The rise of the douche - and what we can do to stop it

We all see it, we all make fun of it. Yet somehow, douche are and have been on the rise. Despite a vigorous anti-douche campaign, this horrific affliction (see what I did there?) continues to assault good taste and classy behavior of gentlemen and gentleladies everywhere. First, we play the blame game:

The Douches themselves: There's a reason decent human beings make fun of Ed Hardy and Affliction shirts, spiky hair that fell out of style circa 1998 and those possessing an Oompa Loompa uber-tan - they try way too hard. And in doing so, they fail. Fail at fashion, fail at relating, fail at life. They're douches, and they have chosen this path.

...and the Women who love them: You know who you are. You're that girl who came up to me in Mexico in 2001 and asked me point-blank to buy you a drink, to which I responded "Are you gonna talk with me if I do?", to which you turned to a douche standing next to me, got your drink, and promptly walked away. The score? Me - 1, Douche - 0.

You're also that club girl that wears too much makeup, peroxides your hair, and takes pictures of you flashing faux gang signs while making kissy faces/sticking out your tongue/pretending you are a lesbian and your boobs are pushed up in a revealing tanktop. You're the Douchette™, and like your male counterpart, you try way too hard and thus you fail.

The Anti-Douches: Stay with me on this one, 'cause it takes a physics metaphor to explain. If you've ever watched an episode of "Star Trek" (stay with me!) you probably heard Scotty complaining about how the warp core can't take much more, how the matter/antimatter injectors are ready to blow.

The key is matter/antimatter. Antimatter is real, and can easily be explained as the exact opposite of matter. Remember the structure of an atom? Protons, electrons (stay with me!), nuetrons? Ring any bells? If not, Google it. One such antiparticle is the positron. Positrons have an electrical charge of +1, a spin of 1/2, and the same mass as an electron. An electron has a charge of -1, a spin of 1/2, and the same mass as a positron. See where I'm going with this?

Science: it's fucking awesome!

The Anti-Douche are those guys who mock the Douches and their manufactured personalities, then go and wear a white v-neck undershirt with a suit vest, skinny jeans that give them chicken legs, and think American Apparel is ironically the height of haute couture. I don't really have a problem with the Anti-Douche, as I like Mirror Spock and if you can rock the look and not seem pretensious or overly trendy, then bonus points to you. However, the supermajority of the Anti-Douche are just as much slaves to conformity as their counterparts. And when matter touches antimatter, they annihilate each other.

Clothing companies: This one is easy. People think shirt X is the coolest fucking thing ever, and after enough people buy it, shirt X no longer is the coolest fucking thing ever. However, a bunch of people still own shirt X, and while some realize their folly (or jump ship and buy the next coolest fucking thing ever, pants Y), many refuse to admit their gullibility and steadfastly continue wearing shirt X. The makers of shirt X, their revenues falling to the popularity of pants Y, come out with shirt X2: shirts united. Some owners of shirt X buy shirt X2, and the cycle continues until, like the matter of a nuetron star, the group of X brand devotees condenses into a small but dense pile of weird shit.

Damn, and my economics lecture was going so well.

Viewers like you!: Much like watchers of PBS, douches are supported by the actions (or inactions) of people like you. And that includes myself. Humans, being creatures of habit that resist change, once having started a pattern of behavior, will only change it when they are forced to. Sensible people like you and me find it easier to make fun of the douches instead of doing the humane thing and staging an intervention. Or putting them down, although that's probably illegal. I'll check on that and get back to you.

Now that we've identified the culprits of this crime, what can we do to stop it?

1) Start by punching them in the face. Seriously. It'll allow you to continue with a level head once all that pent-up frustration has been released. The douches won't mind.

2) Give the douche a better role model. May I suggest any of the following: Don Draper, Buzz Aldrin, Steve McQueen, Chuck Yeager, Top Cat. All of these men show confidence, classic fashion sense, and are real. They are who they are, not what anyone tells them to be.

He's an animated cat and he's still cooler than a douche will ever be

3) Let them know that their behavior is not acceptable in grown-up society. Or children's society or Mini-Society or any society. If they try to break this rule, roll up a newspaper and hit them on the nose, yell "Bad dog!" and rub their face in the mess they made. It's tough love, but it works.

4) Be wary of any potential relapses. Once cured of their douche-ness, the patient still can have the occasional flare-up, especially if the douche was deeply entrenched. Keep them away from Ed hardy outlets, any reports of Spencer Pratt or Platt or whatever the shit's name is, and spray-on tans. If a relapse does occur, repeat step 3 and force feed them "Mad Men" and Steve McQueen movies until they recover.

We can banish douche behavior to the same fate as smallpox and polio. For the betterment of all humanity, we can, nay, we must take this problem head on and remain resolute to the eradication of the douche. If we don't the terrorists win.