Normies Say The Dumbest Things.

PHOTO: ANDREA PIACQUADIO.

IF THERE WAS ever a justification for misanthropy, it would be the discompassionate, frigid, pig-headed takes constantly discharged from the mouth of the average middle to upper-middle-class normie.

What am I on about? I don’t know. Normally, I would insist on the company of “normal” people if the alternative to normal were machete-wielding meth-heads in hockey masks. But normality breeds ignorance. I’m referring to the most sheltered and out-of-touch subset of the normie population. The majority, basically.

I might even go so far as to call them “toffs,” even though you don’t have to be upper-middle class to act like one. You just have to possess a certain ineffable quality that sucks the life out of the room. A specific but vague brand of punchability that’s hard to pin down. Who I’m referring to are the smug, entitled, hostile, overprivileged scone munchers ubiquitous to everyday society who have it better than anyone, irrespective of gender, haircut, ethnicity, or membership in the professional-managerial class.

Those bastards living in that sweet spot between the poor and/or downtrodden and the rich and/or famous. Well-fed and well-housed with generally nice lives, loving families, plenty of friends, zero trauma, and not much in the way of real problems, only moderate ones, if any. Certainly not the type of problems that would fuck you up for life. Not necessarily financially wealthy but otherwise as rich as anyone else and beleaguered by fuck-all. So, if that sounds like you and you’re always taking an uncompromising, unnecessary hard line, especially with those worse off, then you can fuck all the way off. And then some.

Just being fortunate is bourgeois enough in its own right, all things considered. So, basically, anyone with a nice life and who’s a massive dick about it. Anyone who would name their kids “Tarquin” and “Astrid” is a good enough description.

A GIF IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.

As soon as they open their mouths, it becomes obvious just how blissfully sheltered they are. They don’t understand shit. Unless it’s what they studied, or it’s something for which somebody pays them for their expertise. They’re a million miles away from the grim realities of life, but that doesn’t stop them from offering their unsolicited take regardless. What useful, boots-on-the-ground insights could out-of-touch, Volvo-driving, tea-drinking, biscuit-eating, Presbyterian arseholes possibly have to offer on escalating gang tensions in Haiti?

The aforementioned sweet spot they occupy in life (which might as well be Mount Olympus), allows their bullshit to go completely unchecked. If you’re in the top one per cent, and you start saying stupid shit, your stock plummets, the board loses confidence, and you’re publicly laughed out of the company. If you’re in the bottom one per cent, and you get shit-canned for shooting off at the mouth, you get evicted. Maybe even starve to death.

If you’re a normie, nothing happens. No consequences. You’re safe enough within your anonymity and your material comfort to make a complete dick of yourself. These fuckers tend to have large, congenial friend groups, so as the latest “pearl of wisdom” makes its way through the grapevine, it takes on a life of its own, and the next thing you know, a shit saying is born, and no one knows where it came from. It’s never the literati who come up with this shit. Eighty per cent of all the shit sayings out there come from the mouths of anonymous normies. Who did you think it was, Hemingway?

They just blurt shit out, then run with it. Whatever idealistic aphorism pops into their heads at any given moment, if it sounds good or pithy, especially on social media, fuck it, it must be true. Even if they just pulled it out of their arses, and it adds nothing to the conversation. And they don’t bother to scrutinize any of it. Not so much as a Google search. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, this brain fart somehow manages to escape scrutiny long enough to metastasize until it enters the lexicon, then it’s all over TV, mugs and pillowcases, which makes everyone think it’s the type of “knowledge” they can set their watch to.

So odious a brain fart, in fact, that it seems to follow you everywhere, and no amount of Febreze will get it to fuck off. The type of fart odious enough to set off the sprinklers.

The reason why I hate these people more than the average person is as follows:

Firstly, they have it too damn sweet, and man, are they assholes about it. Adjusted for inflation, they’re on par with the aristocracy of 18th-century France in terms of privilege, vauntiness, pomposity, and complete and utter obliviousness to the realities faced by those who have it worse off than they do.

Secondly, being the self-indulgent parasites they are, it’s not enough for them to engorge every luxury available to them in life: food, alcohol, drugs, status, preferential treatment, and people giving a shit what happens to them; they also have a funny habit of gleefully bingeing on the misfortune of others. They freebase gossip and schadenfreude like it’s going out of fashion, then have the balls to consider themselves “reasonable humanitarians.”

