Something like 50% of people play video games. Call of Duty, itself -- just one single game -- sells over 25 million copies in a year and is played by at least that many people, yet we only have a couple crazy mass killers. And that's just one game. Factor in all the other games and gamers and you probably have a good 100 million or more, in the US alone. And, again, only one or two crazy mass killers.
So, even if 100% of mass murders are caused absolutely and directly by videogames and never any other thing, videogames are inconsequential -- only causing (in this magical world where they are actually to blame) murderous violence in a whopping.00001%.
That's not necessarily entirely accurate. The government - including our president - has been persistently pushing for forced psychological assessments of the entire population for a number of years, so far. In some cases, suggesting it should be part of required physician care (especially with any government medical assistance program) and other times that it should be something every student has to go through in school. Couple this with the DSMV's continual diagnosis of almost everyone on the planet with some sort of "mental disorder" (sometimes even in self contradiction so that you have a disorder no matter what side you fall on) and it seems pretty clear to me that mental health and over-diagnosis and over-prescription is being potentially used (or viewed, at least) as a tool against the population.
Also, the difference between a normal medical condition and a mental medical condition should be obvious and it is an entirely rational concern. While I sympathize with someone who is schizophrenic, or bi-polar, or manic-depressive, or occasionally delusional, or paranoid, they are a far greater risk to my business, my safety, and the safety of my employees due to those illnesses than someone who has bronchitis or cancer or diabetes is due to theirs.
Anyway, for one example, you didn't see everyone immediately cling to the "durp durp he has aspergers!" thing? Every fucking geek on the planet claims to have aspergers and it would be a politician's wet-dream to be able to declare people, at whim, as being suspect simply because they share some claimed association to a mental condition of some mass murderer. FURTHER, let's not just focus on mental condition (which I agree *is* important, even though potentially abused) . . . but how about on medication? Notice that a lot of anti-depressants state a warning about how they can actually cause more suicidal and unpredictable thoughts in younger people who are taking them? Notice how that is a common element of a lot of young people, from that kid who flew a plane into the bank building a few years ago to Lanza? So when we say "mental health", let's not forget the culpability and influence of either poor diagnoses or bad and/or over-prescribed medications.
Some times crazy and unpredictable bad shit happens and sometimes those freak occurrences are the price of enjoying a wide range of freedom. I'll take the freedom at the tiny increased risk of bad random shit happening to me, thanks.
I find that hideous. The ESRB is voluntary rating. You know, because of the whole freedom of speech thing. A consumer -- even a 15 year old consumer -- should have the right to determine what they want to purchase, as far as consumable media. The ESRB can label something however they want for informative purchases, but it should not be a shopkeepers obligation to enforce adherence to informational-only labeling. Worse, this "censor yourselves or WE (the government) will do it for you" bullshit is absolutely vile. It's a way to end-run the constitution. It has already been declared unconstitutional for the government to censor content and if they did, you could address it in court.
So, instead, they bully industry into imposing the same censorship *for* them -- only this way, they get all the effect without any of the liability of violating the constitution.
And people are stupid enough to accept this. Or even praise it.
The constitution isn't a list of rights that you get to have as a citizen. It's a list of restrictions placed on government to protect citizens. Period.
I've never understood what the relevance of games to violence has to do with anything. It's only even remotely relevant if we are going to eradicate the first amendment. If we're not, then whatever conclusions derived about videogames are irrelevant. If we are, then we have far bigger problems to worry about than mass murder or video games (like willfully tossing our constitution aside and the protections it irrevocably maintains for citizens).
Even if, in some magical alternate universe, someone came out and said "it is now conclusive -- video games turn people into murders at the rate of one killer per seventy-five-million people", I would respond with "and... so the fuck what?"
And by "chld", let's not forget that you actually mean "21 year old adult". That seems to be lost in all of this media "games drove this little itty bitty baby to mass murder" stuff.
Drawing a distinction between the two is rather disingenuous. Agnostics and atheists both lack belief in religion, because the assertions that religion makes can not be proven, by their nature. Neither beliefs in a thing that is asserted and can not be proven. To suggest there is a meaningful difference (other than one is more socially acceptable and therefore adopted by those more concerned with not being judged or shunned) is to suggest that there is any validity to unprovable assertions, simply because they can't be disproved. "You can't prove that we are not stacked on the back of a massive cosmic turtle" does not give the idea of a massive cosmic turtle any sort of validity. My not believing in massive cosmic turtle is not any active assertion. It is simply not believing in something that someone else is asserting and can't prove.
