People Are Awful

So I had the idea for a new feature on this blog…I often hear stories of people doing horrible, horrible things, and my friends having terrible luck running into awful people. This doesn’t happen to me all that often. Sometimes I hear things that make my jaw drop in disbelief at how comically assholish some people are. So without further ado…PEOPLE ARE AWFUL:

 

This week’s edition comes from my friend J who lives here in New York City. She was recently invited to a fundraiser event by a guy she described as “douchey”, but decided to go because it was for a good cause and she wanted to meet other people. What follows is her report of what happened. My comments are in italics.

 

J: He texts me on the way out the door and says, “so, the event is sold out, would it kill you to have dinner instead?”

Because lying/ambush-dating is always a great way to go. We’re off to a decent start.

J: And i’m thinking, I’m not going on a DATE with this motherfucker, nor will I allow him to isolate me so i say, ok, let’s raincheck.

Note: J had been out with this dude once before and he got really inappropriate and grabby at the end.

J: He goes, “OK OK just meet here, my friend is the organizer, she can get us in”. So I meet him there and he hasn’t left me a ticket at the door, which WERE for sale…

Again, lying is always the best way to a girl’s heart.

J: And are $100 so I text and ask if he’s left me one and he grudgingly comes out and buys my way in because, if i’m going to spend $100 on my evening, it’s not going to go to this stupid party that HE INVITED ME TO. Then he proceeds to complain the whole night about the $100.

Now we can add whining and intimidation to the list of stellar qualities this guy expects will get him laid. Also, the thinly veiled implication that he expects her to sleep with him since he dropped $100 on the event he misrepresented is the diarrhea frosting on this cake of shit.

J: He says things like “I could be having a nice dinner, and instead i’m eating shitty canapes and hanging out by the bar.”

Translation: “How DARE you not go along with me ambush-dating you? This isn’t going to land you a husband.”

J: “It’s my birthday week anyway, the funds should be going in the other direction.”

Translation: “Please take note of how incredible I am for spending money on you, I’ll be expecting sex for it later.”

J: “You better chug that martini and get another one, because I’m getting my money’s worth.”

Translation: “Insert thinly veiled expectation of sexual favors here, once again.”

J: At least his $100 went to a Children’s AIDS charity, and not some dinner I didn’t want. So we go to a different bar with some of his friends who are actually cool, but by this time he’s had like 5 martinis and is totally wasted. Starts demanding kisses and shit. His friend and I are trying to have a nice conversation and he’s busy being a douche. Finally I turn to him and say “You know it isn’t all about you, y’know.” Without skipping a beat he says “Yes it is.” I say “You’re a narcissist.” “Yep.”

…Wow. This might be the shittiest attempt at negging, an already shitty and terribly lame PUA move, that I’ve ever seen/heard of in my life. Why didn’t you just put snails in her hair, dude?

J: By now I’m drunk and sad and drank too much at the open bar, and his friend is asking me if I want to go home, and I say yes. The douche hears me, turns, and gives me the finger in front of huge line of people waiting to get in the bar.

“You see these fingers, bitch? They’re the fingers that will be firmly wrapped around my withered dick while I desperately try to yank one out over my puke-spattered toilet a few hours from now, all the while wondering why I’m so small and angry at the world and women in general. God I’m so desperately alone, how dare you remind me that I can’t have everything I want. FUCK YOU.”

BONUS DOUCHEBAG MATERIAL

J: Apparently the cops came by his place after he got all rapey the other night (he had gotten very aggressive with J outside of his apartment while she was trying to go home and was physically restraining her while she very loudly and plainly told him to let go of her). He brought that up and then told me “apparently you were really loud that day”, because some neighbors heard the commotion.

“You’re really selfish to be so loud and inconsiderate towards my neighbors. Why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut while I’m sexually assaulting you?”

 

 

…And that’s this week’s installment of, PEOPLE ARE AWFUL! Tune in next week, folks!

 

Ira Isaacs

The Internet really is changing everything.

Yesterday, Ira Isaacs, a film producer and self-described “shock artist” was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted on obscenity charges. I’m no lawyer, but it’s my understanding that obscenity trials, especially in the United States, are something of a rarity these days.

In order to determine whether or not the work was obscene, the jury was asked to view hour upon hour of Isaac’s productions in order to determine if any of the films had artistic merit. Ignore for a minute that the notion of objectively determining artistic merit in a courtroom is patently absurd. I wasn’t aware of this until yesterday, but apparently there are still obscenity laws on the books, and the law, in some cases unfortunately, is the law.

So do Isaacs’ films have artistic merit? The most infamous of his productions, Two Girls One Cup, features two women consuming fecal matter. What I’m going to write next may cause some readers to scoff and bristle and shake their heads slowly, muttering “this time you’ve gone too far,” but fairness and general speculation demand it. Is Two Girls One Cup entirely without artistic merit?

On the surface, the question seems almost silly. What values could be found in a video of women consuming feces? One again, disregarding the notion that somebody, somewhere, could find just about anything to have value, nothing about Isaacs’ film seems to operate on any level above prurient trash. Isaacs’ own self-categorization as an “artist” seems, at the very least, highly suspect.

However, the wild untamed beast that is the Internet seems to have opened up a whole new world of theoretical possibilities. Consider that Two Girls blew up across the Internet and became something of a cult phenomenon somewhere around 2005 or 2006 (to the best of my recollections). It’s hard to argue that the interest in Two Girls at the time was due to the (supposedly) titillating nature of the clip. Generally, the cult status of the fecal feast was brought about the same way most fucked up Internet videos become famous (see also Glass Ass, Hatchet VS Genitals, and Mr. Hands if you dare/hate yourself): somebody stumbled across it, thought it was outlandishly weird and disgusting, and put it somewhere else/sent it to somebody. Repeat until Two Girls is so ingrained in the online lexicon that it’s become a go-to joke on Reddit and other forums. I don’t have any hard numbers, obviously, but I think it’s safe to say that most people who have viewed Two Girls did so out of morbid curiosity and/or for comedy purposes (or had it unsuspectingly unleashed on them for the same purposes).

Don’t we have to consider, at this point, that videos like Two Girls sort of cease to be pornography when their place in the pop-culture landscape changes so radically? Isn’t art kind of defined by how somebody receives it? If the majority of individuals are viewing Two Girls as some sort of strange, found-art object, doesn’t that, to some degree, negate the “obscene” classification (if the hard line for “obscene” is that something has no artistic value)?

Again, I don’t doubt that Isaacs is little more than a two-bit pornographer who knows he can make money selling the shit (pun intended) that nobody else wants to sell, but somebody, presumably, will want to buy. I don’t think it makes him a purveyor of obscene material (explicit, certainly), but it also makes him a businessman first and foremost. Still, a broken clock is right twice a day. I humbly submit that Two Girls One Cup (and other associated bits of disgusting video) has become found art, given its transformation in the wild west of online communities.

More on this situation as it develops.