So you want to be the absolute worst person that you can be? Well listen here champ (that’s short for champion), it’s a long and hard road to the bottom. It takes commitment. It takes passion. Not everybody has what it takes to be the absolute worst, but fear not, pleasant internet person, I’m here to help. With a little help from my 7 habits of highly effective wankers, you too could be the talk of the town; the cringe-worthy belle of the horrible, horrible ball; or as the Germans say, a bit of a dickhead (most of them speak English).

I believe in you!

1. Cultivate your willful ignorance

Whether you’re just a social wanker who really only gets into it on the weekends after a few drinks with friends, or you’re looking to make a career of being an insufferable dickhead, a solid first step is always to belligerently cling to your misguided beliefs for grim life.

A particularly excellent example of this has been provided many, many times recently by our future dear leader of the free world, Donald Trump (may he live 1000 years). Are you excited that this crazy train is still inconceivably rolling along the tracks towards our collective doom?

Old mate Trump is currently running for the Republican presidential nomination in the US, and he seems to be doing incredibly well in the polls for a sexist, racist, belligerent old man who looks like a Lovecraftian horror, although his perceived success might be a little illusory according to some of the less reactionary commentators out there.

Anyway, some of the more well known planks on Don the Mon’s election platform include:

The cutting of federal funding for planned parenthood

The forced identification of Muslims living in America (more on this later); and

US based undocumented Mexicans are mostly criminals, rapists even, and that he will build a wall separating the two nations because that’s a sensible thing to do.

Now, the most impressive aspect of this piece of wankery is not that this man believe unequivocally that all Mexicans in the US are rapists and that building a wall ala 80s Berlin is a tops idea, just aces bro, but the fact that he probably deep down right in his squelchy human heart doesn’t for real believe these ignorant things, but that he is willfully maintaining his views through fick and fin, despite a rampaging torrent of outrage and ridicule.

You could say that he is maintaining his willful ignorance, and he doing a cracking job. Well done, Donald Trump, truly an effective wanker.

This is actually an advanced level of wankerism, and a fine example thereof, but one to try to emulate as early as you can if able.

2. Be over confident

While being willfully ignorant is a great start, these efforts are all for naught if you don’t also take the opportunity to be over-confident as well. In fact, there’s no point at all in being willfully ignorant if you’re not going to speak and act with way more confidence than you need to.

And not to keep picking the teacher’s pet or anything, but another great example of overconfidence in action is our old friend Donald “Git ‘Er Done” Trump.

There is no more stunning an example of sticking fast with your ignorant beliefs through sheer drooling raging speaking-in-tongues confidence than Donnie Don Don’s assertion that Muslim Americans should be placed on a government register.

Disregarding the fact that this kind of statement comes straight out of the Nazi Dictatorship Playbook for Dummies (or perhaps regarding it and shoving it deep down where sensitive dialogue goes to die), Trump has stormed forward with his elbows out aimed at the throats of all and sundry who dare suggest that we have maybe moved past this kind of thing as a civilisation.

And good bloody on him. This is absolutely the key to being the biggest and baddest wanker on the planet. Are you doing whatever it takes to be the most intolerable piece of shit that you can be?

Of course not, and I love you a little less because of it.

3. Express opinions as facts

You’ll probably recognise literally everything that you’ve ever read on the internet as a good example of this.

There are any number of Facebook based infographics, groups to join with misspelled and names and agendas, and Twitter hashtags to follow that express a fairly uninformed and angry opinion with such conviction that you could swear they were preaching the honest to goodness objective truth. You could look at your own social media platform of choice and see exactly what I mean. Maybe it’s that one out of touch family member that you can’t quite remove from your friends list but probably should?

Keyboard warriors aside, in actual real god forsaken life you will find that another of the absolute best ways to ensure that you are being the most despicable human being that you can be is to express your opinions, no matter how misguided or ill-informed they may be, as fact. For bonus points, try to do this when you are in a position to reach the widest and most impressionable group of people possible.

You don’t have to look far for the best example, and I will be using a prodigious exponent of the fine art of wankery, Australia’s former Prime Minster Tony Abbott.

After spending a good couple of years expressing his extremely socially conservative and at the same time somewhat misguided opinion as fact, and the letting those opinions influence governmental policy in a way that affected 23 million Australians and a large number of people fleeing for their lives from the most dangerous places on Earth with their families, ol’ Tony Tone has been at it again. He has recently spoken to a number of European leaders, urging them to shut their borders to the current tsunami of human beings attempting to save the lives of their families, before there is a ‘catastrophic error’.

No matter who you are, describing a mass of families seeking to stay alive as a catastrophe in a factual manner, spreading this tripe from one continent to another, takes a Masters level of being an overwhelming fuckface. And not only that, but he’s pretty too!

It takes time and patience to reach the point where you are influencing large swaths of the western world with your wankery, but but by spreading misinformation and not caring a damn about it, you too can reach these lofty heights.

4. Get angry, stupid!

To change direction a little, an often overlooked but legitimately effective way to maximise your wank-factor is to become absolutely inconsolably rage-filled at a moments notice. You really can’t achieve all that you can as a terrible person if you don’t get angry, you soft, malleable leftie! You make me sick!

The absolute best way to express your anger to be the worst person that you possible can is in such a way that it harms the most number of people possible.

