douchey /duʃi/ adjective
1. Having the characteristics of a douchebag.douchebag /duʃbæg/ noun
1. An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by rudeness, and a lack of social grace and self-awareness.
2. A person obsessed with his own accomplishments or appearance, and therefore treats others poorly or with disrespect.
J: They seem really douchey.
G: Those guys who just walked by?
J: Yeah.
G: You think?
J: Yeah.
G: I don’t know. We just saw them for a second. I don’t think we can assume that.
J: You do that a lot, you know.
G: Do what?
J: You defend people like that. I’m just saying.
G: (pause) I think… when I see someone who is attractive, and I think people jump to conclusions about that person just because he’s attractive, it bothers me. I mean, I’m sure there were times in my life… back when I was modeling and such… when I would walk into a room and people would automatically assume, “Oh, he must be a douchebag,” just based on how I looked.
J: Yeah, but … back when you were modeling, you kinda were that way.
G: I know but…
J: You even admitted as much to me.
G: I know, but people still shouldn’t assume it. I just think it bothers me when people assume things about other people based on how they look.
J: Well, I didn’t say they were douchey based on how they looked.
G: Really? Well, what then?
J: They didn’t make eye contact when they walked by. They walked past our entire group, nobody else around, and didn’t make eye contact or smile at all.
G: Oh, I see.
J: There’s no reason not to be nice. They obviously aren’t in a rush to get anywhere, we’re at a resort. There’s no reason not to be friendly.
G: You’re right, there’s no reason not to be nice.
G: Sometimes I have a lot on my mind.
J: What?
G: I was thinking about what we were talking about before. Sometimes, I just have a lot on my mind, and so I don’t smile or make eye contact.
J: You think they all were thinking really hard about something as they walked into the resort?
G: No, I’m just saying… you never know what’s going on in someone’s life. We don’t know what they were doing just before they got here. I mean, I’m not talking about those guys in particular, maybe, but in general. Just because someone walks by without smiling and making eye contact, doesn’t mean they’re douchey. They might just be preoccupied, or upset about something, or… anything.
J: But you don’t think that’s what was going on with them.
G: Well, no. I think in their case, it was… well, I kind of recognized it. Like when I was younger, and I’d be in a bar or something, and I’d think, “Oh, God, I better not accidentally make eye contact with someone that I’m not attracted to, or they’ll come up and start bothering me.” But that’s kind of…
J: Douchey.
G: Yeah. I mean, assuming that anyone who smiles at you is smiling because they are attracted to you, is a douchey attitude to take.
J: Yes.
G: Although, in my defense, you do get kind of conditioned in certain settings. Like at bars and stuff. I mean, it’s not that unreasonable. You can have a couple of bad experiences at a bar or a gym, and just be like, “I’ll just avoid all of that kind of thing by never making eye contact with people I don’t know.”
J: That doesn’t make it any less of a douchey way to act.
G: I suppose not.
G: So, do you think you would have thought they were douchey if they hadn’t been attractive?
J: Are you still on this!?
G: Sorry. I’m sober.
J: You always use that as an excuse.
G: Anyway, so I was thinking… if a bunch of unattractive guys had walked past, and not made eye contact and not smiled, would you still have jumped to the conclusion that they were douchey?
J: I think so.
G: I don’t know. I don’t know that you would have noticed or cared as much, that they didn’t smile, if you didn’t think they were attractive.
J: In my experience, when guys who look like that also act like that, it usually turns out that they are douchey.
G: I guess I just think there’s a selection bias. You don’t necessarily pay attention to the unattractive ones who are douchey, so you don’t have a strong sense of whether unattractive people are douchey as often as attractive people are douchey. What we really need here is a Chi-square statistic, to see whether douchey-ness is really associated with attractiveness. I mean, in a statistically reliable way.
J: Uh huh. I just think there’s never a good reason not to be friendly to people.
G: No, no… I understand. You’re right.
