George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6mo ago
What do you mean exactly by "disagreeable" here? Does this mean specifically that you are a contrarian and literally oppose the stated views of people around you? That you "do not suffer fools lightly" (the balm of those who pride themselves on being disagreeable in this way)? Or are you simply unpleasant to be around because you're tetchy, micromanaging, or a know-it-all? The answer to your question is going to depend largely on what you mean here. (The same is true of those websites you mention.)
If you're literally just the type who corrects people all the time or fails at most junctures to try and be pleasant, @cjet79 has good advice, and it's good advice because it involves getting inside your own head and becoming aware of your reactions moment by moment.
The suggestion/question about how you're disagreeable is also relevant (asked by @slothlikesamwise ) because maybe you're just really annoyed and made angry by people around you. Are you? If so, why? Is it because of you, or them? Are there any people you find yourself being more agreeable (here I mean consensus- or rapport-seeking) with? If so, what's going on there? Was there some point in your life where you cared more about what people thought? And finally, are you in any way autistic or otherwise non-neurotypical?
You obviously don't have to answer any of my questions. I'd disagree vehemently with those saying personality is immutable in this way.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6mo ago
(continuation)
I am told to stand and wheel the little pole with the needle now taped in my arm and go into the room with the doctor. This doctor is young and I’ve never seen him before and he seems emotionless and businesslike, which is pretty much what I want. I am instructed to lie on a table, and this is where I left off in paragraph two of this. As I lie there the nurse says she is giving me medicine to make me sleepy, which she does with a needle injected into the tube that is also giving me presumably saline for rehydration. The walls in this room are not clean. I almost ask “is that blood” about a splat on the wall right at my eye level behind the video monitor, but I don’t want to know the answer so I just leave it. I begin to wonder how violent colonoscopies can be. The medicine calms me a bit, but not enough that I do not realize that the doctor is now ramming what feels like an exceptionally large finger up my bunghole. Presumably he has applied some sort of lubricating jelly and put a goddam glove on, but I am not a good enough contortionist to turn around and verify this. It feels as if he is rawdogging me with his thumb. An involuntary sound between a moan of pain and a grunt escapes my soul. No one seems to hear it. The nurse and the doctor are chatting, perhaps to escape the awkwardness. Or probably they don’t feel the awkwardness any more, maybe this is all just routine for them and they’re just talking about what looks good in the cafeteria this week. I feel like the last time I had this procedure I remembered very little from this point onward, but this time I remember and feel everything. Maybe they gave me the wrong drug, or a weaker version. The only effect it has had is to have made me slightly woozy. But the pain is all there—the pain of the tube being inserted, then what feels like inflation, like those crazy man balloon things beside car dealerships once the air goes inside. In it goes, and it takes all my willpower to not go into a willful sideroll off the table and just take flight.
The video monitor has come to life. I am suddenly watching the Empire Strikes Back when Han flies down into the asteroid—a tan cavern, lit dimly, and in we go. I feel it snaking up into my abdomen and yes, let’s just let the rest be something you imagine and let me not describe it. The rest is less of a blur than I would like it to be. I was on the table maybe twenty minutes. Eventually I feel the tube—which has felt not like a gentle rubber coil but more like a soft plastic ramrod—being pulled out, and at least he is slow about it. When I feel like it’s mercifully all the way out the only thought that crosses my mind is that it could have been worse. I consider “You should get that wall wiped down,” as a parting shot but instead just say “Thank you,” in Japanese and I am escorted to a bed-table-type thing with curtains and told to lie on it. I do. The nurse puts a soft, thin blanket over me and disappears.
This is the post-roofie coming down, when I am supposed to sleep it off and awaken refreshed. Normally in 2023 this is where you’d swipe open your phone and begin browsing TheMotte or whatever, or in the old days leaf through a copy of Boy’s Life. I am without resources, however, so I just close my eyes, listening to various timer alarms and paging chimes going off, and nurses scuffling about. When I open my eyes again about 20 minutes have passed. The nurse turns up and sees I am awake and whips off the blanket, takes my blood pressure, and declares me fit to go sit in the lobby again and wait to be called. I do. And when I am, my intestines are declared綺麗.