Thirdly, the entire basis for their sense of superiority is their normality and how commendably functional and well-put-together they are:

One of you actually said that last one pretty much verbatim. As if the core message of the song was:

They do nothing but take the absolute piss. Again, their raison d’être is “to be decorous, high-functioning and to hell with everything else.” I don’t care if it is the universal societal consensus. That’s straight-up Karen talk.

There are endless metrics for determining a person’s quality. Morality, intellect, talent, height, length, girth, athleticism, accomplishments, and the like. One’s ability to remain cool under no pressure is pretty far down the totem pole. 

Yeah, as if people are all blown away by your composure, thinking:

Whoop-dee-doo. Vincent Van Gogh was an absolute state, the likes of which you normies would probably throw rocks at, not unlike the complete bell-ends he had to put up with in his lifetime. Yet, he’ll be remembered for centuries due to his calibre as an artist and a cultural icon. 

You, on the other hand, have to make an impression of Napoleonic proportions and hand out business cards just to be remembered for five minutes after exiting a room.

Vinnie Van Gogh was objectively better than you.

Yeah, I suppose you do function rather well in a performance-based society. Obviously, a failure to do so is indeed a critical one. But all you’ve done is demonstrate proficiency in one basic area, one that most other unremarkable douchebags have managed to get the hang of to one degree or another. Having a better life does not automatically make you an altogether better person. Only a more functional one. It isn’t the “royal flush” in life that you think it is.

Since your composure has never been so relentlessly and brutally challenged on a regular basis like that of the people you consistently look down upon (whether knowingly or unknowingly), and since you’ve never had to deal with the worst problems of society breathing up your arse twenty-four-seven, it remains untested and only amounts to a three-of-a-kind, at best. Get over yourselves. It would be like drop-shipping a sun lounger on your Shopify site with the slogan: “The best and sturdiest sun lounger in the world.” Even though it’s only been weight-tested by people who weigh about a buck fifty.

That’s all well and good until some barge-arse gets on the thing, and until that happens, your douchey, overconfident slogan remains dubious.

And besides, you function well in a bullshit society anyway. That’s nothing to be proud of. Which itself doesn’t even function properly. If it did, everyone would be happy. Which would tank the economy because then we wouldn’t need to buy as much crap to fill the void. If society isn’t fucked, there’s no money to be made in “fixing it.” It’s a design feature. It’s nothing more than an onerous contractual agreement of mutual self-interest, in which “society doesn’t owe you anything,” yet somehow “you have to contribute to society” (however the hell that works). Sounds like mafia tactics to me.

The government wants more power and money, the corporations want more money and power, and the individual consumer wants more money and stuff, power optional. And whoever gets the least amount of stuff at the end of the day is fucked and burned by everyone else for, I don’t know, reasons?

The expectations of Western society are the leading cause of mental illness. If you can even stay sane, let alone function nicely in a society like this one, then you must be out of your fuckin’ mind. In addition to the pressures of a performance-based society and what becomes of those who can’t hang, those who reject societal norms become ostracized and isolated. Social isolation itself leads to mental illness and drug abuse. Mental illness and drug abuse lead to poverty and homelessness. Ergo, there are people starving in the West, not for drought, civil war, or national debt, but for being lame.

You, on the other hand, go to work everyday and come home at night, thinking you live in the real world, when, really, you and all the other normies have built your own little “normie zone” where it’s perfectly “normal” to starve to death for being lame and where you all live in a state of mutual denial, where the world isn’t such a shit place after all, where most people are decent, and where families are dysfunctional at worst.

Wake up, idiot. The world’s a shithole.

GREATEST HITS:

Almost every shit take is from a normie. If it’s uninformed, poorly researched, self-congratulatory, overly quixotic, prejudiced, or uncharitable, there’s a good chance it’s from one of you. These are just a few of the brain farts I’ve heard over the years:

“THE RICH ARE A BUNCH OF LUCKY PRICKS.”

Few things get on my goat more than when middle-class normies who don’t know they’re rich try and muscle in on the “getting-fucked-over” niche by being all pissed off and resentful towards those with more money than them and admonishing them for “subjugating us all.” 

