My name is paul wheaton. I'm a little bit famous. But there is a famouser wheaton, wil wheaton, and his catch phrase is:
And it turns out that Jesus says this too:
Jesus is freaky awesome, so surely this must be THE path. Right?
And then when I was fishing for these images, I came across this one:
And as everyone who has ever posted here knows, our full rule set for using these forums is "be nice". So it looks like jesus, wil and i say the exact same thing. Profound.
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Long, long ago ... in a land ... well ... in missoula .... I worked as a software engineer. All the engineers had cubes and I was closest to the pathetic bathroom which didn't have a fan.
There were .... odors .... powerful odors. My desk was placed optimally as closest to the break room and furthest from the door to the outside where the cold montana winds blew. But it had this one downside - the stench.
Somebody put a can of lysol in the bathroom. This empowered well meaning people to enhance the stench of shit into a mix of shit and lysol. Twice as powerful. I think this might be the definition of "toxic shitstorm."
In this office was a really nice guy named Tom. One time I was in a pretty serious nerf gun war with somebody and Tom ended up as an accidental casualty of war. He said "Dammit Wheaton you URINE-HEAD!" That was the first time I ever heard the phrase "urine-head". I think I used it about a thousand times since then. Poetry. Tom is always great at expanding my cultural horizons in this way.
So I hid the lysol. It was the right thing to do. Tom said "where the fuck is the lysol?" "I hid it." Tom very clearly and carefully explained to me "don't be a dick." I clearly and carefully explained to him my position: "YOU don't be a dick."
Could it be that dick-a-tude is not just relative and subjective, but also reflective?
I walked over to a nearby store and bought "air freshener" spray (which is a marketing spin on "cover the stink with vanilla"). Through the mighty power of chemistry, the smell of poop lost in the great vanilla war. I could feel the wind tugging on my cape as I stood tall on my pedestal of awesome problem solving. I was prepared to receive the nobel peace prize and roses at the foot of my amazing pedestal when tom said "you're still a dick."
As the years passed, there was a massive parade of people that endorsed tom's analysis. Girlfriends, one wife (now ex-wife), my own children, other children, dozens of co-workers, strangers .... the internet has proven to be a great facilitator to thousands to convey this message. I would like to take this moment to thank Jesus for never pointing directly at me and calling me a dick, that would have been a sad day.
It seems that the body of evidence is rather profound. I suppose I should take my lumps, carve out a little, dark corner somewhere and remove myself from society for the betterment of the world.
A few interesting bits and bobs to add:
1 - in each instance that i was called a dick, I thought the person with "dick" on their lips was an even bigger dick! (HA HA - "dick on their lips")
2 - for each of those people, it seems that they, too, had a parade of people with analysis similar to mine.
3 - is it possible that everybody in the whole wide world has been called a dick? (helpful tip: a thesaurus could be used to make sure nobody gets left out)
4 - if dick-a-tude is reflective, then wouldn't that mean that wil wheaton, who is famous for saying "don't be a dick", has more people pointing back at him saying the same thing? Like, more than average. Maybe Wil Wheaton is more dick-ish than the average person because the votes are in?
I have written recently that the following is
the root of all of human history and 90% of human psychology:
Most people NEED to hear their own opinion from all other people and are frustrated that they don't have the might to make it "right."
I wonder if somebody has the gall to utter an opinion that is contrary to what the listener wants to hear, if the response might be "don't be a dick".
Maybe one possible interpretation for "don't be a dick" is "Your behavior is outside the realm of what I allow." Could it be a command for obedience? "Stop what you are doing and embrace doing what I tell you." A sort of master/slave relationship. And whenever somebody attempts to engage this master/slave relationship on somebody, the other party naturally expresses "*I* am NOT your fucking slave. YOU are MY slave! OBEY MY WORDS!"
It's a dick-off. A battle that has happend trillions of times throughout history.
I now propose that "don't be a dick" is a mediocre jedi mind trick. Easy to adopt. I suspect that it does work at times which is what makes it mediocre. You just point at somebody, say "don't be a dick" and sometimes, some weak minded twit will actually obey because they don't want to be thought of as a dick. Not too bad.
I wonder if there is a formal fallacy defined around this. Something with a latin name. "Dick Dicens" perhaps? (thanks google translate)
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I'm trying to think of who, for all of time, was never called a dick. Gandhi is out. Mother Theresa is out. Lincoln is out. Jesus was killed by the people that thought he was dick. In fact, it seems that the greater positive a person has done in the world, the more people there are that will point and say "dick!" To bring balance to the force, Hitler, Stalin and Satan had even more people pointing at them. Maybe there is something to be said about accomplishment to hate mail ratio. But I suspect that still isn't a slam dunk.
Maybe there are a few people that always did what others told them. And since a lot of others would give conflicting commands, they would find a way to hide from all of society and, thus, managed to get old without ever being called a dick.
But I want folks to do great and amazing things. And if they are going to do that, they are going to be called a dick. I don't think there is a way around it.
And now I am realizing I should have kept all this to myself. Because I hope that these next words don't end up on some meme next to a wil wheaton meme where he is saying "don't be a dick" ....
To make the world a better place, millions of people will have to ....
be a dick
But, of course, be dick in a way that I am cool with. Which makes you not a dick to me. Just to icky people. And if you are a dick on my forums, I will delete that shit - and I don't care if you think I'm a dick. In fact, I would be proud of that.