The doctor had no explanation for my pain, which comes and goes and has gone, anyway. “Maybe just gas,” he offers. “Or stool passing through your bowels.” This seems a flimsy bit of guesswork, but I just leave it and say thanks. The instructions also said not to eat anything the Night Of except rice and maybe broth, to ease the intestines back into their role as the major player in the digestive tract. I have a dinner of heavy pasta, a bag of ruffled potato chips and a beer.
“It’s not the destination; it’s the journey.” There, I remembered it, finally, for those of you who were gritting your teeth in frustration earlier. No problems with my colon; that was the journey. And here we are at the end of it.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7mo ago
Because I am given to writing out sprawling anecdotes, let me tell you the story of my friend W.
W had lived in Japan a few years and speaks better Japanese than I do--I who have lived here more than 20 years. He moved, as one does, to Hawai'i, where he worked at UH and did some ocean-involved part-time jobs. He is a natural physical, outdoorsy-type. Smart, quick-on-his-feet, clever, but also competent. Not bookish. He is also blonde and blue-eyed and has a winning smile. This leads to the next point, namely that he got around with the ladies to some degree. He was mostly attracted to Japanese women, possibly because, as Hannibal Lector says, "We covet what we see every day, Clarisse." Anyway he would occasionally come visit us in Japan and tell me the goings on of his life. I met one or two of his girlfriends. One of them I liked a lot, though, like W himself suspected, I didn't think she would be a great wife. He broke up with her. The next girl he dated I did not meet, though I did see photos. In the photos they looked immensely happy hiking up Diamond Head or diving or on some trail somewhere--they always seemed to be outdoors in the pics. They got along famously, he said. She was several years younger than him, but I saw that as only a positive. She was Japanese, she spoke a little English. She met some of his family, and he hers. He proposed, she said yes, they scheduled a date, the date eventually became the day after I received an email from him.
What comes next is the relevant part to your own story. For W suddenly had had a change of heart. Unlike the situation you describe, his conformed more closely to what I have seen as the norm--he had his change of heart because someone else entered the picture. It is my view that in the realm of relationships many of us will tolerate even the most tedious of sameness and irritating behavior as long as we see this person as our lot in life (once married, at least in my mind, this becomes part of the gig--in other words once married part of the job is tolerating the bad.) However even in good relationships among singles, once someone else drifts into the picture--and I mean someone who tickles our fancy, not just a random brunette at Starbucks who smiles, but someone who hits the right buttons--this is when we start thinking of greener pastures, etc. This is true as much for women as men. And this is what happened to W, though he told me this part in confidence. He then asked me for advice as to what he should do, whether he should go through with the wedding, or just end it, as, frankly, everything in his heart was telling him to do. I told him the choice was clear, and that he should break it off. I told him if he didn't he was going to make the poor girl's life hell later on.
And break it off he did. The day before the wedding. He earned his previous fiancee's eternal hatred, and the eternal hatred of her entire family, no doubt. And probably the hatred of many others. And he did not end up marrying the other woman, either (though he did end up getting married a few years later to yet another woman.) I do not know if he regrets his decision, and maybe there's no way of knowing because of the natural tendency to stick to our guns in such cases (sunk-cost, bygones, etc., though I really dislike such neat terms when applied to human relationships). I personally think he did the right thing, though I have no doubt it was traumatic for the girl and her family, and that he deserved their hate and still does. But that's life.
As for your friend, I am not sure that she will listen as closely to you as a man as she might to your wife. Even then, at the end of the day it's going to be trusting her heart, because Woman. That probably sounds and is sexist, but I don't mean it in a hurtful way. I wouldn't think about it too much if I were you, but I'd lay out your views as a friend. That's just me, and how I am. I know many reasonable people who wouldn't do this, who would keep quiet and just be there for the person regardless of what plays out.
Train has arrived, gotta go. Good luck.
Are we becoming a circle jerk?
I don't ask this facetiously--and for me to use the preposition we here is laughable, not because I do not wish to be included, but because my own contributions are so flimsy that I can scarcely be called a participant, though I am a great lurker.