I mean, by this logic used by a number of people, we must accept all possibilities -- no matter how fucking absurd -- as equally possible. Negating any logic, experience, knowledge, or common sense. And if you don't accept them all as possible because you can't disprove them, then you are not simply someone who "does not subscribe to those beliefs", but are somehow actively asserting the opposite of those things . . . instead of simply remaining in the default position you were at in the beginning of it all -- of not subscribing to any random unprovable assertions.
Of course, the whole conversation ends up being kind of dumb, because who gives a fuck?
If you give me a bag full of 0s, my statement that the bag has no 1s is the same as my statement that there are no 1s in the bag. They both sit at the default position of "that bag does not contain 1s". All you have to do to change that view is to pull a 1 out of that bag.
And there is the distinction, after all. People who "believe there isn't a deity" and "do not believe there is a deity" (same fucking thing) would change their mind if data proved otherwise. Because it is not a belief. It is not an assertion. It is the default position which remains when you are not making an assertion that there is a thing. It is religion that makes an assertion (and that does not give a rip about data and evidence and would never change that assertion under any circumstances). Trying to equate the two -- as so many here seem to be doing -- is pretty disingenuous.
By definition, you are an atheist if you do not believe in a god or a religion. I used to be an agnostic, because "I can't prove anything and don't care", but then I realized an "agnostic" is just what you call yourself when you want other people to be less judgmental of you. I've had people wish me dead, simply because they found out I don't believe. I've been harangued by family. I've been judged by parents of girlfriends. This is why I keep that shit close to the vest as much as possible in real life. But I'm not going to call myself an agnostic, anymore, because that's just sort of catering to people who are so angry and obsessed with what I do or do not think.
I spend about 0.0000000001% of my life giving the slightest fuck about religion or lack thereof, except when it is foisted upon me. The fact that I'm not out there telling other people "you should stop believing in crazy shit!" doesn't mean I'm not an atheist. You know, that's the whole "a" part of the word. I'm also not an astronomer or a race-car driver, but I guess they don't have a word for not being one of those things.
I do, however, find it kind of pathetic how religious people often act like you should keep being poked with the stick of religion and then act like you're somehow "militant" when you finally get tired of that stick and turn around and knock the person holding it across the head. As if not believing in their religion means you should not care about anything ever involving it, even when it directly impacts you. It's about as transparent and disingenuous as you can get.
If standing up for things like, you know, not being discriminated based on lack of religion or standing up for the right of people to be married since "all men are created equal" under our form of government and the only reason we disallow it is on the grounds of "the bible durp durp!" makes one "militant", then I guess I'm militant. I would just suggest that I'm a human being that doesn't believe in a thing and also doesn't stand by and let that thing disrupt other people's lives.
In a world where the religious have seeped into every aspect of politics, life, government, and law and where people who do not believe in a religion (or, sometimes, just believe in a different one) are persecuted and mistreated (death threats, problems at work if someone discovers you don't believe, problems if your significant other's family finds out you don't believe, etc) and religious beliefs and assertions are imposed upon everyone else in the form of laws and policies (hello, gay marriage rights like any other "all men are created equal" fairness?). . . . do you really think that the side that is guilty of nothing more than simply not believing should just shut the fuck up and eat it?
Your comment sounds an awfully lot like when people used to refer to "uppity negroes" or talk about how women asserting their rights and marching and boycotting and organizing were so "militant" and "aggressive". It's the same kind of shit we hear all the time when someone calls a group on their intolerance and their response is "oh ho ho ho! so the one complaining about intolerance is intolerance of intolerance! How ironic durp durp durp!".
There really are not a lot of people out there trying to convince you that there is no god. Guess what? Nobody really cares. However, there are a lot of angry and "militant" people out there who are pissed off that they have to walk on egg-shells and worry that someone might discover that they're an atheist, because it will be held against them in potential relationships, friendships, employment, community standing, and so forth. I know that religious people think those people should just "shut up and not care", but that's bullshit. When there are people going around wishing that people would be killed for simply not having a believe that they have, I'm pretty god damn glad there are some guys out there who make it their living to be "militant" about combating that.
