In my first post in this series on douchism, I want to explain my purpose. Anyone who has been to Yale, either as a student or a visitor, knows there is a great deal of douchebaggery here. You cannot walk a block without seeing someone who looks like a doucher, or hearing something incredibly douchey. So why write about it? I think of myself as a vigilante of douchiness, a douchilante if you will. I want to combat the extremely high levels of douchism at Yale by exposing it to the real world — where dbags aren’t tolerated like they are here.

On a side note — this is just fun and is meant for entertainment. In many people’s eyes, I may be a doucher for doing this. Let me rephrase some words of advice that I received when I came here. I believe it was the Dean formerly known as “The Stachemaster” who said, “Everyone here is better than you at something else.“ The same goes for douchebaggery.

With that said, let’s begin with a textbook case of douchetastic behavior, overheard in the JE Dining Hall submitted by (your mom) JE ’11:

The setup is this: one dude, whilst preparing his salad, attempts to flirt with one equally preppy girl, who fills up her cup at the nearby soda fountain.

Dbag: “Oh yes, I remember.“

Dbaguette: “We were first in the nation.“

Dbag: “Yes, yes. And we were fourth in the nation and we beat you!“

Breakdown:

Alright, so by Yale’s standard, this is only mildly douchey on the surface. First, the dialect is classically douche. The repeated use of the word “yes“ brings to mind an English schoolboy drinking tea while fondly recalling summer days spent in the garden with Albert, his French travelmate who speaks Castillion fluently. The surface is actually quite douchey, causing any outsider to likely spit out his/her sip of juice upon hearing this in passing. The casual talk of being first in the nation in public is outright pretentious, but then to act as though beating the first place team as the fourth in the nation is an underdog scenario … that’s just douche de leche. Let’s take it one step further and guess at what they were first and fourth in the nation. Well, it must be coed. The recalling implies this was in high school. So those two assumptions combined, we can assume it was either a club sport or for a prep school. Nothing wrong with that. But what coed, club sport or activity are they talking about? Post a comment with your response and further douchetastic analysis.

My douche-o-meter for the inaugural post reads:

Douchelicious — the kind of douche that brings food back up and makes you spit out your Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato.

If you think you’ve heard the douchiest thing of the week, email maxwell.lanman@yale.edu.