Rather, I have a concern, perhaps misguided, that themotte.org has become a kind of Athenaeum where (we) sit around in our plush chairs (if that's what they do in The Athenaeum) and bandy opinions that everyone shares anyway, but (we) re-word them at times for cleverness' sake, and, at other times, simply bask in our smugness, content that we are correct and that anyone else who disagrees with us isn't. And don't get me wrong--I often find myself nodding in agreement at certain posts, particularly in the "The Motte Needs You" Janitor section, and wondering if I think they're good because I agree with them out of context, or if I truly think they hold high what I would consider the extremely rare and valuable banner of the Motte.
Of course this group consensus posting people do is in violation of one of the main rules of the Motte: Steelman your opposition. Assume that whoever your interlocutor is (or, put another way, whoever reads your post) may well disagree with you.
I am not suggesting that no one disagrees on any of the posts made here. A few well-known combatants go at it from time to time, usually respectfully, sometimes not.
Still, as a daily browser-not-poster, I feel as if I see a lot of posts that make what I would consider wild, self-assured generalizations without pushback. And very often I either don't have the time or inclination to do a proper pushback or I am, frankly, intimated intimidated by the horsepower some people seem to have on making effortposts as counterpoint. Today is a rare day: I have world enough, and time. I usually don't.
The question "Are we a circlejerk" is probably rhetorical, but feel free to answer however you will. I hope at least people will give the question some thought. As always I am happy to mingle at the party, nameless and unknown, eating the hors d'oeuvres and sampling the champagne.
Regardless of the answer, I think this site is a success beyond expectation, despite the bullshit dismissal of us on reddit.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
Edit: from the response I'm getting I understand that this site had undergone a "normiefication" of sorts. Time to log out forever and never visit it again. Hope you well.
Ball collected. Home returned to.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
18d ago
pendants
Another swing against pedantry.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
This is, if I may insert my view here, a facile read on the social structure of Japan. Violence of any sort here (outside, say, some type of budo or martial art) is simply not tolerated. Even police are trained to subdue potentially violent citizens with a minimum of physical contact. There are no samurai-type authority figures stalking the streets, and no one is alive who would have witnessed anything like what is described here.
I would suggest the relative peacefulness of Japan is a two-edged sword (and thus quite unlike the single-edged katana, if we're extending the metaphor.) You are not to be violent even when provoked, and there are very specific limits within the law when violence is acceptable (i.e. you must be in imminent physical danger, unable to flee, etc.)
Last year I assured a good friend of mine from the US who was visiting that Japan was pretty clean and that there was nearly never public violence. The first afternoon we walked out I saw a used condom in the street, and a few nights later in town a guy grabbed another dude by his shirt collar and threatened him. (Threatening guy was the usual punk, guy being threatened was a tout who had approached what I assume was punk's girlfriend, who was wearing what looked like a very frilly maid outfit with big clompy shoes.)
As for reasons for Japanese peacefulness I'd say a lot is, indeed, homogeneity of upbringing and socialization, on which I could write volumes. But won't.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
I like to (or used to like to) call this (or some version of this) the Diamond Jim syndrome. I don't know who Diamond Jim is but when I came up with that term it seemed to fit. The Diamond Jim syndrome is pretty well defined by the following attitude:
(She) is obsessed with me, and has been since she met me....I don't know how in the world I could ever meet a woman as open to my weirdo contrarian conservatism as she is, or as accepting of my quirks, or as in love with me. She's put a halo on my head that I cannot possibly be worthy of.
If I may--and very possibly I may not, without being rude--It's possible you may be just a bit complacent and self-satisfied here. I am not suggesting this girl is without affection for you, not at all, but there's a dynamic here you're unaware of, possibly. You feel this way (beloved by her, beatified, desired) because for whatever amazing lucky reason she makes you feel this way.
Let me explain. And, in the explaining, I would encourage you to keep in the forefront of your brain that I might be wrong: This girl probably does love you lots. You're sweet, smart, and cute, just like what girls used to write in my school yearbooks (are yearbooks still a thing? I don't even know). But you feeling it, you knowing you are loved, that is a result of her efforts. It is very possible to be in a relationship where all the parts seem to function but you do not viscerally feel that you are loved--sometimes you even feel the opposite, that you are despised and contemptible, despite the fact that your other half seems to nevertheless stay with you. Feeling great and loved then is a reflection not just on you and your lucky self, but on the considerable talent and grace of this girl. Whom you now are considering (airily though your considering may be) ditching for some (I was going to write skank, then goth loli, but have settled on) sylph who might get your rocks off.
