses the boat entirely with this little piece of fool's gold:

"So, what, you're saying that I should pick up a book on how to get girls?"

Only if step one in the book is "Start making yourself into the type of person girls want to be around."

Because that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?" and not "How can I become the type of person employers want?"  It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?"

Yeah, let me put this to rest right now.  The reason all the dating advice you have ever heard and ever will hear on How To Get the Girl/Guy is bullshit is because it's all making one fatal assumption: that there is a universal "type" that pretty girls/hot guys want.

There is good news and bad news here, so I'll go with the bad news first: there is absolutely nothing you can do to make yourself attractive to the person you like.  You can be the funniest, sweetest, most interesting person they have ever met.  But if there is no spark there, there will be no relationship.  And that spark is completely up to chance.  You can't create it out of nowhere.  It's either there or it isn't.

The most you can do is eliminate things about yourself which are pretty universally unattractive.  Nobody wants to date someone who doesn't bathe and can't hold a conversation without groping them.  But "giving up your favorite hobbies" will not make you a catch.  The sexist assumption that pretty girls don't have "guy hobbies" and hot guys don't have "girl hobbies" is a rant for another day.  And even if it did, there is no partner on earth worth giving up everything that makes you happy.  In fact?  Asking you to give up your hobbies and favorite activities is an indicator of domestic abuse.

The good news is that your chances of finding a mate increase exponentially when you figure out what exactly you want in one.  Because then you can start going to places where you're more likely to meet that person. You want someone who plays video games?  Awesome.  Keep hanging out at GameStop or your local indie shop.  If you're a straight male, take extra care to not be a sexist douchecanoe to the women you're trying to talk to.  Strike up conversation and talk about video games.  You want someone you can watch the Lord of the Rings extended editions with or marathon Attack on Titan?  You should know or be able to figure out exactly where to look for them.

Of course, common interests are just the start.  To truly figure out what you want in a mate, you need some alone time to figure out who you are first, and what you need.  And no, you don't even have to stop playing Call of Duty to do that.  We all have emotional baggage regardless of gender, and when you're single is the perfect time to start sorting that shit out.  Because as previously mentioned, unless you've lived in a real-life mock-up of Pleasantville all your life, you've probably had to learn some messed up lessons of your own to make it through your life so far, and retraining yourself to deal with the world in a healthy manner will go a long way to making you a happier, more desirable person.

There is no secret to being attractive, and that is the secret that nobody wants to tell you because they don't want to admit it themselves.  But if there is one proactive thing you can do, it's this: stop looking.

You may have heard it before, but probably never heard why.  The reason why is that when you're looking for a mate, your brain automatically starts playing a game of Bang or Pass with everyone of your preferred gender(s), and it uses a really shitty sorting algorithm of first impressions and current mood.  When you're pissed off about shit, your brain will be the pettiest little pet and pick out every single flaw it sees in the person.  Purely because you're annoyed at something completely unrelated.  Likewise, when you're stoked about the new comic book movie coming out next week, your brain will overstate everyone's desirability and see a potential dinner-and-said-comic-book-movie lurking at every corner.  Purely because you're excited about something unrelated.

Basically, you start to view people through the filter of "potential mate," and you will end up getting tunnel vision in the same way you shop for clothes and exclude everything that isn't in your size.

And like the dress rack at Wal-Mart, you may be missing something that would be perfect for you just because the number wasn't what usually fit you, or walking away with something that makes you look and feel terrible because it was the best of your narrowed choices, but not what you really wanted.

5. "Kill 'Em With Kindness" Really Does Work

You remember hearing this advice in dealing with bullies, right?  And you remember as a kid thinking it was such utter bullshit because the only thing your bully understood was a good kick in the glove box?  Yeah, me too.  But while this is really awful advice when you're a kid, when you're an adult, things are different.  And applying the honey is far more effective than reaching for the meat cleaver.

Except for the truly sociopathic among us, most people will feel at least some sense of shame when someone they've been a real shit to responds with courtesy and respect.  This is something everyone who has ever worked customer service figures out quickly enough.  You let them rage at you, you apologize for the mistake, you explain the situation, and you tell them very clearly how you're going to fix it.  And you apologize again and you thank them for bringing the matter to your attention.  I cannot tell you how many times I've had a complete stranger go from cursing me out to sheepishly apologizing for doing so.