Guess what? I don't believe in anything. I don't care if you do or not. I only care that you not impose your shit on me. I don't mean "don't show up at my door and give me a Watch Tower magazine", because I don't mind that and am kind tot hose people. I mean, don't make me worry about how I'm going to be treated in various aspects of life simply because I don't share some weird subscription to various mythologies and don't make the rest of the world who doesn't agree with you submit to your narrow views, despite their protection as an equal by our constitution. Everyone should be allowed to believe (or not believe) in whatever the fuck they like. They also should not have to be subjected to the results of other people's beliefs.
Atheists aren't the ones making an assertion about anything. Religious people are the ones making baseless assertions and it is therefore upon them to back those assertions up. People need to stop trying to defend their inability to justify their irrational beliefs by finding some absurd tenuous string by which they can attach "I do not believe in something" to "believing in something". Not believing in a religion is a natural default. Not believing in astrology is a natural default. Not believing in magic is a natural default. Stating a belief in something (magic, astrology, mind-reading, religion, etc) is an assertion. It is an active claim.
Anyone claiming that "atheism" is a belief or a religion or anything of the sort fails to comprehend how language works and what the 'a' prefix to the word means. An atheist is no more religious or "faith" based or "belief based" than a non-astronomer is an astronomer (or than a non-astronomer is making a statement against astronomy).
However, it's understandable. When people operate without any logic and have nothing to back their statements up (and they insist on foisting them on everyone else, simultaneously), one of their only remaining tactics is to try and tether their boat to other things and change the definition of these other things.
Not really, it doesn't. Since I don't watch live television and I use an adblocker online, I find out every once in awhile that I'm not aware of entire swaths of "popular culture" (and no, I don't regret missing out on these things one bit, either). I tend to learn about movies and shows long after they're over with and get around to watching them (if I even want to, on the rare occasion) even longer afterward than that (for instance, I just now started to watch ALIAS on Netflix, which I think is a decade old -- and not very good). I only found out this weekend that there is a second or third GI Joe movie coming out, that Prometheus from last year or whenever was part of the Predator franchise, and learned that "Two and a Half Men" is not the same as "My Two Dads" (which is what I assumed everyone had been talking about during the whole Sheen thing).
Now, it might be a little bit unlikely to say he has never heard of Game of Thrones (the TV series), but it's entirely possible that he's heard the name and just not cared enough to find out what it is. See my example above, about "My Two Dads" and "Prometheus".
I don't know about that. I used Facebook for a few days, once, and having to scroll through the endless inane shit (even of people you know) is enough to make you want to use your service revolver on yourself.
My first thought is that, who cares about a concert? They certainly don't seem to give a fuck about the assholes on their bikes with the modified mufflers going past my house that you can hear from two miles away and they don't give the slightest fuck at the retarded kids driving past with their music so loud that the bass rattles every window in the house and wakes everyone up dozens of times per day, 24x7.
The oceans are pretty big fucking places. What a coincidence that this keeps happening. You'd almost think it was a shitty cover, the way "so and so died in an airplane crash / heart attack in the hot tub" thing always seems to happen to politicians.
You are owed no particular respect for having stupid beliefs -- whether they be "non-whites and women are inferior to white men and should be treated as property" or "there's a magic man in the sky who watches everything you do and also you are not allowed to wear clothes of mixed textiles" or "2+2 == 1".
"a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Of course, that's because what you said isn't exactly true. I can think less of you all I want. That doesn't make me hateful or intolerant of your opinions. You can have them all you want and I can think they're silly all I want. You did, however, use the right word for most of religion as historically (and currently, for that matter), practiced.
None of this even matters. The word "literal" no longer means "literal". Literal also means "figurative", in which case, he can probably argue that everything in the bible IS literal (in the figurative definition of the word).
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Something like 50% of people play video games. Call of Duty, itself -- just one single game -- sells over 25 million copies in a year and is played by at least that many people, yet we only have a couple crazy mass killers. And that's just one game. Factor in all the other games and gamers and you probably have a good 100 million or more, in the US alone. And, again, only one or two crazy mass killers.
