14:59

By Scott Smith in Miscellaneous on May 2, 2006 11:00PM

We swore we weren't going to post on this as it's only going to give more publicity to a douchebag that doesn't deserve it. But damnit, Defamer, you forced our hand.

We're speaking, of course, of TheTrixie.com and self-proclaimed local asshole Tucker Max.

Chicagoist noticed TheTrixie.com yesterday and debated posting on it before we dismissed it as too trite, even for us. While LPTrixie.com (RIP) gave us some laughs (when it wasn’t chilling us to the bone with the fear that someone might take it as a call to arms), the whole concept is a bit of a dead horse, even though we’ve been know to beat on it from time to time.

But our curiosity was piqued by a few suspicious names in TheTrixie.com's blogroll, so we took a look at the registry of the site. Lo and behold, the site is owned not by some Jetta-driving Clybourn-haunting Trixie, but by none other than Tucker Max.

Such detective work must be beyond the folks at Defamer.com, who bought into the TheTrixie.com's faux story about supoosedly being in a bathroom after Nicole Richie had a little nose candy. We expected more from the Defamer gang, but sometimes the allure of a good story makes you disregard your own instincts.

Which brings us back to Tucker Max.

Perhaps you’ve seen Tucker Max’s website, his appearance on MTV, or his NY Times profile, which was followed by the unmistakable sound of the death rattle of journalism. This makes him about as famous as the girls on "My Super Sweet Sixteen". But what makes him far more morally repugnant is why he’s famous. Apparently he acts like an asshole (his word, not ours), has sex with a lot of unsuspecting women and treats them like trash. And then brags about it. He’s turned the average jerk’s standard operating procedure in any crap bar in the Rush/Division area on any given Saturday night into a cottage industry. