Assholes: What Are They Good For?

The human rectum and anus are extraordinary pieces of equipment.

I realize this is an unusual place to begin an essay, but stay with me. Anatomically speaking, the rectum stores waste until the body is ready to get rid of it, while the anal sphincters perform an essential service: they hold things in when they need to stay in and let things out when they need to leave. They are specifically designed to distinguish between those two circumstances, which, when you think about it, demonstrates a level of discernment that seems increasingly rare among the human population.

The anus is also the perfect exit point for waste. Some people use it for pleasure. Most of us spend remarkably little time appreciating the entire operation until something goes wrong, at which point its importance becomes immediately and spectacularly clear. So anatomically speaking, assholes are incredibly useful.

This essay is not about those assholes.

I’m talking about the other kind. The kind who takes up the entire sidewalk while watching you approach and somehow concludes that you should disappear. The person given a tiny amount of authority who begins behaving as though they’ve been appointed emperor. The service provider who would rather turn a simple problem into a protracted battle than simply resolve it. The person whose bad mood somehow becomes a community event.

There have always been assholes. I know this. You know this. Every generation has produced them, and presumably every generation has wondered whether it was producing more than the one before it.

Still, lately, I have some questions. Is it me, or do they seem to be multiplying like little baby gremlins?

I encounter them in businesses, buildings, gyms, sidewalks, emails, customer-service exchanges, comment sections, and places where nobody should have enough power to become drunk on it but somehow manages anyway. The specifics change, but the underlying message is remarkably consistent: My needs matter more than yours. My inconvenience is now your emergency. My anger deserves an audience. My authority, however microscopic, requires acknowledgment.

That, more than simple rudeness, could be precisely what makes an asshole an asshole.

Everyone is rude sometimes. Everyone is selfish sometimes. Everyone wakes up pissed off, distracted, exhausted, scared, broke, heartbroken, overwhelmed, constipated, or simply not in the mood to participate enthusiastically in civilization. I’ve been an asshole. I’m sure I’ll be one again.

The distinction, at least for me, is a basic lack of regard for the fact that other people are having a human experience at the same time you are.

This shouldn’t be a radical concept. You are not the only person who woke up angry today. Neither am I.

That’s why the sidewalk gets me.

A sidewalk is perhaps the simplest social contract we have. Two people approach one another. Both make a microscopic adjustment. Everybody continues walking. No forms. No terms of service. No mediation. Nobody has to win.

Yet I’ve had people look directly at me while occupying the entire path and simply keep coming. There is something almost fascinating about it. What is the expected outcome here? Shall I climb a tree? Enter traffic? Evaporate?

Move six fucking inches or you’re gonna get checked by my elbow.

This is civilization—or a lack thereof—at its most basic.

Perhaps that’s partly why assholery feels more conspicuous now. So many of our ordinary interactions have become unnecessarily adversarial. A transaction that could take thirty seconds becomes an argument. A reasonable request becomes a power struggle. Someone discovers that they possess the ability to say no and appears almost giddy at the opportunity to use it.

None of this requires enormous power. Sometimes all you need is control over an appointment book, a refund, a policy, a door, a parking space, or six feet of sidewalk.

Power does make assholery more interesting, though.

This flies in the face of a story many of us were handed early: work hard, do the right thing, treat people well, don’t screw anyone over, and eventually the math will math. Except sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes the person cutting corners has the bigger house. Sometimes the loudest person gets the microphone. Sometimes the person least concerned about inconveniencing everyone else gets exactly what they wanted because everyone around them has decided that accommodating them is easier than dealing with them.

That last one bothers me because perhaps assholes aren’t uniquely gifted at getting what they want.

Maybe the rest of us have been subsidizing assholery.

Most reasonably considerate people possess some internal mechanism that asks, Am I being a dick here?

We move over. We let something go. We give somebody the benefit of the doubt. We decide the money isn’t worth the fight, the argument isn’t worth the energy, the comment isn’t worth answering.

These are generally good instincts. They’re part of what allows millions of people with completely different needs, personalities, beliefs, histories, moods, and tolerances to coexist without punching one another in the produce aisle. They’re also exploitable.

The person with no concern about being difficult has an advantage over the person desperately trying not to be difficult. Eventually, everyone learns that the quickest way to restore peace is to give the asshole what they want.

Social media appears to have taken this already questionable incentive structure and poured gasoline on it.

Assholes once had relatively limited distribution. You could terrorize your family, annoy your coworkers, ruin Thanksgiving, dominate the neighborhood association, or become the person everyone hoped wouldn’t show up at the bar.

Now you can build an audience.

Outbursts become content. Conflict becomes engagement. Provocation becomes reach. Reach becomes followers. Followers can become money. Suddenly the behavior that would once have made everyone at the dinner table stop inviting you back can become a business model, which when you think about it, has something vaguely carnivalesque about it.

Human beings have always been drawn to spectacle. We used to gather around whatever was unusual, outrageous, shocking, grotesque, dangerous, or difficult to look away from. Now the carnival travels in our pockets, available twenty-four hours a day, and some of the attractions have affiliate links.

An even stranger part is how easily spectacle can become aspiration.

Attention begins to resemble importance. Visibility gets confused with expertise. Someone survives something, experiences something, buys something, loses something, changes something, or discovers something about themselves and six minutes later is explaining to millions of strangers how everyone else should live.

Experience has value. It does not automatically confer mastery. Yet certainty performs exceptionally well online, and assholes tend to have plenty of it.

I don’t know whether there are objectively more assholes than there used to be. I wouldn’t even know how one conducts an asshole census. I suspect we’ve simply created more places for assholery to occur, more ways for it to reach us, and, in some cases, actual financial incentives for performing it publicly.

I must admit that my own tolerance for assholes has changed. For much of my life, it was easier to move over, let it go, or take a loss because protecting my peace was worth more than proving a point. But I am less interested in doing that now. 

Not because I want to become an asshole. I don’t. There are enough openings in that department already. I’m simply less convinced that refusing to accommodate an asshole makes me one. Those are not the same thing.

If you fuck with something that belongs to me, take money you shouldn’t have, treat me as though my time doesn’t matter, make your responsibilities my problem, or use whatever little bit of leverage you possess to behave badly, I may call you on it.

You may not enjoy that. You may even decide I’m the asshole. Don’t worry, I’ll live.

Decency and compliance are not synonyms.

Perhaps that’s the only useful thing the human variety of asshole provides: contrast. They show us where our boundaries are. They expose what happens when consideration becomes one-sided. Occasionally, they remind the rest of us that being kind doesn’t require volunteering to be steamrolled.

Still, as a category, I’m not convinced they contribute much. Which feels deeply unfair to the anatomical asshole.

Our anatomical assholes, and particularly the sphincters, have this whole thing figured out. They are marvels of restraint and containment. The rectum knows how to hold ’em. The sphincters know when to fold ’em. Kenny Rogers would be proud. Together, they dispose of waste efficiently and, under ordinary circumstances, without involving innocent bystanders.

Most importantly, they seem to understand something their metaphorical namesakes often do not:

Just because you’re full of shit doesn’t mean everybody else needs to deal with it.

So, assholes: what are they good for? Anatomically? Quite a lot. The rest of you?

The jury is still out.