Make Fun

Okay, my friends, here is a public service announcement I've wanted to make for months. I'm sick and tired of people who have clue how to properly insult one another. As a kid, I remember this was common, but I figured as I grew older the insults would develop. I was sad to find out that as I grew up, the insults only grew more childish. Instead of crippling a person at their core, these insults were the kind of stab that wouldn't make a lasting mark in Play-Doh. Please allow me to instruct you in the finer arts of insult humor.

The first piece of business to attend to is your target. A lot of times, the better insults are not warranted. You can just stick to some standard ones, but that doesn't mean you need to be boring. Sure, douchebag is good, but vary is up. Douche-nozzle, meaning you are not even good enough to be a douche, but rather you are the nozzle through which douche passes, is a great change-up. In some cases too, you can use the fact that somebody isn't worthy of a good insult as an insult in and of itself. Remind the person that they are of such little significance in your life that insulting them would be a waste of manpower. However, for the more stubborn cockroaches in your life, the following guidelines might help.

Be gross. If you are at all squeamish when thinking up gross insults, grow the fuck up. I know it's scary to confront things like dead bodies or horrible sex acts in person, but in your head it should all be fair game. Preferably, your mind should look like a murder scene from CSI. Trust me, the more grotesque, the better. Incest, blood, gore, feces, sexual diseases and all available orifices are not only recommended, but necessary to bring somebody down to the level at which they belong. If it's so fucked up that you need a cold shower after you insult the person, you're about where you need to be. Preferably, the gross insult should be something so evil, so heinously wrong that even if the other person has a great comeback, they're too repulsed to get it out. I'd put some ideas here, but I want to sleep tonight so I'll let you decide what direction to take this. Hint: Hell and lower levels.

Make it personal. I know the "your mother" joke is still pretty common, but you can take it up a notch, people. Don't just say you fucked somebody's mother, because that's pretty weak. Good comedy comes from the joke that's harder to think up. You wanna hurt him? Describe it. Go into excruciating details. If you know the guy at all, use some of that. Is he from the deep south? Make a crack about you fucking her, but you're pretty sure he knows what that's like already. Is he a comic book nerd? Tell him that you loved the V for Vendetta poster on his bedroom wall, because it gave you something to pay attention to during the sad excuse for a blowjob his mom gave you. The closer you are, the more it hurts.

Insult something that they're proud of. I know, it sounds counterintuitive. Usually, you'd want to go for the thing they're least confident about because it's a sore spot, but believe me on this. The more confident somebody is about something, the more it hurts to get hit there. A very attractive woman once made fun of one of my friends for being a nerd, and somehow she ended up crying. Why? Because he KNOWS he's a nerd and he's been told it before. She, on the other hand, had never been told that her face bore a strong resemblance to Sylvester Stallone's cleft buttcheeks. True, an harsh hit, but she did fire the first volley, so it was a fair retaliation.

A word about timeliness. I know it can be tough to think up this stuff on the spot, but you need to do it for maximum impact. If it's over the line, so be it, but it might also be great and you just need to let it rip to find out. The longer you wait to get out the insult, the lamer it will sound. Give a slight pause between when the person makes an offensive comment and when you retaliate, but no longer than a few seconds or you'll face the dreaded insult gap. Pass that and still attempt an insult, and you're the stupid guy. If you need to work on this, keep some quick insults at the ready until this becomes second-nature. Or, barring that, stare the asshole down like you're going to knife him. It's not effective as a direct shot at his miniscule privates, but it does make him debate his next assault.

Last rule, and this is important: No fear, no regrets and no remorse. If you're going to do this, do it full on or it won't work. Half of the time, the reasons insults suck is because the insulter half-asses it and lets the intensity waver. By the time you're done spraying your vitriolic burst at your opponent, they should feel awful. They should feel like if they tried to commit suicide, Clarence the angel would let them do it. Let the bastards have it. If a person warrants some of the evil shit which I've mentioned above, game on. Now, go out there and make me proud.

Andrew Gutin