Don’t Be Friends With Assholes

Do you ever ask yourself, “Gee, how can I become friends with a group of mean terrible people? All of my friends are just so nice and love me for who I am, and it’s totally boring! I would love some sociopaths to brighten up my otherwise healthy social life, you know?” Well, writer Marc Brennan Rosenberg apparently has the solution for you! In a recent article on Huffington Post called “10 Ways To Break The Ice With Mean Gays,” he instructs you on how to have the soul-sucking monster gay BFF of your dreams/nightmares! (But, like seriously.) He writes,

My buddy Mike Kelton and I were sitting around chatting about “mean gays” the other day. You know the ones I’m talking about: They’re out every weekend, looking like they just walked out of a GQ photo spread, and they don’t have time for you or anyone else. They’re stuck-up and pretentious and have no souls, and you not only fear them but want to be them, or at least their new best friend.

Okay, all of that made sense until the whole “wanting to be them and/or their new best friend” part. Call me crazy/emotionally stable but when I see a gaggle of bitchy gays, my first instinct is to stay far away from their laser beams of judgment, not devise ways of penetrating their inner circle. Am I wrong? Are people all around the world secretly wanting to befriend/become awful people? Because I thought we outgrew that shit when high school ended. I understand having this mentality when you’re a teenager — you’d practically let someone take a dump on your face if it meant that you could be popular — but in college, the social hierarchy fades, the old definition of popularity no longer exists, and you only become friends with people who are awesome. It’s great! One of the fantastic things about growing up is that you get less insecure and only want to be around with people who make you feel good. They don’t have to be nice per se (I actually find people whose chief characteristic is “nice” to be boring as hell), they just have to subscribe to your specific brand of assholishness and not treat YOU like shit.

Apparently, though, some people are still longing to be a part of an “In Crowd,” even if the in crowd in question represents everything they despise. To befriend these so-called mean gays, Rosenberg advises people to essentially deny who they are and make shit up. Lie about what kind of music you listen to and the TV shows you watch and ask for a cigarette, even if you’ve quit! (Honey, no friendship is worth cancer!) I understand that Rosenberg is likely to be at least 70% kidding when he makes these insane suggestions (he calls “mean gays” out for being superficial and gross) but, still, it’s the idea that this type of gay man — vain, narcissistic, and cruel — is something that all gay men secretly aspire to be like that bugs the hell out of me. You should never be envious of someone who is not a fundamentally good or interesting person. Besides, everybody knows that once high school ends, people who are hilarious and smart become the real popular kids in life. That’s why Jennifer Lawrence is adored and Anne Hathaway is disliked. Hathaway was totally that popular girl in high school who everybody secretly despised. Lawrence, however, only became popular after the social politics of high school faded and people realized they were allowed to like someone weird and different.