Assholes

Ever run across someone that never has anything good to say about…anything?

I have a subscriber to The Daily Dirtnap, who has subscribed since more or less the beginning, who, for about the last ten years, rips me a new one in an email about once a year. I got this call wrong, I got that call wrong (ignoring the myriad ones I got right), I write too many books, I have too many DJ gigs, I suck, etc. etc. During this period of time, not one compliment or word of encouragement. Only bad, never good. So today, I fired him and blocked his email. I’m at the point in my life where I don’t need the money, and I have a strong desire to surround myself with positive people, people who care about my contributions.

I was upset for a few hours, for sure. And then I started to think about it—he doesn’t really have a lot going on in his life. He runs a trading service with a handful of clients. He makes a fraction of what I make. He doesn’t write books, or play music, or doing anything else outside of sending short emails telling people to buy or sell this or that ETF. I mean, what kind of person thinks that publishing books is…bad? Someone who couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted him the c and the a. I will tell you another thing about this. 90% of the time, criticism like this is rooted in envy. He probably looks at me and wonders why I have the following that I do (in spite of all my terrible calls, according to him) and he is toiling in anonymity with a subscriber base that is stagnant, at best. Lord knows what is going on in his personal life, but he’s probably not a real thrill to be married to. He is probably the type to write a one-star Amazon review of a spatula.

Speaking of Amazon reviews, I have had my share of bad ones, and most of go beyond an honest assessment of the book and are downright mean-spirited. You’re going to take 20 minutes of your time…to make someone else’s day worse? If you want a good laugh, look up Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning on Amazon. People gave one-star reviews to Victor Frankl! Assholes! Who the fuck gives a nasty review to a Holocaust survivor? About 20 years ago, I used to fancy myself some kind of music critic and would post reviews of CDs on Amazon. I regret all of them, and I haven’t written an Amazon review in years, and that’s because I write books, and I doubt any author worth his salt would post a negative review of another author’s book. You put your heart and soul into creating this work of art, and some rando takes a giant shit on it.

Now, there was a time when I would read a negative Amazon review and it would send me into a tailspin. Don’t care much these days—been through this a bunch of times. Thick skin, and all. And I never, ever read the comments section on my articles. But for my last four books, I noticed that I got one ridiculously mean review on each of them, and I connected the dots and discovered that they were all written by the same person! He never bought the books; he would just read the 10-20 free pages on Amazon and then come up with the meanest one-star review possible. I imagine when The Awesome Portfolio comes out, he will do it again. Not that I really care, but you can imagine putting all this time and effort into…hurting someone? To be wholly dedicated to the destruction of another human being? It’s just incredible. Anyway, the goal is to sell a million copies of a book so it has 30,000 reviews and then you really don’t give a fuck about the bad ones. By the way, there is a special place in hell for the people who “like” a mean-spirited review. They’re going to smoke a turd in hell for that one.

So I guess the answer is…to not be evil? I never say anything bad about anyone publicly. And hardly even privately. I don’t engage in character assassination. Even if I don’t like someone very much, I try to say good things about them! But the question is: do assholes know that they are assholes?

The answer is no. Assholes think they are right, and to them, being right is more important than being a decent human being. I am at the point in my life where friends are writing books, and my friends want me to read their books, and I’m not excited about this, because they’re usually not very good, and then they turn out to be not very good, and I email them and tell them that I loved them! What are the ethics of this? Am I lying? Should I be telling them the truth? Well, the truth is that even in a bad book, there are usually things to like, so those are the things I focus on. I maintain my integrity, and everyone is happy. And if someone says to me, “I know you’re a writer, and I know you’re really good at this, so I want your honest opinion,” I am still not going to give my honest opinion!

I was in this position recently at a club. I struck up a conversation with a very novice DJ who was playing the opening set. I told him that I had been playing for 18 years, and he said he wanted my honest opinion, from someone who had so much experience. Well, it actually was a great set, and he was a better mixer than I was, but he was going pretty hard for an opening set—too hard, in my opinion. So when he was done, he sat down with me, and he said, “What did you think?” And I said, “It was great, but why the fuck are you playing 126 in an opening set?” I saw his face fall, and I knew I had hurt his feelings. So then I told him about all the things I liked about his set, and he cheered up a bit, and we exchanged phone numbers, and we’ve been texting. It was simply inexperience—he didn’t know that if you’re opening, you should be playing deep, slow and sexy. So I told him, which I would characterize as a “shit-filled Twinkie,” and he got the message, I think. For a split-second, I was an asshole. But I recovered.

The funny thing is that I used to be a black belt asshole myself, back in my Lehman days. Everything was bad, nothing was good. Customers were scumbags. Sales traders were idiots. The world was out to get me. And from that standpoint, I am a little ashamed of STREET FREAK, because it is 365 pages of me doing nothing but complaining! Now, it was very funny complaining, but it was complaining. It was a pretty dark book, and I am kind of ashamed of it. But that’s where I was at that point in my life. Look, I don’t want to give anyone the impression that life, for me, is always a bouquet of roses. I have setbacks like anyone else. I have had a rough couple of days, and I have been complaining a bit to my wife, but for me, the best way to deal with adversity is to write about it. Now, you might say to yourself: you got a mean email? That is adversity? Luxury problems, I know. Normies may not understand this, but the first time you see yourself in print in a less-than-positive light, well, that day is going to change your life. If I saw that FT reporter who took a swipe at me on the Staten Island Ferry, I’d probably hip-check her over the side. The reality is that most people go through life without being yelled at, ever. Most people go through life without getting any negative feedback, ever. People are a lot more sensitive these days than they used to be. If you were fucking up at Lehman Brothers, you got screamed at! Now, they banned yelling at the Coast Guard Academy. In basic training. The point is that you are probably more of a snowflake than you think you are. I would bet money on it. By the way, the Guardian did a profile on a handful of self-described internet trolls many years ago. They had photographs of them. They were…the ugliest people you have ever seen. Pretty much tells the story.

So let’s say you are dealing with an asshole, and after a period of time, you say screw you, I am cutting you out of my life. You might wonder: do they feel remorse? Not a shred of it. In the past, we have talked about wanting to be happy rather than right. These are people who would rather be right than happy. That the actual definition of an asshole. So he’ll think to himself, well, he can’t handle the truth, and go on being an asshole to everyone else. Hand to God, this is true. You will never get an apology. There will never be a change of heart. The answer is to spend as little time thinking about them as possible—you don’t want assholes taking up space in your head rent-free. Excise the tumor, and spend time with people who care about you. I assure you, there are plenty of those.