No, dickhead, they’re subjugating everyone else. You, on the other hand, are all but getting a rub and tug from the government and big business, as evidenced by the continuation of your cushioned existence. Trust me, if you were “subjugated,” you’d know about it. You’re just as much a member of the ruling class as they are. Even if they do secretly hate your guts. All of their policy decisions that aren’t motivated by their best interests are motivated by yours. Every election cycle, they meatride your socioeconomic group, which keeps them in diamonds and furs, and worst case scenario (for you), they underdeliver. When was the last time you saw a political campaign ad that wasn’t directed squarely at you? You’ve got them by the balls.

It’s a symbiotic power-sharing arrangement. Your needs, wants, and rights are prioritized over everyone else’s. “Gotta do right by the normies,” as they say. As for everyone else?

The powers that be would happily bulldoze my house just to build you a gazebo. They would snuff out my very life with their cold, clammy hands just to ensure your continued leisure, let alone well-being.

“HEY MAN, WE ALL HAVE PROBLEMS.”

That statement presumes that all problems are the same. Your job woes and the old ball-and-chain banging the landlord are not remotely the same as the plight of war vets, the oppressed, the poor, and starving, etc. There’s the normal amount of problems, then there’s the “premium package.” So go and bother someone who gives a shit with your normie “problems”

Namely, no one.

“LIFE IS A GIFT.”

Yeah. Yours.

Some of us are mighty brassed off over the lack of a refund and exchange policy.

“I DON’T LIKE YOU. I DON’T NEED A REASON.”

Really? Oh, you poor thing. I’m quite sorry. When you said you had problems, I didn’t realize that meant me. Oh God, what have I done?! 🥺

Oh, that’s right: nothing. Look, if my mere presence is a problem for you then you don’t have any problems, and if you’re so delicate that one of your triggers just happens to be literally nothing, then apparently I’ll have to hide behind a ficus whenever you enter a room, lest you’re forced to take a mental health day.

Look, I know this is a bad time to be any more a baffling, inexplicable pain in the arse than I already am, but in polite society, one would generally rather not have their evening ruined with the company of an odious vinegar-tits such as yourself. So, for the sake of everyone (since you’re not a Jedi and all), if you could just try to move past your Neolithic instincts and summon the requisite brain power to make a more thorough assessment of people before you go keying their car over their mere existence, that’d be great.

“REMEMBER, YOU ARE BRAVE.”

Is that so? And what if I’m not? What if I’m the “Coward Of The County?” You don’t know me.

“REMEMBER, YOU ARE LOVED.”

Am I now? What if I’m not? What if I’m universally despised? You don’t know me.

And loved indiscriminately by whom exactly? You? A minute ago, you said that you hate on people for “no reason.” So, who am I talking to right now, Jekyll or Hyde?

“STAY STRONG.”

Stay strong, eh? What is that, a backhanded compliment? Do I detect a tinge of sarcasm? When it fawns, it bites.

What If I’m weak shit and have been from the beginning? You don’t know me. I don’t remember winning any weightlifting competitions. I could have arms like vermicelli noodles, for all you know. Check with the athletics board next time before you start patronizing me with presumptuous statements like that, you condescending dickhole.

“YOU SHOULDN’T HATE.”

Must be nice to deal with people and situations bearable enough that hating them is optional.

Also, you just said that you hate people for no reason.

“EVERYONE DESERVES LOVE AND RESPECT.”

Really?

What about Hitler? What about Goebbels? What about Himmler? What about Caligula? What about Nero? What about Pol Pot? Josef Stalin? Osama Bin Laden? Idi Amin? The BTK Killer? Jeffrey Dahmer? Ted Bundy? John Wayne Gacy? Charles Manson? Attila The Hun? Ivan The Terrible? What about all the other horrible human beings?

So, I suppose what you meant to say was:

EAT THE RICH!

Great, it’s the champagne socialist. 🙄

Just order a pizza, turkey tits. I know normies have adventurous taste buds, but I think I’m going to give “Warren Buffett Tacos” a miss.

