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Pique'n'yer interest

On Douchebaggery

In his seminal essay On Bullshit, Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt noted that our culture is rife with bullshit, but that “we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.” Thus we have no way of recognizing bullshit, or appraising its impact on our society.

I feel the same way about douchebaggery, loosely defined as the act of being a douchebag. To paraphrase various urban and slang dictionaries, a douchebag is a pretentious low-life, an asshole purely for the joy of it. Usually male, a douchebag is vain, smug, and entirely without empathy or sympathy for others.

Lately I find myself wondering why so many douchebags gravitate to Whistler. Is it the “Type A” personality, jock, adrenaline-junkie thing, or does it speak more to the resort’s desperate need for a constant stream of young, transient workers to staff our service industry? Is it endemic ski/snowboard/skateboard culture, or to our current youth culture as a whole?

A few weeks ago, I headed to the Whistler Disc Golf Course to squeeze in an early season round, slumping through snow, squelching through mud, and picking up a ridiculous number of beer cans and bottles that had been tossed everywhere. I probably missed three things for every item I picked up, but I’m planning on going back with a proper garbage this weekend to do a proper cleanup.

While picking up all this trash I started to wonder what this litter says about our town, and the douchebags that come here to live and play.

Where, I wondered, do these litter-tossing douchebags come from? Why did they choose to live in the mountains, close to nature that they hold in so much contempt?

Are these douchebags rebelling, and, if so, against what? Recycling bins? The environment? Reasonable expectations of personal responsibility and good conduct?

Are these douchebags just being shiftless and lazy? Do they think that someone has been hired to clean up after them, and that they’re creating jobs for muni workers?

Or are they just out to piss people off?

Whatever their reasons, it’s completely stupid. It’s really not that hard to pick up after yourself. The municipality has been kind enough to put a garbage and recycling bin right in the middle of the course so you walk right by it twice during a full 27-hole disc golf game.

In fact, the municipality was kind enough to build the course in the first place, trusting the public not to trash this free amenity or carelessly burn all of Lost Lake Park to the ground. As always, I’m sure it’s just a few bad eggs that are the cause of the problem, but that won’t matter if the municipality one day decides that it isn’t worth the hassle and closes the course.

Unfortunately for everyone, the lowest common denominator wields disproportionate power in our society, resulting in newspapers with a Grade 3 reading level and the cancellation of the only good, intelligent shows on television. It only takes one inconsiderate douchebag to ruin a good thing for everybody.

There’s never a good excuse for littering. Even if you feel you’re making some kind of grand statement by dropping your crap on the ground, like “I don’t play by the rules”, or “F— the World!”, nobody cares. If you want to make a political statement, then join a party and vote. If you want to make a social statement, then buy a T-shirt or start a blog.

Litter is just the top of the iceberg of Whistler douchebaggery. I would apply the same standard to all the taggers in town that feel their Sharpie squiggles on everything qualify as art, or the wannabe skateboarders that trashed the underground skatepark in Creekside last winter and nearly got all of the other skateboarders evicted.

Same goes for all the douchebags that don’t clean up after their dogs, or sprawl over three bus seats during rush hour and intimidate other passengers into standing, or kick out bus shelter windows, or steal things, or are rude to the tourists, or throw their cigarette butts around, or get in fights at the taxi loop at 3 a.m. with other douchebags for no good reason.

It’s not entirely hopeless — the one thing that separates douchebags from assholes, in my understanding, is that douchebags do stupid, destructive things deliberately, while assholes are just being themselves.

The good news, then, is that douchebags are redeemable. Unlike assholes, they can change their behaviour, and, by choice, make an effort once in a while to do the right thing.

I think we can all agree that Whistler would pretty much be Utopia without all the douchebags. Let the training begin.

Heckling douchebag behaviour is a good start. Just remember that decent people outnumber the douchebags, and should come to your aid if a douchebag takes your suggestion to put his garbage in the bin as a challenge to fight.

Ticketing douchebag behaviour is also important. In my 10 years in Whistler I’ve never heard of anybody getting a ticket for littering, but bylaw and RCMP really should have special days every so often where they target a specific kind of bad behaviour.

Educating douchebags is the best solution. We’ve done a little work in this area through Welcome Week and the Spirit program, but I’d like to see regular public awareness campaigns. “Don’t be a douche, don’t pollute.”

Anything less, and the douchebags win.