So, even if 100% of mass murders are caused absolutely and directly by videogames and never any other thing, videogames are inconsequential -- only causing (in this magical world where they are actually to blame) murderous violence in a whopping .00001%.
That's not necessarily entirely accurate. The government - including our president - has been persistently pushing for forced psychological assessments of the entire population for a number of years, so far. In some cases, suggesting it should be part of required physician care (especially with any government medical assistance program) and other times that it should be something every student has to go through in school. Couple this with the DSMV's continual diagnosis of almost everyone on the planet with some sort of "mental disorder" (sometimes even in self contradiction so that you have a disorder no matter what side you fall on) and it seems pretty clear to me that mental health and over-diagnosis and over-prescription is being potentially used (or viewed, at least) as a tool against the population.
Also, the difference between a normal medical condition and a mental medical condition should be obvious and it is an entirely rational concern. While I sympathize with someone who is schizophrenic, or bi-polar, or manic-depressive, or occasionally delusional, or paranoid, they are a far greater risk to my business, my safety, and the safety of my employees due to those illnesses than someone who has bronchitis or cancer or diabetes is due to theirs.
Anyway, for one example, you didn't see everyone immediately cling to the "durp durp he has aspergers!" thing? Every fucking geek on the planet claims to have aspergers and it would be a politician's wet-dream to be able to declare people, at whim, as being suspect simply because they share some claimed association to a mental condition of some mass murderer. FURTHER, let's not just focus on mental condition (which I agree *is* important, even though potentially abused) . . . but how about on medication? Notice that a lot of anti-depressants state a warning about how they can actually cause more suicidal and unpredictable thoughts in younger people who are taking them? Notice how that is a common element of a lot of young people, from that kid who flew a plane into the bank building a few years ago to Lanza? So when we say "mental health", let's not forget the culpability and influence of either poor diagnoses or bad and/or over-prescribed medications.
Some times crazy and unpredictable bad shit happens and sometimes those freak occurrences are the price of enjoying a wide range of freedom. I'll take the freedom at the tiny increased risk of bad random shit happening to me, thanks.
Uh. Lanza was, by definition, crazy.
How is that a problem? Enforcing ratings as a law would be censorship. You think it only matters to us old folks and fuck everyone who is younger?
You're always free to enforce whatever you want upon your own kids.
Your assertion is baseless and stupid.
Incite to violence,,, Oh, lik =e religion, churches, and sermons.
I find that hideous. The ESRB is voluntary rating. You know, because of the whole freedom of speech thing. A consumer -- even a 15 year old consumer -- should have the right to determine what they want to purchase, as far as consumable media. The ESRB can label something however they want for informative purchases, but it should not be a shopkeepers obligation to enforce adherence to informational-only labeling. Worse, this "censor yourselves or WE (the government) will do it for you" bullshit is absolutely vile. It's a way to end-run the constitution. It has already been declared unconstitutional for the government to censor content and if they did, you could address it in court.
So, instead, they bully industry into imposing the same censorship *for* them -- only this way, they get all the effect without any of the liability of violating the constitution.
And people are stupid enough to accept this. Or even praise it.
You are contradicting yourself. Nobody is talking about censorship, we're just talking about censorship.
Age-gating information or content *is* censorship.
The constitution isn't a list of rights that you get to have as a citizen. It's a list of restrictions placed on government to protect citizens. Period.
I've never understood what the relevance of games to violence has to do with anything. It's only even remotely relevant if we are going to eradicate the first amendment. If we're not, then whatever conclusions derived about videogames are irrelevant. If we are, then we have far bigger problems to worry about than mass murder or video games (like willfully tossing our constitution aside and the protections it irrevocably maintains for citizens).
Even if, in some magical alternate universe, someone came out and said "it is now conclusive -- video games turn people into murders at the rate of one killer per seventy-five-million people", I would respond with "and... so the fuck what?"
And by "chld", let's not forget that you actually mean "21 year old adult". That seems to be lost in all of this media "games drove this little itty bitty baby to mass murder" stuff.
