On Maynardism and why you can tell people you don't like how they look, but they'll think you're an asshole.

I have a friend who is simultaneously quiet and brash. He has a pronounced tendency not to bother with such things as social niceties, and I accepted this long ago as a personality quirk rather than genuine vitriol. Tonight I was introduced to the idea that not everyone is willing to overlook it as such, in the form of another friend of mine becoming heartily offended over an unflattering comment he made on her appearance.
It was the kind of comment that was terribly worded, and knowing him as long as I have I could see immediately that he did not mean it in the way it came out, but by then it was too late. It had been said, the proverbial damage dealt.
And that, children, is why it's best to consider who we are talking to before we say anything that could possibly (definitely) be seen as rude or hostile.

I also spent some time in the company of the kind of people who drink until they vomit and then continue drinking/are pretty sure there's absolutely nothing undesirable about living in a constant cloud of pot smoke/declare poorly edited cartoons with little or no coherency to be 'exactly like a bad acid trip', which makes no fucking sense because modern acid rarely if ever causes visual hallucinations. Inevitably, Bill Hicks was mentioned and adoration heaped upon His Holy Name from all sides. I left before someone could bust out the Tool albums and begin pointing out the Bill Hicks references in the Tool songs. My only response to anything along these lines will forever be best summed up in this video:

Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that these pseudo-intellectual/edgy/whateverthefuck morons have made one very basic mistake.
Say a layman strikes up a conversation about quantum physics with a physicist. There's a good chance the layman will not understand a single thing the physicist is talking about, because the physicist is extremely intelligent and knows a lot more about the subject than the layman does.
Say a useless stoner pseud strikes up a conversation about who-the-fuck-can-tell-what with an average non-idiot person. There's a good chance the non-idiot will not understand a single thing the pretentious Messiah-complex-bearer is talking about, and sadly, they seem to think that this is because - like the physicist - they are just too clever for the poor layman to follow.

It's not because they're talking utter bullshit that has no intellectual or philosophical merit whatsoever. It's just that you don't get it, man.