The fact is the girl you're seeing long distance may or may not see you as, in the words of my late father, "having hung the moon." She might like you lots, yes, but keep the following in mind: If and when she changes her mind, she will be far, far less sentimental about the break-up than you will be On the contrary, she'll walk away and never give you another thought and you'll be sitting alone thinking What just happened.
I want you to now enact a little mental exercise where you imagine just that scenario: You send a text (because you can't be bothered to live close to your beat friend/partner who loves you) and you brace yourself for the long sprawling message beseeching you to stay, stay. What you get instead is static. It sits on unread. You are blocked on social media--or maybe not? Maybe she was kidnapped and disappeared and moved away, etc etc. You suddenly, far too late, realize the folly of your mistake and send an apology. This also sits unread. You maybe try a, b, and c if whatever other scrambling to undo what's been done, but all this will be a waste of time. Because it's over.
But, but, she loved you! She would never leave you! You were practically soulmates. Yes, yes, she did, she wouldn't, and you were. And now she's gone and she ain't coming back, ever. Good luck with the casual sex.
All of the above may be wrong, but if experience is any teacher (and often it isn't) you can probably get something of value by rereading. I am not saying you'll change your mind. If you were using your mind this wouldn't be an issue. You're not using your mind. Diamond Jim never does. Diamond Jim sees the greener grass everywhere. He is full of confidence that he has but to seek and he will find. And he feels that way (which isn't a bad way to feel, of course) because he is puffed up with sexual confidence. Nevermind that he gained this confidence because he has a stable, supportive relationship.
Anyway. My train has arrived Good luck
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4mo ago
This was all over the news last night. Japan seems to me to be quite different from the US in that although this is "big news," it's also shameful and embarrassing and I think you'd have to really press to get people to talk about it. My Twitter is mostly filled by Japanese and it reminds me of the old days of 2012ish Twitter where people would just tweet some joke about the humidity. The long, Kulak-like screeds of dubious reasoning calling for whatever revolution (or even political change) just don't seem very common at all in Japanese, even in matters such as this where the scandal is clear and no one is denying it (also unlike the US). Of course my Twitter feed may not be very representative.
I enjoyed this take, but there's always a John LeCarré even on the British side (an author I have always greatly admired) whose spies carry on even while often knowingly part of a dysfunctional system (and LeCarré suggested he made his fictional circus/MI6 much more efficient than the reality). The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is probably the best example of this, while the Smiley books are more in line with a loyal British subject in some way representing an ideal of a man soldiering on for his country despite a faithless wife and traitorous colleagues. But here it's individuals who fail him, not the system.
Book Bourne, if memory serves, is also considerably less hostile to the CIA than the Matt Damon, movie Bourne, who is an odd mishmash of superfighter pacifist. Your thesis isn't necessarily taken apart by this at all, but may be stronger when applied to film depictions. I haven't, alas, read Hunger Games.
Edit: I wrote that at 5 something after almost no sleep. Rereading it I am not sure what my point was.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5mo ago
I only glanced at it, and I assume these entries, like many diary entries, weren't meant with a future audience in mind necessarily, but for the writer to essentially vomit thoughts onto the page. I've read many, many handwritten pages throughout my teaching career and I'd have thought girl looking at these. Not girlie girl, but female.
That doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong, it's just what I thought and still think. You have a point that some sections are far less legible.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6mo ago
It's very considerate of you to even entertain this quandary. I am not sure if there's a physical solution short of moving people around, but the usual diverting of questions and throwing attention toward the quiet people in the way of random commentary and "What did you say that one time about..?" to refocus attention their way would be my own strategy.
You didn't ask for this next comment but quiet people are often fine being quiet and even prefer the audience role, which is of course something else that only you can gauge from the moment and the individuals involved.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7mo ago
I feel as if you must have either immersed yourself in some really angry, fairly unrealistic online discourse regarding the dating scene, or that you yourself have had some fairly horrible experiences in your romantic interactions with women. I am not suggesting that terrible outcomes are not possible, but the likelihood of being beat up or having the cops called on anyone for approaching a woman seems exceedingly low, unless of course you are doing something very, very wrong (I mean like wearing a shirt covered in blood level wrong).
