August 17, 2012
Competing companies can talk shit about you to potential clients. That’s just business, but if they try to poach your employees, bash their head in with a rock. And if someone who isn”t a competitor tries to hurt your reputation and says something critical of you to a client or even a potential client, he’s dead, too.
2. THEY THREATEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR FAMILY.
I use the word “family” here, but it’s really about a man’s relationship with his wife. I suppose someone humiliating a guy in front of his kids would be grounds for an X, but that doesn”t happen often. But saying or doing something that could hurt a man’s marriage in any way is the end of that friendship.
For example, say your friend smokes like a chimney but his wife doesn”t know. If you let that secret get out, you are telling his wife he’s a liar, which makes her question the whole relationship. Way to go, dick.
3. THEY THREATEN YOUR HOME.
This happened a lot more in the cave days, but there are smatterings of it here in New York City where reasonably priced apartments are coveted.
If someone is having a party on their building’s roof and the superintendent comes up to tell you all to go downstairs, you may be tempted to tell him off. You weren”t making any noise, so what’s the big deal? This is not your affair, and by bawling out your friend’s super, you are jeopardizing his tenure at this residence. This includes yelling at his neighbors when they ask you to keep it down in the hallway.
There. That’s it. Love thy neighbor like Braveheart unless they violate one of these rules”then erase him from your world. Don”t kinda-sorta-like people. That’s a waste of time. Like that huge black guy said in Do the Right Thing, “If I love you, I love you, but if I hate you, I HATE you.” But you can live in a jerk-free world because they only exist for the fraction of a second it takes to X them. That means every single person you see is a pal.
Chuck Zito says you should not only X people that are talking smack, you should literally smack them. I feel that what people say behind my back is none of my business. They”re not threatening my lifestyle, so if it’s cathartic to have a bitch session, go bananas. In Scotland they covet gossip almost as much as Xing. If you ask someone how they”re doing, “Nosy as ever!” means, “I”m doing great!”
Christianity says we should forgive, but to let people get away with violating mate/hunt/cave is to let the world walk all over you. There has to be a line in the sand. Disagreeing with someone politically or thinking they”re an unfunny douche means you might be able to have a beer with them and hash it out. That’s what was so great about Breitbart. He loved everyone, especially his enemies. But if anyone violated his Trinity, it was war.
This is where I think this generation has improved upon the Xing during my grandfather’s day. He wouldn”t only X those who violated the three rules; he”d X people who didn”t X people who had crossed them over. His entire life was a series of discarded tic-tac-toe games where he couldn”t even remember why someone was persona non grata; he just knew that what they did was unforgivable.
The modern X has been narrowed down to three basics. If your neighbor can follow those, he’s your brother. If he can”t, he’s dead.
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