dirty laundry

The smart, socially resilient people in the world don't let people like me get to them. They cherish the notion that they cannot be perturbed by the loud and obnoxious -- they neither like me nor do they stoop to dislike me. But then there are the rare few who somehow allowed their insecurities to be exavated by yours truly, and they generally are the ones who outwardly profess hatred. So, on this chipper Friday, I decided to take a little social inventory, after a short break from blogging.

Below are the pictures of 6 people who, for the record, hate me -- and hate me enough to discuss the virtues of hating me in public:


Below are 6 descriptions of these people in no order. You match 'em up! See, it's a game!

A. Born with a natural stutter, this one participated in one of my blind date experiments for the MIT paper. I never really needed to make fun of him, he just came up with good quotes all by himself. Example: “It seemed like she [his date] wasn’t too happy working hard. I tried to give her some advice about getting out.” Who says that? Anyhow, I never reimbursed him for his blind date, mostly on accident, and ever since, I've been receiving emails from the guy with choice lines like: "If I knew this whole blind date was just your way of manipulating things to fuck over whoever you chose to, I would have told you no."
Insecurities: stuttering (nicknamed "home star runner" because of speech patterns), being the joke of his fraternity, general ugliness.

B. Heavily active in student activities, this one kind of fulfills the "visor-wearing, self-infatuated, inarticulate but thinks otherwise" cliche better than anyone else I've never met. Wrote this about me on someone's guestbook: "Devdoot is possibly the biggest argument in favor of euthanasia that I have ever seen. I guess he is too busy applying rudimentary psychoanalysis (I guess he took 9.00) to matters far beyond his understanding to realize that he is a classic case of the inferiority complex. By deriding others, he feels bigger in his own sad little life. Well that makes him a big man. Truly what we want at MIT and in society at large. What a ****-up. There are only a few people I will say this of (Aimee Smith also comes to mind), but the world would truly be better off without him. "
Insecurities: No clue. Probably very afraid of coming off as dumb. Who uses "****" in place of a big fat expletive? Oh well, don't know the guy. Just amused at his anonymous hatred.

C. One of my best friends at one point, this person later just cut things off without letting me know. Two years later, found out that we were friends because this person was trying to correct me. It seems that this person always thought I was an asshole, and gave up after 2 years because "it was clear that I would never be changed." To this, I say -- liar, I am soooooo worth everyone's time! Anyhow, being smarmy was a conscious effort for this person, and when it failed, in came a veil of reticence. Enjoys maintaining social networks and dabbles in that whole entrepreneurship/business side of things, like all annoying people.
Insecurities: Total napoleon complex. Validates self by being elegantly dismissive.

D. Ooooh, this one's a quiet one. I was so happy I had a white friend, that I completely overlooked the fact that he was fundamentally boring. Worked out with me regularly, see -- whitefolk are such good influences. Never really had much of anything to say to anyone, my nickname for him was "conversational sponge" as the person just sucked the life out of every conversation. Eventually, things got sour when he didn't have a date to our Senior Ball. One day, while walking with him, I ran into a few random female friends and asked each of them to take him to the ball. He flipped out, and will never speak to me again, even after several apology emails. This one is the kind of person who derives all self-worth from a girlfriend, so I was just trying to help the process along. Oh well, sometimes you just can't win with crackers.
Insecurities: EVERYTHING. I mean absoflutely everything.

E. Another best friend gone bad. This one was at one point in his life an exemplary violinist, and that was about the only high point. Very quiet, this one comes off as a total mystery to people, only for them to later figure out that he just has issues with the formation of sentences. Regardless, we got along for some time until I realized he was using up all of my other friends -- social virus. Also, another guy who finds self-worth in women. Only, working the mystery dynamic, he would only go out with girls that approached him, meaning he was always surrounded by crazy fierce amazon women who plunged into his sea of insecurities to try to straighten out the mess.
Insecurities: Everything, again, except for abilities with violin. Took him about 3 years to finish "The Fountainhead," but certainly a bit of an inarticulate intellecutal aspirant. Hides blatant stupidity with vapid pothead statements.

F. Awful, boring, blathering, stuttering, smug, ignorant hick who's here with me in grad school. Physically incapable of pronouncing the letter "w," this guy likes to pretend he has a girlfriend in a never-ending attempt to avoid all of our social events. He passes notes to everyone in graduate school classes, calls everyone "turbo," and infuses awkward silences of his own creation with the phrase, "good times." His idea of "a good shirt" is a hawaiian print with neon colors.
Insecurities: Secretly gay.

Alright, well that was too much fun. It's funny, every time I look at those pictures at the top of this page, I just shudder. Imagine simultaneously looking at everyone who outwardly hates the fact that you are alive -- just a bit emotional. For the record, a certain Ms. Renner's picture was unavailable for this exercise.