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7mo ago
You get it. And the guys who have left her on read without responding have, perhaps, saved their own pride, but have also failed the shit test as much as the guys who become bruised and immediately apologize and make a list of other possible fun date ideas. Or worse: Ask her what fun thing she wants to do.
I think considering the woman's perspective is instructive, and as much as straight women generally don't understand what courtship (that's my chosen word, feel free to substitute your own) is like for straight men, men as well I think can't get their head around what it must be like for women. Namely to inhabit a world where one has a) readily available sex basically whenever one wants it, though not without possibly considerable social, emotional, and yes, possibly physical cost 2) a body that can get pregnant due to said sex, pregnancy of course being much different than the flu, or other physical ailment and d) the knowledge that, after the sex and depending upon how early it has been had, how much the man has had to invest to get it (because women are the figurative seller here), and how satisfying it was-- the man may very likely lose any long-term interest, starting you again jarringly quickly back at the beginning with a new prince charmless.
What must it be like for a girl to be treated as if she is in possession of a prize worth all of Africa's ivory and Asia's gold, then, when the post-coital tissue comes out, realize she isn't? The feeling of having been conned must be substantial.
Of course often some spark is kindled, the guy is too busy counting his lucky stars to show or feel disinterest, and a relationship may blossom into something long-lasting, if not quite the place that was promised. Or perhaps something something true love, if saying this unironically will not get me Motte-banned.
The dating dance, once I learned it (far later than would have really benefited me but not so late as to not benefit me at all) I always found exhilarating. Which is not to say I was some sort of record holder. I wasn't and am not. Having written that I also fully understand the frustrations involved, particularly when obsessiveness masquerading as love enters the fray.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7mo ago
As an aside, if this isn't too off-topic, in fifteen minutes of Motte browsing I have now encountered the word assabiyah twice, having never seen it before. What's the pronunciation? And from whence the apparently now popular usage?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
As a Bond geek, let me insert here that the double-oh status is simply (if that's the right word) a "license to kill" and the films/books regularly refer to, say double-oh-nine, or even a double-oh-twelve.
007 is just the number of Bond himself, and in the first film of Craig's it's stated outright：
Dreyfuss： "The benefits of being section chief; I'd know if anyone had been promoted to 00 status. Your file shows no kills. And it takes--"
Bond： "Two."
(Bond proceeds after a moment of banter to kill Dreyfuss, solidifyng these requirements, which we see in the opening credits.)
Thus ends my contribution here.
Really? It takes all kinds, I guess. I was on the train this morning, enjoying a rare day of sunshine (it's been very rainy) and I had to stop the wave of nausea before the title card when I think I saw some kid fellating a dog. Maybe it wasn't a dog. Maybe he was biting. Biting is worse, but just barely. (Edit: Or is it? I don't even want to know.) The perverse part of my soul that I try to keep down as much as possible wanted to pause and rewind. Better Me won. I dragged the bar a bit and then saw what looked like a few snapshots of men with malformed faces, I guess to show, what, malformed faces are bad therefore Indians are bad? And a woman getting kicked very hard in the stomach to the point that she went flying. I saw a man dying as he was struck by a train.
I stopped after that. I probably didn't flinch, but revolted seems like the right word.
I stand behind the notion that you shouldn't dismiss a whole piece of art unless you've watched/read/listened to it in its entirety, so I won't dismiss it, but damn.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
21d ago
Thames isn't a name of a person or video creator it's taken from the logo of Thames television
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
24d ago
Has anyone else watched, or did anyone else watch as a child, the documentary series World At War? The link I just provided is to all 26 episodes on Youtube. Not the best resolution, but really this must be one of the best documentary series about WWII ever produced, not least because of the interviews with men who were actually in the war and who are now dead (it was made in 1973.) Narrated by Laurence Olivier. Highly recommended. I remember my dad watching it as it was released--he'd sit in his lounge chair, and I can still recall the theme playing. I got bored quickly and usually only watched a few minutes, but I was a kid. Recently I've been watching the whole thing.
Not really fun, however, so I'm not sure it's appropriate to this thread. I didn't want to put this in the main forum and I am not interested in a culture war take.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6mo ago
Do you expect you're talking about the same women? The women I know best wouldn't dream of setting up an OF account. I am sure they have their secret garden like all women, the face they don't show me and would never show me, but I am not sure the OF types are the same girls one might be approaching at, say, Starbucks. Of course you could argue you're talking about some sort of female psychology here, but that seems like women assuming all men are subscribers to OF or are dangerous potential rapists. This is only true in the least charitable view.
