Previously: Your endorsement on LinkedIn means nothing to me.
When I saw the little red notification this morning, my heart both sank and hissed in delight within me. How he has sunk, I thought to myself, and I was not at all wrong. You abject, you pathetic, you craven child, to come crawling to me, begging me to approve of whatever vile little endeavor you have cobbled together to convince yourself that you exist. How like you, at this late point, to suggest to me that perhaps I like your page on Facebook or congratulate you on LinkedIn or join you in welcoming the latest addition to your team when you know perfectly well that I have deliberately withheld my approval from you, that I ride upon a seething ocean of contempt for your every wasted effort. Do not think for a moment that I enjoy watching you grovel and flail in a desperate attempt to scratch out some sort of reputation for yourself; your suffering is a waste of time and a bore. I would ruin the earth and every living thing therein before I lifted the slightest finger to aid your happiness. (I’d be happy to like your page on Facebook! How’s the funding coming along? When’s the tour?)
I would wish you out of existence, could I be bothered to wish anything about you at all. You vapid, ghastly, grinning scarecrow of a fraud. Everything you believe about yourself when you wake up flushed and horrified in the middle of the night, gasping and afraid, is perfectly true. Everyone shares your self-loathing, you useless assortment of skin some wretched child has scrawled a face on. How dare you invite me to share in your joy, when the thought of you experiencing even a moment of satisfaction makes me want to slit open my forearms and replace every ounce of my living blood with hot black tar ’til I burn up from the inside out, leaving only the charred and hollow suggestion of a heart. If I believed for even one second that you considered me a peer and an equal whose approbation you could regularly seek out I would drown the entire world just to close your eyes and throat. I want to vomit the entirety of my spleen into your lungs, you bloated, walking tragedy. (Congratulations on your exciting new career move! So excited for you.)
It is a moral outrage on the scale of the Hindenburg and a goddamned crime that I am not flanked at all times by flaming handmaidens like a god, or at the very least murdered immediately. How I shall delight in your slow and helpless slide into inconsequentiality. How I shall laugh, and clap, and hold out my hands for more, you Christing squeal of an abomination. Your persistent belief in your own significance is an insult both to me and the ideal concept of truth, and I will drive myself to rack and ruin destroying you in my mind, you petulant wash-rag, you human blood-clot, you unloveable stale crumpet, you infantile pile of drunkenness and hair loss. I will build a throne a mile high upon your dirt-stuffed corpse. I will never congratulate you, never share in your joy, never join you in welcoming anything, never allow myself even a moment of sympathy for your putrid, sprawling waste of an existence, never stop to sleep or eat or breathe anything that is not a thick and congealed miasma of contempt for you. (Congratulations.)
Tags: delusions, empathy, fiction, insults, misanthropy, oh my god i don’t mean you, paralyzing resentment, the holidays
do i get to be the first commenter to say that i read the entirety of this in richard e. grant’s voice
I was hearing Simon (he of Kids in the Hall and his manservant, Hecubus!!!)
Mallory, when science enables us to rent the brains of those we admire, let the record show that I called dibs on yours, you beautiful evil genius.
I have read this aloud to myself twice now. I think I want to record this and put it in a handmade card so it plays when the recipient opens it.
I love you so much Mallory. Christing fuck, this was brilliant, and a balm to my charred blackened soul.
“oh my god i don’t mean you” Hahaha, of course not! Haha. Ha.
“Petulant wash-rag.” So, so good.
Side note: We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!
side note to side note: 90 percent of what I say to my cat in the mornings is just what Uncle Monty says to his cat. and what Uncle Monty says to everyone else too.
marry me
“It is a moral outrage on the scale of the Hindenburg and a goddamned crime that I am not flanked at all times by flaming handmaidens like a god” no kidding I was just saying that myself.
I love this rant so much, but I just can’t…what….more rustling? That’s it, I’m leaving. There is something in the kitchen that is MOVING…
Yeah, that’s about right.
How I shall laugh, and clap, and hold out my hands for more, you Christing squeal of an abomination.
You are a treasure and I fear you.
As someone who was briefly tasked with sending out announcements on behalf of our firm (for hirings & awards & such), I find this deeply soothing.
Oh, I really needed this today.
Okay, I can’t hold it in any more. I’m in love with Mallory Ortberg. There, I said it.
We all are. We all are.
#subtweet
I got all the way down to “infantile pile of drunkenness and hair loss” before I realized that I must be the person this is addressed to :'((
Edit: just read the tags, delusions of loathe-ability. Delusions of repugnance.
If I were still in high school Forensics, I would totally want to do this for a prose piece.
I feel that way about SO MANY Toast pieces.
we gotta start recruiting high school speech team kids and by that I mean I’m trying not to wish The Toast existed when I was a wee one. Just stupid, STUPID livejournal. PS VERSE FOREVER.
Beautiful.
some days i am certain that this is the subtext to a woman saying hello to me
some days
some
days
Nobody writes a burn like Mallory Ortberg writes a burn.
I was hearing Simon (he of Kids in the Hall and his manservant, Hecubus!!!)
I’ll use small words so that you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon…It’s possible, Pig, I might be bluffing. It’s conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass.
We’re coming back in here! We’re going to buy this place!
I have read this aloud to myself twice now. I think I want to record this and put it in a handmade card so it plays when the recipient opens it.