Drawing a distinction between the two is rather disingenuous. Agnostics and atheists both lack belief in religion, because the assertions that religion makes can not be proven, by their nature. Neither beliefs in a thing that is asserted and can not be proven. To suggest there is a meaningful difference (other than one is more socially acceptable and therefore adopted by those more concerned with not being judged or shunned) is to suggest that there is any validity to unprovable assertions, simply because they can't be disproved. "You can't prove that we are not stacked on the back of a massive cosmic turtle" does not give the idea of a massive cosmic turtle any sort of validity. My not believing in massive cosmic turtle is not any active assertion. It is simply not believing in something that someone else is asserting and can't prove.
I mean, by this logic used by a number of people, we must accept all possibilities -- no matter how fucking absurd -- as equally possible. Negating any logic, experience, knowledge, or common sense. And if you don't accept them all as possible because you can't disprove them, then you are not simply someone who "does not subscribe to those beliefs", but are somehow actively asserting the opposite of those things . . . instead of simply remaining in the default position you were at in the beginning of it all -- of not subscribing to any random unprovable assertions.
Of course, the whole conversation ends up being kind of dumb, because who gives a fuck?
I'm sorry, but this is bullshit nitpicking.
If you give me a bag full of 0s, my statement that the bag has no 1s is the same as my statement that there are no 1s in the bag. They both sit at the default position of "that bag does not contain 1s". All you have to do to change that view is to pull a 1 out of that bag.
And there is the distinction, after all. People who "believe there isn't a deity" and "do not believe there is a deity" (same fucking thing) would change their mind if data proved otherwise. Because it is not a belief. It is not an assertion. It is the default position which remains when you are not making an assertion that there is a thing. It is religion that makes an assertion (and that does not give a rip about data and evidence and would never change that assertion under any circumstances). Trying to equate the two -- as so many here seem to be doing -- is pretty disingenuous.
By definition, you are an atheist if you do not believe in a god or a religion. I used to be an agnostic, because "I can't prove anything and don't care", but then I realized an "agnostic" is just what you call yourself when you want other people to be less judgmental of you. I've had people wish me dead, simply because they found out I don't believe. I've been harangued by family. I've been judged by parents of girlfriends. This is why I keep that shit close to the vest as much as possible in real life. But I'm not going to call myself an agnostic, anymore, because that's just sort of catering to people who are so angry and obsessed with what I do or do not think.
I spend about 0.0000000001% of my life giving the slightest fuck about religion or lack thereof, except when it is foisted upon me. The fact that I'm not out there telling other people "you should stop believing in crazy shit!" doesn't mean I'm not an atheist. You know, that's the whole "a" part of the word. I'm also not an astronomer or a race-car driver, but I guess they don't have a word for not being one of those things.
I do, however, find it kind of pathetic how religious people often act like you should keep being poked with the stick of religion and then act like you're somehow "militant" when you finally get tired of that stick and turn around and knock the person holding it across the head. As if not believing in their religion means you should not care about anything ever involving it, even when it directly impacts you. It's about as transparent and disingenuous as you can get.
If standing up for things like, you know, not being discriminated based on lack of religion or standing up for the right of people to be married since "all men are created equal" under our form of government and the only reason we disallow it is on the grounds of "the bible durp durp!" makes one "militant", then I guess I'm militant. I would just suggest that I'm a human being that doesn't believe in a thing and also doesn't stand by and let that thing disrupt other people's lives.
Sorry, but you are confusing two things.
In a world where the religious have seeped into every aspect of politics, life, government, and law and where people who do not believe in a religion (or, sometimes, just believe in a different one) are persecuted and mistreated (death threats, problems at work if someone discovers you don't believe, problems if your significant other's family finds out you don't believe, etc) and religious beliefs and assertions are imposed upon everyone else in the form of laws and policies (hello, gay marriage rights like any other "all men are created equal" fairness?). . . . do you really think that the side that is guilty of nothing more than simply not believing should just shut the fuck up and eat it?
Your comment sounds an awfully lot like when people used to refer to "uppity negroes" or talk about how women asserting their rights and marching and boycotting and organizing were so "militant" and "aggressive". It's the same kind of shit we hear all the time when someone calls a group on their intolerance and their response is "oh ho ho ho! so the one complaining about intolerance is intolerance of intolerance! How ironic durp durp durp!".