Also I am not sure it's either realistic or ideal (despite the modern idea of writing up a dating profile) to be "open about preferences" from the get-go (primarily because I think these preferences should be a natural growth based on shared experience of one another, and not, say, what one learns one gets off to via watching porn).
Many women are students of male weakness, yes. For various reasons. But I'd argue against anyone who suggests all men want one type of inamorata, actually. There are commonalities, probably, among men, but I mean camgirl and porn sites all have the Category button for a reason. If what you mean is "All men want to see your tits" then you're probably right. Past that it's vague. But presumably for most the draw of such sites is the same as the draw of the waterlogged magazine cache in the woods for boys of my era--the erotic forbidden. There have been Playboy centerfolds for a long time. That doesn't mean that's everyone's ideal (thus you get sexless wonders asking on reddit and elsewhere "Would U date an Onlyfans girl?") Regardless of the answers, the fact that this is a question that gets asked suggests these girls and women who put themselves in that marketplace are not the norm, despite how it seems.
I will offer that I think the normalization to some degree of this sort of virtual prostitution is very troubling and I can't imagine it sending us anywhere good. An equivalent would be normalization of, say, fighting and violence for men. We all have that side in us, buried to some degree. Make it acceptable and people suppress it less. There probably is a zone where girls who never would have imagined themselves dancing naked to shitty music in video are doing so because as you say, easy money and some degree of anonymity.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7mo ago
The point presumably is that using the phrase "He was mean to me" suggests that you yourself are weak in a way for allowing meanness to get to you, whereas "He used violence against me" lays all presumptive blame on the violent. At least that's how I read it.
I don't know but I somehow doubt it. Saying almost anything explicitly here is considered bad form--or, actually I only guess that it is bad form, as even that has never been said to me explicitly. Even in my earlier post when I said that it was "put to me" that I was accruing on inadvertently, this was not really put to me. It was hinted at and I got the message.
If I had to imagine it, I would say that I could, yes, state to one or two neighbors that I just wanted to piddle in the garden park for my own gratification, and I would then be seen as a tolerable eccentric (which is how I am usually seen anyway.) But it would contribute to an imbalance of what I will probably inappropriately call the wa of the neighborhood. I would set things off kilter, and as a foreigner here I always take pains to not do that any more than I do by my presence alone. And probably someone would still not feel right about it.
On is one of those things that never ends. The cycle commences and then it never stops. We have one neighbor whose sole interactions with us are greetings--no other kindnesses or gestures--for once those begin, they can never end. It's nothing personal. I guess. All of this is just me intuiting the unwritten rules.
Interesting. I'll do that. Even with the software I used the gold ones stayed, but I manually wiped those as well just out of spite.
edit： Yes a few are still there though [deleted] shows as author. Odd that tge search engine for my username (same as here) nevertheless turned up the posts.
No recourse, as my acct which could redelete them is gone. Thanks for telling me, though.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10mo ago
"There's a lot to unpack here" god I hate that, irrationally so, almost as much as cringe used as an adjective, though cringey is no better.
The word leftist itself is right-coded. You don't hear a lot of left-leaning people use the word (or, I myself don't hear them).
The term indoctrinate seems more right-coded now, particularly when referring to education. Deplorable used ironically as a noun to refer to a person, for obvious reasons.
You'll get there if you keep thinking. Apart from the danger to other people's lives (and also your own life and the lives of your passengers when your unstoppable force meets its immovable object), the most compelling reason to not be an asshole (on the road at high speeds in a 2 ton metallic box, in line at Lowe's, at the table at Red Lobster, or, yes, online): is that it's contagious. Your zooming in front of a frazzled mother shakes her up, she gets so rattled she snaps at her daughter, who is then a little bitch to her brother, who then storms out and throws a rock at a window. It's a cycle of destruction and human misery that is a microcosm of hell on earth. Sure, you get wherever faster and mildly more smug, but you've fucked over your fellow men and women to do so. If explaining why that is not ideal is necessary, it is probably also pointless.
That said, I understand you may have been going for hyperbole.
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