Why?  Because people are socialized to respond to emotions the way homeopathy tries to treat whooping cough.  Anger is met with anger.  Sadness is met with sadness.  Joy is met with joy.  Except emotions aren't caused by bacteria, so homeopathic principles work pretty well on it.  Basically, the easiest way to de-escalate a situation is to calm your own tits first.

I feel the need to make this point because the original article is so cartoonishly over-the-top buttmad that there are people out there annoyed at this cynical notion that you have to have some kind of use in the world in order to be considered worthy of the oxygen you're taking in.  This is evident in the very first comparison Wong makes: the world is somebody whose loved one is dying of a gunshot wound, and you are the unfortunate person wandering around with a screwdriver.

It's ridiculous because there is only one circumstance in the world that is that dire, and that is "somebody actually bleeding to death from a gunshot wound."  People may need things, but for the most part, nobody is going to die if you personally can't perform trauma surgery.  Needs can be prioritized.  So it does everybody a world of good to realize that even if you are wandering around an accident scene with naught but a screwdriver, that doesn't make you completely useless and unworthy of being cared about.  All it means is that you lack the skillset or the tools to help this specific person (that's what we have 9-1-1 for).  Eventually that screwdriver will be useful.  Just not right now.

And that's really the entire problem with the worldview in Wong's article.  Besides this absolutely cruel, borderline eugenics idea that you are only as worthy as you are useful -- don't even get me started on how this comes from a place of able-bodied and able-minded privilege -- it also fights self improvement because...

6. The World Is Only As Terrible Or Wonderful a Place As You Make It

This is the Holy Grail of all self-help advice.  Right here.  Because it says everything you will ever need to remember for the rest of your life.  How you see the world affects literally everything you do in it.  The mountain spring from which all unmotivated apathy flows is the cynicism that the world is a shitty place, so it's not worth being a good person.  It's the basis for every Crapsack World and Bad Future in every story ever.  You play the game or die in the gutter because life is cheap and no one gives a shit.

First, if you haven't seen the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, you really need to.  Go watch it.  Now. There will be a quiz later.

See, the assumption that the world is a shitty place and that all people are selfish and use you for however you benefit them by default is Wong's first mistake, and it's what leads to all the others.  If you believe that nobody cares about you as a person and only about what you can do for them, then it's natural that you will feel unmotivated if you don't think you have anything to offer.

David Wong's solution is to come up with literally anything to offer the world in exchange for a job and a girlfriend.  But the reality is that if everyone is that much of an asshole, then what exactly is the point of meeting their needs when they don't care about you?

That should be the first crack in the mirror.  Your first clue that maybe Wong's advice isn't really about self-improvement at all, and more about airing his own insecurities by tearing down other people (kinda like Asuka).

Because if the world is full of such terrible, uncaring people, then how exactly is "improvement" even defined?  By being that one turd in the bowl that refuses to flush?

Yeah, I realize that episode of Evangelion is a mindscrew on acid.  But once you're done cleaning your brain off the wall, the most important point it makes is this: when you only see people as useful skillsets and erase all other value that they have, you make the world that much shittier a place for yourself and others.

Because skillsets are not forever.  You can lose them.  They can become obsolete.  And if your entire identity and self-worth is based upon That Thing You Do -- which is what Wong's article advocates -- then your identity will crumble the minute That Thing You Do is no longer relevant or you stop being able/willing to do it.

Because see, you don't hate yourself because "you don't do anything."  You hate yourself because you see people as inherently selfish and horrible and "people" includes "you."  If you start with changing your thinking in that regard, everything else falls into place, for one very simple reason: your view of the world is really your view of yourself projected onto everyone else.

You are not truly capable of being a good person if you don't think people can be good in the first place.  You hate yourself because you assume everyone else does because you don't do anything useful.  In reality, it's the reverse: you think people who don't do anything useful are worthless, so you assume others do as well because you can only see the world from the one vantage point you choose.

The biggest motivator you will ever have is changing your vantage point.  Seeing things from another angle.  Flipping the chessboard.

The ultimate secret to being a better person is believing that the world is worth improving because there are good people in it.  As long as you believe that, there is no force on earth that can stop you from being the best you can possibly be.

If you want to work here?  Don't close the sale.

Open the fucking door.