First of all, you don’t get to say that phrase. It’s not for people like you. It’s about people like you. It’s reserved for those being exploited and impoverished by a corrupt capitalist system. Not those watching comfortably from the sidelines as they enjoy a cup of tea and a wee Belgian biscuit afforded to them by that same system. Where do you get the balls to say it?

Second, according to that logic, we should straight-up eat people if they “have it too sweet”. What, and you don’t? I know Jean-Jacques Rousseau came up with it, and I hope they do get eaten. But I was thinking something a little more sensible. Like the bunyip.

Here’s the original quote:

It’s more relevant now than ever. It’s pre-revolutionary France all over again. I’m pretty sure I wrote something earlier to that effect. I believe you were also mentioned.

I do have notes, however. Look, not to be that guy, but we should probably wait until the food shortage is critical, though, right? You had better not be planning this for, like, Tuesday or some shit. I don’t want to tell you how to run things, but of all the desperate measures potentially on the table: robbery, piracy, shoplifting, organized crime, or revolution, you’d have to be pretty fucked in the head to go straight to cannibalism. The fact that you would even throw that out there this early on is, to be honest, concerning.

One question, kind of important:

Feed them to… who, exactly? I didn’t hear you volunteer. Y’know, I have a rather sinking and ominous suspicion that you weren’t nominating yourselves, were you? You meant me. 🤨

OK, now I’m really concerned. So, if not you, then, by process of elimination, I can only assume that you wish to unilaterally force some kind of fucked up Soylent Green scenario on the rest of us. I think I’ll just stick to being economically exploited if that’s the alternative.

Fuck off. I wasn’t consulted about this. Did you even bother to ask how I’d feel about “eating the rich?” Because that is some nasty ass shit, even to us plebs. I know you think we’re all just walking garbage disposals. We’ll eat anything, right? Garbage, tin cans, paste, rich people. We’re lucky to get shit.

It’s not as if we possess any kind of moral compass or lateral thinking capabilities that will compel us to think of a less batshit solution. If you think I’m going to be putting some wrinkly oil tycoon between two slices of bread and eating the son of a bitch just so you can grandstand and post about the shitty, cannibalistic hellscape you’ve created on Instagram, you’ve got another thing coming.

You know what? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And, if public sentiment ever does veer toward cannibalism, you shouldn’t be congratulating yourselves; you should be basting yourselves. How many billionaires are there in the world? Fuck all. How many normies? All you can eat. And I’ll give it about two days until we’re fresh out of billionaires.

Alright, so, practically speaking, whoever has “too many resources” should be eaten, is that it? Too many, according to whom? You? Plenty of those resources are also disproportionately allocated to you, are they not? You’re a participant in the capitalist system. And an enthusiastic one at that.

OK, so how are we doing this then? You have more resources than I do, right? So by that rationale, I would be well within my rights to eat you, wouldn’t I? Then, whoever has it worse than I would be well within their rights to eat me. Then, whoever has it worse than that person could eat them, and so on, and so forth, until the only inhabitant remaining on Earth is whichever poor bastard has it the absolute worst out of all of us, who, as if they hadn’t been through enough, has to now fend for themself in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and now we’re pretty much extinct in the stupidest, most embarrassing way possible.

Now what, dickhead? 

It reads like a South Park episode. Did you even think this bullshit through? Look, calm down, take a five-minute break, go outside, and breathe into a paper bag because you sound like a crazy person.

Not all rich people are destroying the planet and subjugating everyone. Mostly the billionaires. Some are mere millionaires who were just lucky enough to buy Microsoft shares in the 80s or win Lotto. Doesn’t mean they should be lightly pan-fried with garlic and rosemary and served with chips and aioli.

Because in the event of an apocalyptic scenario, what the hell are we going to do for transportation now? We just went and ate our entire fleet of toboggans. Nice.

Apologies for the incoming doom scroll, but if your basis for resorting to cannibalism is that the rich are assholes, well, so are you. The ultra-rich aren’t the only ones with a rap sheet. What about the ball-breaking you constantly engage in? What about your Twitter mobs? What about cancel culture? What about the people you’re impoverishing? What about the diabolical villainy of taking away the livelihood of someone with a family to feed just because they offended you? They’re not all mouthy celebrities. Some are working-class people with mortgages and lives that don’t revolve around you and your feelings and opinions. Some egalitarian utopia you’ve created.

