freddiedeboer:

Months back, maybe a year, I was heading home from Manhattan on a late-night 4 train. There were only a few people on the train. One of them was Toothpick Man.

Toothpick man was a guy, maybe mid-30s, white guy, wearing a black leather jacket, one foot up on the subway seat, and showily clenching a toothpick in the side of his mouth. It occurred to me at that moment that Toothpick Man was everything that the internet would mock; he was a Mean Twitter wet dream. And yet something else occurred to me: Toothpick Man would not care. Toothpick Man’s toothpick might scream affectation in the internet era, but he projected such a natural confidence and unabashed self-possession that the idea of insulting him seemed absurd. Surely Toothpick Man would be happier than his critics, just as he was surely happier than me.

I know it’s not exactly groundbreaking to say that there’s a connection between unhappiness and a desire to crack jokes, or that humor is a product of insecurity. But I do think you’d rather be Toothpick Man than someone who tells jokes online. The question is whether Toothpick (Wo)Men are made or born.

Many of you will recognize the kid who, in high school when everybody starts drinking, sits back at the edge of the party and says, “It’s actually more fun to be the guy making fun of the people drinking than to drink.” And one of the things you learn as an adult is that this is absolutely not true.