By Danny Deza
Last week, a friend and I were walking down the street and we couldn’t help but notice a group of young college students yelling and screaming without a care. Their, “Yeah dude!” and constant references to Dane Cook jokes made me roll my eyes and turn my head in annoyance to mutter the common phrase, “douchebag.”
Despite their skin tight polo shirts that were attempting to cover their balloon-like biceps, these dudes are just a few in the many different categories of “douchebags.”
Whether it’s the egotistical douchebag at your local pretentious cafe or the drunken douches you see swarming Mission Hill, they all serve the same purpose: to annoy the crap out of you.
The technical meaning of a douche is a female product to help clean “down under” (please don’t make me get into details). But the common use of the word is to describe someone who naturally exudes jerk-like qualities, kind of like a scumbag.
There isn’t one true definition of what the insult means, and it can only be defined by personal experiences with the douches of America.
Some celebrity examples include Kevin Federline, also known as “K-fed,” douche. Vanilla Ice, major douche. And let us not forget the biggest douche of them all, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.
This trendy phrase has been around as long as I can remember, but the vague definition of what a douchebag is leaves me with the burning question, “How many different types of douchebags are there?”
After an immense amount of research I have been able to narrow the selection of the douchebag-kind into three categories. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the douchebags of the Northeast:
The first type is the Euro-trash douchebag; these specimens are usually characterized with long mullet haircuts and can be spotted from a distance by the cloud of cigarette smoke following behind them. This douchebag will compare everything to his home country and drop a few high fashion brand names in hopes of impressing that vulnerable girl at the bar.
When he is not blaring techno music in his yellow convertible, you can probably find him at Armani Exchange on Newbury Street dropping hundreds of dollars on cheesy clothes. Beware, as they tend to travel in packs.
You see the second douche category all around Mission Hill and read of their arrests in the The News: Drunken douches make the No. 2 spot. These douches are also known as the “yeah dudes,” and after many games of beer pong, their sloppiness is usually responsible for your party getting broken up.
He’ll try to mask his intoxication by saying, “Nah dude, I’m good, I can walk home,” which always ends with him telling everyone how much he loves them, whether it be a best friend or a complete stranger.
And finally, the third level of douchey-ness can be found at your local gym or walking down the street with a protein bar in hand: The weightlifting douchebag has made the gym his full-time job and tanning his favorite hobby. They aren’t too hard to spot because their bright-colored tank tops will usually let you know they’re around.
There are a ton more that I haven’t covered but thanks to author Jay Louis and his book, “Hot Chicks with Douchebags,” you can fill in the blanks. Louis first launched a blog under the same name, which is solely dedicated to mocking the douchebag kind who have somehow managed to get the hot chick through their douchebag qualities. Due to the blog’s success and the public’s obsessive love to mock, his book was released in 2007, and featured pictures of guys with hot girls acting like, you guessed it, douchebags.
So I guess douchebaggery has no boundaries. Everybody can fall victim to douche-like tendencies. I don’t think there are more douchebags out there than before, it has just become easier to identify them.
So, even though they might annoy the crap out of you, at least at the end of the day we have a word to define them; nothing is more satisfying than calling one of them out on their antics and uttering, “What’s the deal with that douchebag?”
– Danny Deza can be reached at [email protected].