A hot off the press example of this very strategy in action takes us to Colorado Springs in the US, where a lone shooter has found the idea of abortion, sexual health and family planning so disgraceful that he has decided to open fire with a big ol’ gun, killing innocent people including a police officer, before eventually being taken in.

What a bloody great exponent of the lost mystical art of being a gigantic dickhole. You too can reach these heights, all it takes is that small step of being angry as hell for no particular reason and being happy to follow through with it. You’ve got this, I believe in you.

5. Remember that the world owes you everything

You wouldn’t be the best wanker that you can be without believing with absolute conviction that the world owes you everything, and that you need to supply very little in return.

A brilliant example of this strategy in action is one that I have covered in an earlier post. Australian senator Eric Abetz has been up against it a bit, the poor guy, with regards to his hard line extreme right views in gay marriage and the vast majority of Australia’s and the rest of the world’s feeling that his views can eat a bag of dicks.

The argument for gay marriage in Australia is rapidly swinging to the affirmative, and not to be outdone, Eric has stated that in the current warm and fuzzy climate where almost everybody is getting what they want and love is flowing freely and pink cheeked and robust men and women are frolicking in local meadows, that those who oppose same sex marriage face the very real prospect of having to face legal fees when they choose to challenge it in court. Not actually joking.

It’s difficult to understate the gravity of that stance. A group of people that have been discriminated against in often violent ways and who’s relationships have been ruled unofficial and illegitimate for the longest time are gaining some ground, and now those who don’t like that fact very much may face some fiscal difficulty if and when they choose to become all litigious.

That’s a stunning feat of self-reference and pig-headedness, and epitomises beautifully the idea that making it all about you will help you to become the most derided miscreant in the country, hemisphere, and perhaps globe. The sky is the limit. Eric needs a friend in his sphere of entitlement, and there’s just enough room for you.

6. Remember that it’s all about you

Similar to the above (and not at all stretching my material to fit the 7 habits reference), you can’t possibly expect to break through the glass ceiling and enjoy the calm and tranquil lands of extreme pigheadedness without stopping, taking stock and remembering that it’s ALL about you.

Perhaps the prime modern example of somebody making absolutely everything about themselves lies with our Kanye. Behold.

From the litany of examples that I could provide you to highlight this strategy in action, I’m just going to stick with the key points here.

Actually no, these are too good. Check these out.

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud nonreader of books.” — via Reuters, 2009 “Kim doesn’t understand what a blessing I am to her.” — via Twitter “My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.” — via VH1 Storytellers, 2009

Truly a Renaissance man. It’s hard not to be impressed.

Anyway, perhaps the most glaring example of Kanye’s complete disregard for everybody else ever would be his bold decision to storm the stage during the 2009 Grammys when in one of the most hilariously off-tone and cringe-inducing moments that will live on indefinitely in pop culture history, he stormed the stage to inform all in attendance that Tay Tay didn’t deserve her award, and that his mate Beyonce did.

In spite of, and perhaps because of the fact that he received such a mighty clip from the world at large, including the President of the United States, so much so that he had to go into hiding a for a brief stint, he’s actually gone and done something similar again this year, this time kind of sort of implying that national treasure Beck is undeserving of the award that he received, and that he is not an artist worthy of praise.

The genius behind this approach is that in both instances he appears to be acting out on behalf of others, but who gets that attention? Who is focussed upon? That’s right, old mate Yeezie gets all of the sweet, sustaining attention. Kanye’s on a quest to be his Kanye best.

Follow his example and you too can tap dance delicately on the knife edge between self-parody and, er, even more blatant self-parody, and cement yourself in the annals of wanker history.

7. Maintain those double standards

Finally (right? I’m sick of me, I can only imagine how you’re feeling), the icing on the cake to speed up reverse loops and synergise backward overflow to become the most highly successful wanker that you can be, you need to establish some key double standards, and then hold on to them for grim life. Not quite sure what I’m referring to? Of course you’re not, you adorable simpleton. Double standards are an advanced strategy, and not fully understood by anybody but the wanker elite, so let me take you through it.

A great example can be found in my own lovely country of Australia, where being a bit of a dickhead is kind of par for the course. In line with the socially sensible Trumps concerns, there are some social groups that are starting to form in Australia, like Reclaim Australia for example, who are politely expressing their concerns about the impact of Islamic culture in Australia. To drill down a bit further, a loose collection of complete bogans and hillbillies across Australia are getting together to vomit xenophobic and racist views in an attempt to stop the building of more mosques, retrieve ‘jobs’ that they don’t actually want from a non-existent immigrant menace and to reclaim a lifestyle that they haven’t actually lost.

See habits 1 to 6 for some insight into why this is also terrible behaviour.

You could say that judging and discriminating against people based on their skin colour and general appearance based on limited personal knowledge and understanding is their ‘thing’. They just love themselves a spot of hatefulness based on stereotypes.

Hilariously, in a move described by hardly anybody, a Reclaim Australia rally attendee has found himself to be the face of these movements, and has since found that he has been labelled as a disgusting, racist bogan.

In a display of irony so severe that it gave me an aneurysm, the above distinguished gentleman has expressed his disappointment in being judged negatively based on his physical appearance.

It’s not exactly a feat of perspective-taking gymnastics to understand that this is exactly what he is doing to a fairly large section of the global population, but that is at its heart the essence of the final habit of highly successful wankers.

Now go forth my friends, spread the word. Together we can follow the fine examples listed above and make the world a truly horrendous place.