That’s just about villainous enough to make it onto one of those pillowcases if they could print one big enough. It’s as if some coked-up movie producer typed into ChatGPT:

And then you retrocausally came into existence.

What about the collective and individual actions you’ve taken that will echo through eternity? Did you ever consider the potential for human wreckage? Can you account for the whereabouts and the welfare of everyone you’ve ever been dicks to? That’s a lot of people if you’re doing it on the internet every day. What if they were hanging on by a very thin thread when you started fucking with them? They could be dead in a ditch somewhere, for all you know. Can you rule out the existence of an actual body count? Domestic and international?

Just because you don’t have white-collar felonies on your record doesn’t mean you’re not an absolute hell-spawn. Why don’t you let the world’s biggest polluters worry about reducing their carbon footprint, and you just focus on reducing your karmic footprint?

Obviously, the embarrassment of riches they possess is well beyond the pale, but who do you think gave it to them? You did. You’re the consumer. If you believe there are too many rich people, don’t create so many of them by buying all their shit, namely the shit you don’t need. Even if they do have you by the balls by controlling the means of production, surely you could force some kind of reforms if you collectively boycotted the stupid, useless shit that you only buy because it’s trendy. Protest with your wallet, not your George Foreman grill. Or, better yet, why don’t you quit bragging about how well your life functions since it mostly functions just to feed the corporatist machine that perpetuates poverty and the wealth gap in the first place?

Democracy is supposed to be the rule of the people. If you happen to live in a democratic country, then, at least on paper, the buck stops with you. So, how do the estimated 450 million people who run the world’s governments bamboozle seven billion of us into relinquishing that power, delegating it to someone else, and then accepting their shitty decisions and broken promises year after year with no one leveraging the numbers advantage and taking over? A labyrinthian system of distractions and the endless loop of forced participation in the economic hamster wheel, of which you’re a vociferous and obnoxious advocate. And since that blows, so do you.

So, you can’t exactly extol the virtues of your fastidious dedication to that white-collar desk job of yours, your home ownership, and impeccable productivity. Because, at best, it lacks enough consideration of other people to qualify as virtue, and, at worst, has you colluding (albeit unconsciously) with those same rich pricks.

If your contribution to society is purely economic, it’s a flip of the coin as to whether it helps or hurts. With no direct involvement from you, it depends on economic powers greater than you and what they decide to do with your contribution. Whose corruption and tyranny, if you recall, has you so incensed you’re considering feeding them to us. And if we did suffer some apocalyptic economic collapse, we would need people who are mindful of the best interests of the collective population on a level more human than economic to rebuild society without the problems that doomed this one. The only thing you’d be good for would be an anchor on a boat.

This is not a call for socialism, communism, or any “ism.” They’re mostly fucked and do nothing but rearrange shitty, preexisting circumstances without addressing the root causes, which go far beyond money and politics. We’re all forced to participate in whatever system we’re given. It doesn’t make us bad people. I mean, what is the average person going to do about it? Go live in the boonies and forage for berries? But if you were the class acts you claim to be, you could at least participate reluctantly like a normal person. Rather than bowing down and pledging undying fealty to what should be regarded as a necessary evil. Money is supposed to be a utility. Not a belief system. It’s one thing to buy stuff; it’s another thing altogether to identify with it on an emotional and even spiritual level.

And really, do you know how insecure and, frankly, fucked in the head you would have to be to possess the ambition and determination to even attempt the largely phallic feat of becoming a billionaire? Even more so to succeed at it? Someone would have had to have beaten that into them.

You have no right to be indignant, first of all, because you chose to have a normal social life, which they decided to sacrifice to focus on the “grind.” That kind of obscene wealth is an optional luxury if all of your material needs are met, and not a necessity to which you’re entitled. So if you wanted it so damn much, you should have gone after it and put in the work instead of going to the club with your friends all the time. You can’t have it all, and you chose not to pursue it anyway, so quit your bitching.

Second, the hardship factor that motivates some of these people to make such a grandiose amount of money in the first place is something you miraculously managed to dodge from the outset. If it’s not greed that motivates them, it’s poverty, either financial or a poverty of non-material wealth, such as self-esteem, stability, respect, inches, you name it. If you lack these things, which I suppose you may, then maybe you can bitch. Otherwise, it’s greed that motivates you.

