Fit to Be King

"It is better to be hated for who you are than be loved for what you're not."
- Kurt Cobain Marilyn Monroe André Gide

Googling the attribution of the above quote yields a simple demonstration of how information is stored and disseminated on the internet. The first hits will say that Kurt Cobain said this. He did say it, and so that's true, and there are plenty of memes saying he said it, so even if it weren't true, it still counts (just as the cat who sits in the soup bowl and says, "All ur ramenz r belongz to uz" counts).

Our projection of what we want to be true for the purpose of the narrative is the narrative. The fat man who failed dunking a basketball while jumping off a trampoline didn't exist until worldstar added an R. Kelly soundtrack to his attempt. "Of course he did, he was just some guy who lived a full life before that, and then epically failed in public." Prove it. "Look, here's a news story all about him." It doesn't mention his name. He is #fattrampolineguy just as #shovelgirl is now shovelgirl for the rest of her life. Did they exist before they became their internet personas? Okay, yes, probably-- this whole paragraph is hyperbole, but if they did exist, they didn't matter. Just as nobody said, "It is better to be hated for who you are than be loved for what you're not" before Kurt Cobain said it. Before Kurt Cobain said it, nobody said it before Marilyn Monroe. Before Marilyn Monroe said it, nobody said it before André Gide. Before that, Google doesn't give a shit. Gide also said, "Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again." Fuck that, no he didn't, I just made that up.

Understanding how information is stored and disseminated is key to managing your image. For some, like Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, or Miley Cyrus, the paparazzi and years of abusive "handling" left them vulnerable to public meltdowns, despite the best efforts of their PR teams. Others, like Jay-Z and Beyonce, are so careful with their image that they don't seem real, which they aren't, because they make documentaries about themselves. The greatest image of all, though, one that is nearly impossible to attain, because it requires a lifetime of work, and cannot merely be assumed, is that of the man or woman who doesn't give a fuck.

When I was a kid, I would occasionally get to go to St. John's Arena to watch Ohio State play basketball. If I was lucky, once a year I got to see Indiana come to town. St. John's arena still exists, but now the Buckeyes play down the street at the Schottenstein Center (or Value City Arena if you wanna acknowledge that we are also not safe from corporate trolling). St. John's was old school. It was intimate, built straight up in the air so the upper deck was right on top of the court and the sound had nowhere to go, it just folded in on itself until we were all so deaf we didn't realize we'd stopped yelling. When Indiana came to town, this was where I heard the loudest booing of my life.

Sure, we booed the team, they were our rivals. Shouldn't Michigan have been our rivals? Wasn't Purdue Indiana's biggest rival? All I can tell you was that we hated Indiana, more than any other team, and the reason was Bobby Knight-- a former Buckeye on Ohio State's only national championship team. Would he have liked to end up at Ohio State instead of Indiana? Shit, I dunno, all I know was that he was there, they were a powerhouse, he swore and threw chairs, and nobody loved getting booed as much as Bobby Knight. He would send out the rest of the team and coaches and we would boo them all, but it was just an appetizer. Knight would stroll out onto the court all by himself a minute later, so that he knew each boo raining down on him from 12,000 screaming fans was just for him, and we loved him for it. The only other people who got booed like that were WWF wrestlers, but in their hearts they knew that hadn't earned their vitriol. They were actors, villains in a play. Knight was a villain in life, and you could tell he loved it. Would you love it too?

"When my time on Earth is gone, and my activities here are passed, I want they bury me upside down, so my critics can kiss my ass!" 
-- Lifetime Trollchievement Award Acceptance Speech

When my time on earth is gone, and my activities here are passed, I want they bury me upside down, and my critics can kiss my ass!
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/bobbyknigh359550.html#Xw0J4h4r9w3BLamr.99

Picture this scenario. A friend comes over and says he/she has two bits of news. First, a mutual best friend just found out he/she finally got a hard-earned promotion. Second, a person you mutually can't stand who had been having an affair forever was just caught by their spouse. What do you want to talk about more? Answer: You're a troll. That alone doesn't make you a bad person, we're all trolls. Jealousy and anger are primary emotions, whereas happiness for others requires empathy, which is secondary. Sure, we can cry when we see the deaf woman crying when she hears for the first time, but we can't explain why. It's easy, however, for us to explain why we hate Lena Dunham (even though it's probably far less rational than why we like seeing the deaf woman hear). We are more in touch with ego-driven emotions, they're instinctual. Happiness for others is learned; it can be genuine, but it's not in our DNA.

You hate her because you want to be her, shitty tattoos and all.

So if we are all inherently trolls, wouldn't that mean we want to know what it's like to be booed, to see people violently decry our very nature because it has affected them so much, don't we all dream of being the Troll King? Where is the videogame where we get to be enough of a badass that by the end of the game, tens of thousands of people are booing us whenever we're in sight? Where's that movie? I just secured copyrights on 27 different HeroTroll film projects, so don't even try it. Even if we won't ever know what it's like to be a Troll King, wouldn't we like to live vicariously through one?

I don't know if Johnny Manziel is an asshole. I don't know if he's a good teammate, or a good student, or a good son. All I know is that Johnny Manziel is a great troll. In the sense that Peyton Manning was born to be a quarterback, Manziel was trollborn, the descendent of a long line of swindlers, oil men, and cockfighting champions. If your ancestors were world champions at an illegal sport, what's the most profitable way to follow in their footsteps? By playing SEC football, of course.

