The other day I was reading an article about the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm in the magazine, The Wrap. It gave a really interesting breakdown about comedy over the past twenty years and how Curb paved the way for shows like Arrested Development, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Veep. It’s the era of the asshole and Larry David led the charge. Seinfeld set the stage, but they were always sort of morally ambiguous. Larry David is THE bona fide asshole, and he embraces it. There’s always something charming about how he goes about being a terrible person while never really repenting for his actions. This comedic trope was taken even further with Always Sunny where the entire gang are a bunch of assholes who do things any sane person would consider irredeemable. These are the people who say what we are sometimes thinking, or act solely on emotion with little to no thought of consequences. It’s definitely (IMO) why it’s some of the best comedy on TV, blowing sitcoms with their soapy situations out of the water. But is it a commentary on our current society, or are we giving the narcissistic monster a real seat at the table?
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The rule of “Do What Thou Wilt” comes from Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law which is the basis for Thelema, an occult philosophy and religious movement. The central theme focuses on a person’s right to their true purpose. It revels in the individual and manifesting our desires into reality. Strangely this is very close to what is embraced by the so-called “American Dream.” We are told we are “special” and unique like a snowflake, a term that has been adopted by American extremists in describing their opposites on the right and the left. Oh the snowflakes, getting their undies in a bunch over some words and stuff. Lots of assholes on either side, trolling about their beliefs being better than the other group of assholes. As much as I do agree with the core concept around finding our true purpose through the application of Will, I also strongly disagree when people are assholes on their path to “purpose.” Shows like Curb and Always Sunny poke fun at the narcissists who’s job is to make everyone’s life miserable at their own expense—but art is the mirror to our reality. If we turn on the news or flip through our Reels it seems like the world is being run by assholes. Maybe it’s always been this way.
The saying “nice guys finish last” was always something I remember hearing growing up. Then in the early 2000s we had that asshole Mystery on the VH1 show The Pick Up Artist. He would teach young men that the best way to get a girl was to “neg” her. Seriously? He was an early prototype of our current asshole du jour, Andrew Tate. Except that guy is a rapist and sex trafficker. Allegedly. But he’s on social media racking up numbers being an asshole and making a ton of money doing it. He just disguises it in “manliness.” Then we have the wonderful Donny boy who says he just grabs women “by the p#ssy” and he gets a pass because it’s deemed locker room talk. I don’t know, but if I heard a guy talking about my daughter like that he’d get a pass straight to Davey Jones’ locker. We are in the era of the asshole. Teflon Don can get up there and say whatever he wants and the crowds cheer. Have we gotten dumber or were we always like this? It all feels like a giant joke that has yet to reach the punch line. Comedy and tragedy are just two sides of the same coin, and right now this comedy of assholes is pretty tragic.
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The more you’re an asshole on social media, the higher your star rises. It really owns the idea that all press is good press. What’s also fascinating is that even altruism is used to mask being an asshole. Currently we are in a Tale of Two Sams, with Sam Bankman-Fried who swindled ignorant investors out of their live savings (currently serving jail time) and Sam Altman who’s been data-raping the internet with what was supposed to be a non-profit AI company focused on ethical artificial intelligence. He might escape the jail time, but his “altruism” is a thin veil for much more nefarious intentions. Even the influencers who are out there doing “good” are more focused on keeping their numbers up while spinning narratives to polish their image. When you do a good deed and record it to later post on Instagram, bragging about how you did a good deed just makes you an asshole. Do the good deed because it’s a good deed. Not because you need people to like you and write comments about how “you’re such a good person” and “the world needs more people like you.” No, asshole…the world doesn’t need more people like you. What it needs are less assholes.
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The world would be a better place if all the assholes got on a spaceship with their Asshole in Chief, Elon Musk, and blasted off to Mars to start their own asshole colony. All the big pharma assholes and media mogul assholes and political assholes could colonize the red planet and rename it Planet Asshole. It reminds me of the timeless classic SpaceBalls and Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet’s unforgettable line: “I’m surrounded by assholes!” Right now, it’s not too far off. From Twitter (I still refuse to update my app to X on my phone since I love my little blue bird) to CNN, the assholes have taken over the airwaves.
That said, we do need assholes to purge all the shit we intake. It’s important to drop a good morning dump after our body processes all the content we consume. But let’s have our assholes on our TV shows, not running our countries or steaming up Silicon Valley. I’d much rather watch Larry David on Curb, than Elon Musk on TWITTER. Just sayin’.