You’re not necessarily in an inferior position to these people yourselves. You may even be better off, in a sense. It’s about time you realise that wealth is not purely financial and recognize just how good you truly have it, you ungrateful whingebags. You may not be able to buy your way out of any problem as they can, but what kind of problems do you even have to begin with that would require the GDP of a small country to solve? I would assume that normie problems require nothing more than some serious elbow grease, arse-kissing, a lawyer, and a few phone calls to extricate yourselves from. And if money is required, it’s probably in the ballpark of several thousand bucks. Take out a loan dickhead, and be more careful next time.

My point is: do you even comprehend the cosmic lottery you won? Think about it: presuming there’s any rhyme or reason to the universe, something or someone saw fit to gift you a life that didn’t even necessitate the endless pursuit of obscene material wealth. Some higher (or lower) power had the generosity to decide before your old man forgot to wear a condom: 

So, what do you do? Get straight to whingeing about billionaires and how rad their lives are. Is it really that much of a deal-breaker to have to go through life without a solid gold crapper, a fleet of jet skis, and majority ownership of the New York Yankees?

It’s as if you’re dissatisfied with being a spiritually and psychologically intact person with a full life, with everything accounted for, and you’re salty about the lack of damage and that shit isn’t missing. Because the lack of an unfillable void and the productive hunger associated with it are “bumming your hustle?” In pursuit of what? You’re exactly where you need to be. I don’t understand what the problem is. Chaos is the bedrock of existence; the world is full of misery, and there are worse fates you could have suffered than suburban boredom and insufficient luxury.

If I were that power, I would squash you like a bug. Prepare for some cliched and corny platitudes, but if these knobheads that surround you in this “functional” life of yours are bearable, or better yet, you actually like or even love these people, then go ahead and tally that up with the relative peace in which you live, the roof over your head, the food in your fridge, your fond memories, and your (at worst) mediocre ones. 

Then, tally up all of that with having lived, loved, and been loved in return (🤮), being well fed, well housed, having an education, working a job that doesn’t involve subservience to gluten-intolerant shitheads such as yourselves, not being spit on, persecuted, defamed and demonized, not being born to that crazy YouTube bitch with the dungeon in her house, and enjoying fuck-all in the way of turbulence throughout and then get through your thick skulls the stupendous value of that. You basically struck oil. 

Then, to add insult to injury, instead of staying in your lanes and graciously accepting your lot in life, you decide to buffalo your way through society and be a piece of shit to everyone, especially those who would kill to be in your position, and rub the good fortune that you never appreciated in their faces and add to their woes by acting like spoilt brats.

Until someone develops an app to make life and the people in it tolerable, let alone enjoyable, a billionaire cannot purchase any of what you have. What could possibly possess more value than something even a billionaire can’t afford? I know it’s an old cliche that your Mum told you when trying to get you to eat your Brussels sprouts, but people really are starving to death elsewhere. And getting fucked over, killed, persecuted, sent to war, and blown to smithereens, and the chances were more than significant of you being born into such a reality were it not for the absolute fluke of having been born into the one you’re in. It’s as if an errant bolt of lightning manifested the embarrassment of riches that is a bearable life.

The reality in which you live was formed in the same way as a precious stone from a shitty rock. By using the same valuation criteria that we apply to those stones, surely we can appraise the value of your life similarly. They could have been lumps of coal, petrified llama shit, not formed at all, or you could have even been born as an arse-worm, but by a stroke of either dumb luck or divine providence, you dodged it. 

The miraculousness of the hand dealt to you endows your lives with the same inherent value as a precious stone the size of a donkey. Does Bezos have one of those?

Editor’s note: Don’t answer that.

Even if he did go to space for five measly minutes? You have that “gem” of yours for the rest of your lives. Or, at least, until you fuck it up or things turn to shit.

Jeff Bezos had to go out of his way to be Jeff Bezos. In order to be you, you just had to be born. And that’s a middle finger to me. As far as I’m concerned, you might as well both be billionaires. So shut the hell up.

Ingrate.

G. Billington Evans is a satirical writer, visual artist, and owner of THEARTOFGEVANS.COM.