When Manziel enrolled at Texas A&M they were a loveable, middling Big 12 team, with greatness in their distant past, mediocrity in their memorable present, and an awesome, and much-deserved, nickname for their crowd. They were a team everyone knew, only a few feared, and nobody hated. I'm sure there was some sense of rivalry with Texas, but when your biggest rival's biggest rival is a team in a different state than the two of you, you're not a traditionally relevant football team (sorry Sparty). Isn't it shocking that the Troll King could come from such a university? Shouldn't he have gone to Notre Dame or USC, where his legacy could be written on signing day, and Brent Mustberger would practice screaming his name while flipping through an issue of Playboy's Girls of the Pac-12? Shouldn't he have been banging strippers on yachts at the U? How did this happen?

Anyone who calls themselves an "expert" is an idiot, that's how this could happen:

To be fair, despite being first team All-American in high school, his Midichlorian levels weren't very high

Manziel redshirted his freshman year, and in the following summer off-season he was arrested for fighting shirtless in the middle of an intersection with 2 fake IDs on him. Okay, sure, that's pretty badass, but a lot of quarterbacks can do or say awesome things off the field. What about on the field? This is where we truly learn to hate someone-- and therefore, the most fertile ground for trolling.

In order to be a transcendent troll, you must first be successful. Anyone can troll from their couch, or the end of the bar, but to really get under people's skin, you have to be great at what you do, then piss in people's faces right when they were gonna say, "Alright, I'll admit, you're better than I am." Johnny Manziel could not have executed this more perfectly. His meteoric rise from "Wow, look at that little guy go" to "Hey, wouldn't it be crazy if he beat 'Bama" to "Holy shit! I can't believe he won the Heisman, and he still has to go back to school for another year!" was all within three short months. Then right when we were asking ourselves if we wanted him to win another Heisman, if we wanted him to be the guy to do what Tebow, Detmer, Ingram, Leinart and so many others couldn't do, he pissed right in our ponderous faces.

Both these hand symbols are satanic, but this could merely be trolling Christians

He taught a Trolling masters class the following offseason. He didn't get out of bed to teach youngsters at Manning's Passing Academy because he was reportedly hungover, was kicked out of the camp, later said he was sick, and still went out that night. Then Texas A&M said he wouldn't be attending classes the following year, and that really pissed us off. Look, if you're gonna live out #everyguy's dream, and do nothing but run around slinging footballs and banging ridiculously hot co-eds, you have to pretend to go to class. Those are the rules! This student-athlete shit is very fragile, and we're can't afford to have you swinging your dick around because you could break it.

This is the Mona Lisa of Troll pix

Then there were the autographs. So, hypothetically speaking, you're the son of millionaires, who's playing football on scholarship in college, and is one year removed from being able to make millions yourself playing in the NFL. Somebody who sells autographed sports paraphernalia asks you to sign 4,400 items for him out of the goodness of your heart, but you know this act of charity would bring scrutiny and jeopardize your college career, what do you do? Okay, so he probably offered money, but the point is, however much he offered, you probably don't need. What you do need, however, is to be a troll, so you take some Vicodin for the coming hand cramps and sign away. Then in your first game back after your (super-cereal) one-half suspension, you taunt an opponent with a signing autographs gesture. Troll on, Johnny. Troll on.

Wearing a Jets Tebow jersey to a party is worth +478 Troll XP

On the football field Johnny Manziel was magical, he was Johnny Football, a prodigious virtuoso living out our wildest video game fantasies in southern cathedrals 14 days a year. Off the field he was equally as magical, he was Johnny Football, a prodigious virtuoso living out our wildest fantasies in bars, sorority houses, and Halloween parties 351 days a year. He was who we wanted to be. Peyton Manning was a dork (at least in college), Tebow was a hyper-religious virgin (or a supertroll that puts Manziel to shame), and Matt Leinart wasn't nearly as cool as Reggie Bush. We all want to be a mobile quarterback who doesn't give a fuck about the play call, and makes 300 pound monsters look silly before saying "Fuck it, I'm doing deep!" But unlike Rex Grossman, or Terrelle Pryor, or Chris Rix, it usually worked. But what about RG3 or Cam Newton, wouldn't it have been great to be one of those guys?

If you think Cam Newton would get away with this, I have Reggie Bush's Heisman to sell you

It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not. RG3 and Cam Newton both weren't allowed to be whatever they wanted to be in college. First of all, they're black, so they already have to deal with ignorance and double standards, meaning any excessive showboating, bragging, partying, or competitive fire will be met with nothing but outrage and questions about whether or not they were thugs. I don't know if RG3 is religious, but Baylor was certainly happy to say he was, which meant he had to keep up appearances whether he wanted to or not. Cam Newton's father robbed his son of being able to be who he wanted to be during his one year of big time college football because Cam had to constantly defend himself against accusations of taking illegal benefits. To be fair, what Cam was just two years prior was a person who would steal someone's laptop then write his own name on it, so sometimes being who you are ain't all that.

Swap this face out with RG3's, and Skip Bayless would spontaneously combust

So here we find ourselves, on the eve of the 2014 NFL Draft. We've heard all the reasons Manziel should be a top-five pick, and all the reasons he should be a fifth-rounder. This is the way we want it. We want them to doubt him. We want them to h8. We want them to say he's too short, too cocky, too improvisational, too independent, too egocentric, too genetically predisposed to being a troll. In 36 hours we will know just how we want the next ten years of our lives written. Johnny Manziel is going to hold up a team's jersey and we will want that team to win so badly that in three years when they keep winning we will live only to see them lose. That's why we know he's not going to the Browns, because the G0dz are the ultimate trollz, and they hate Cleveland.