Know Your Asshole Footprint

Regrettably, some people are simply not aware of how large an asshole footprint they leave on the planet. Here, Vanity Fair offers aquestionnaire that will help such individuals determine the size and breadth of their footprint. If you answer "yes" to four or more of the questions for your age group, it is incumbent upon you to take urgent measures to reduce your asshole footprint.

illustrations by Ross MacDonald October 2007

For ages 14–25

1. Do you refer to attractive members of the opposite sex as "smokin' hot"?
2. Do you leave vitriolic comments in the "Comments" sections of blogs and Web sites, even if you're commenting on something innocuous, such as an old Linkin Park video?
2a. When leaving such comments, do you use such rote Internet pejoratives as "asshat," "douchebag," and "'tard"?
3. Are you convinced that it's only a matter of time before the world recognizes you as the next Andy Samberg?
4. Do you write a dating column for your school paper or local weekly?
5. When you are being photographed, do you flash gang signs?
6. Are your birthday parties televised?
7. Is your name Skylar, Tyler, Taylor, Cat, Bryce, Morgan, Brandon, Braden, Hayden, Jaden, Brianna, or Keegan?

For ages 26–39

1. Do you work in an office with a Foosball or Ping-Pong table?
2. Do you run a T-shirt company that specializes in flimsy apparel that runs small and whose designs are essentially appropriations of old advertising and TV logos from the 1960s and 70s?
3. Does it take more than two words to describe what you do for a living?
4. Have you or has anyone in your close circle of friends written a roman à clef about being a rich socialite, working in publishing, working in film, bonking the help, or any combination of the aforementioned circumstances?
5. Do you refer to ordinary male pastimes and accessories with such terms as "man-cation," "man-date," "man-purse," "man-orexic," and "man-olos"?
6. Before you go out bicycling, do you first change into iridescent spandex shorts and a skintight spandex shirt with a gaudy pattern recalling a 1990s screen saver?
7. Do you refer to having young children as "doing the parent thing"?
7a. If you do indeed have young children, have you launched a blog, or, worse, a video blog, about raising them?

For ages 40–55

1. Do you have money in a hedge fund?
2. Is your car worth more than $100,000?
3. Did you join a church or temple in order to get your children into its affiliated school?
4. Does your wife run a "therapeutic" gift shop/yoga studio/juice bar in the little town where you summer?
4a. If so, did you drive out a longtime mom-and-pop general store beloved by locals in order to obtain the lease or building for your wife's store?
5. Do you send off your kids to summer camp by helicopter?
6. Have you ever shelled out in the five figures to attend a rock 'n' roll "fantasy camp"?
6a. If so, do you keep a framed photo on your desk of you with your arm draped around a sweaty Roger Daltrey?
7. When your companion gets up to use the facilities at a restaurant, are you incapable of passing even the smallest blip of solitary time without theatrically scrolling or tapping on your BlackBerry, Trēo, or iPhone?

How to Reduce Your Asshole Footprint: Some Tips

1. Read a book to a small child, and not in a "Cool! I read this when I was a kid!" way.
2. Stop gelling, mussing, and spiking your hair. You should part it, and that's that.
3. Refrain from ever using the construction "Mmm, I want me some.…"
4. Do not ever order a Cosmopolitan again.
5. Do not leave any comments in any "Comments" section, on any occasion, ever.
6. Give in to the aging process, through every step of it.
7. Eat leftovers.
8. Go two entire, consecutive days without using a wireless electronic communication device.
9. Do not ever again refer to an elderly person, to his or her face, as "so cute."
10. All those things prescribed by Robert Greene in The 48 Laws of Power? Do the precise opposite.