There really are not a lot of people out there trying to convince you that there is no god. Guess what? Nobody really cares. However, there are a lot of angry and "militant" people out there who are pissed off that they have to walk on egg-shells and worry that someone might discover that they're an atheist, because it will be held against them in potential relationships, friendships, employment, community standing, and so forth. I know that religious people think those people should just "shut up and not care", but that's bullshit. When there are people going around wishing that people would be killed for simply not having a believe that they have, I'm pretty god damn glad there are some guys out there who make it their living to be "militant" about combating that.
Guess what? I don't believe in anything. I don't care if you do or not. I only care that you not impose your shit on me. I don't mean "don't show up at my door and give me a Watch Tower magazine", because I don't mind that and am kind tot hose people. I mean, don't make me worry about how I'm going to be treated in various aspects of life simply because I don't share some weird subscription to various mythologies and don't make the rest of the world who doesn't agree with you submit to your narrow views, despite their protection as an equal by our constitution. Everyone should be allowed to believe (or not believe) in whatever the fuck they like. They also should not have to be subjected to the results of other people's beliefs.
You are an idiot, then.
Atheists aren't the ones making an assertion about anything. Religious people are the ones making baseless assertions and it is therefore upon them to back those assertions up. People need to stop trying to defend their inability to justify their irrational beliefs by finding some absurd tenuous string by which they can attach "I do not believe in something" to "believing in something". Not believing in a religion is a natural default. Not believing in astrology is a natural default. Not believing in magic is a natural default. Stating a belief in something (magic, astrology, mind-reading, religion, etc) is an assertion. It is an active claim.
Anyone claiming that "atheism" is a belief or a religion or anything of the sort fails to comprehend how language works and what the 'a' prefix to the word means. An atheist is no more religious or "faith" based or "belief based" than a non-astronomer is an astronomer (or than a non-astronomer is making a statement against astronomy).
However, it's understandable. When people operate without any logic and have nothing to back their statements up (and they insist on foisting them on everyone else, simultaneously), one of their only remaining tactics is to try and tether their boat to other things and change the definition of these other things.
Not really, it doesn't. Since I don't watch live television and I use an adblocker online, I find out every once in awhile that I'm not aware of entire swaths of "popular culture" (and no, I don't regret missing out on these things one bit, either). I tend to learn about movies and shows long after they're over with and get around to watching them (if I even want to, on the rare occasion) even longer afterward than that (for instance, I just now started to watch ALIAS on Netflix, which I think is a decade old -- and not very good). I only found out this weekend that there is a second or third GI Joe movie coming out, that Prometheus from last year or whenever was part of the Predator franchise, and learned that "Two and a Half Men" is not the same as "My Two Dads" (which is what I assumed everyone had been talking about during the whole Sheen thing).
Now, it might be a little bit unlikely to say he has never heard of Game of Thrones (the TV series), but it's entirely possible that he's heard the name and just not cared enough to find out what it is. See my example above, about "My Two Dads" and "Prometheus".
I don't know about that. I used Facebook for a few days, once, and having to scroll through the endless inane shit (even of people you know) is enough to make you want to use your service revolver on yourself.
My first thought is that, who cares about a concert? They certainly don't seem to give a fuck about the assholes on their bikes with the modified mufflers going past my house that you can hear from two miles away and they don't give the slightest fuck at the retarded kids driving past with their music so loud that the bass rattles every window in the house and wakes everyone up dozens of times per day, 24x7.
The oceans are pretty big fucking places. What a coincidence that this keeps happening. You'd almost think it was a shitty cover, the way "so and so died in an airplane crash / heart attack in the hot tub" thing always seems to happen to politicians.
The future is not in the product my current competition is selling, but in the product I am now personally invested in promoting.
You are owed no particular respect for having stupid beliefs -- whether they be "non-whites and women are inferior to white men and should be treated as property" or "there's a magic man in the sky who watches everything you do and also you are not allowed to wear clothes of mixed textiles" or "2+2 == 1".
"a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Of course, that's because what you said isn't exactly true. I can think less of you all I want. That doesn't make me hateful or intolerant of your opinions. You can have them all you want and I can think they're silly all I want. You did, however, use the right word for most of religion as historically (and currently, for that matter), practiced.
None of this even matters. The word "literal" no longer means "literal". Literal also means "figurative", in which case, he can probably argue that everything in the bible IS literal (in the figurative definition of the word).
On the other hand, if most of the people who know you think you're an insufferable selfish asshole, you just might actually be one.