We all dream of releasing our inner asshat once in a while. Unfortunately, there are so many professional asshats on social media that the casual asshat will be crushed by them. If you are in this position, I offer the following advice that will help you hold your own with even the most experienced online asshat. If practised long enough, it will help you become…the Compleat Asshat.
Cultivate Anger
What is the single most important quality for the aspiring asshat? Rhetorical ability? Please! Have you ever seen Tucker Carlson? He couldn’t argue his way out of an imaginary paper bag! Empathy? How serious are you about wanting to be an asshat? If you want to feel other people’s pain, become a companion cat!
No, the Compleat Asshat’s most important quality is anger. Anger at sleeping through the most productive hours of the day. Anger at being woken up before they had gotten enough sleep. Anger at the media for not reporting that antifa was behind the January 6 riot at the Capitol and blaming it on the right. Anger towards water for being wet. For the Compleat Asshat, anger is not a response to specific adverse circumstances, it is a way of life.
The novice asshat will be at a disadvantage, since there are already so many asshats online for whom rage is the ocean in which they surf. Make anger your friend. Take it out for dinner and a movie. Cuddle with anger in the back seat of your car. Send anger cute e-cards on holidays. A constant kettle of boiling over anger will make following the other steps to becoming a Compleat Asshat much easier.
Ignore Facts
Facts? Please! There is no such thing as empirical reality – the success of various Khardashian projects has proven this time and time again! – there is only what you feel in your gut is true. Go with your gut. It is your third most perceptive internal organ.
Say you argue that wearing masks spreads COVID. There may not be evidence that this is true; in fact, all of the available evidence may show the opposite. Ignore it. Your gut – the sixth most grateful internal organ – will thank you.
Never Back Down
Adjectival number down instead. Double down. Triple down. Decuple down (asshats tend to be single in any case – the world is unfair! – use that knowledge to feed your anger!). The more often you speak your truth, the warmer your gut will get, and that’s a good feeling. A good, good feeling.
You may sometimes be tempted to respond to a criticism with, “That’s a fair point,” or, “I never looked at it that way,” or, “I gotta go to the bathroom. brb.” Don’t go to the bathroom! That’s the opening your haters need to take you down! Instead, firmly repeat your conviction that COVID vaccines contain microchips that will allow George Soros to control people’s minds. Keep making the argument until the haters go away.
Intellectual attrition is the Compleat Asshat’s best friend.
You may find that some haters will continue arguing long after most reasonable people will go away. They require special treatment. You know how, in kindergarten, you were taught not to call the other children names? Anger in adulthood obsolesces that lesson. Attack their family. Attack their grooming habits. Attack their pets. Yes, you heard me correctly: attack their pets.
Your angry gut must accept no arguments!
Avoid Being a Single Issue Asshat
Say you’ve staked out the position that Jews run a space-based laser that alters ballots in American elections. Perfectly reasonable argument. Except somebody responds with a list of all of the satellites in near space, showing that none of them have lasers capable of altering ballots on Earth. Awkward.
Ignoring the list is one possible response, but the Compleat Asshat knows that a more robust, pro-active response would be better. This could include sextupling down (which is not as dirty as it sounds, unfortunately) on the assertion, but if that doesn’t dissuade the hater from arguing with you, another tactic may be called for.
Insert into the argument your feeling that Nancy Pelosi is a space alien with a taste for Christian babies. That will get the haters’ attention! On the off chance the hater has a rebuttal for that, too, throw out the idea that Donald Trump will be returned to his rightful place as President on August 13…or October 27…or January 12…
Remember: being an online asshat is not about winning arguments, it’s about humiliating people who would dare argue against you. If confusing them with rhetorical non-sequiturs will help you achieve that goal, wretched farfetched palindrome!
The Most Important Rule is That There Are No Rules
What do you think this is? Marquis of Dingleberry Rules don’t apply, here! Your gut doesn’t follow rules – it digests food according to its own agenda (if it didn’t, we would be eating triple chocolate fudge cake every meal!). Be like your gut. If you’re in a situation where none of the rules will help you humiliate a hater, ignore them and find your own path.
If you just follow these simple rules, you will be a Compleat Asshat in no time. Good luck!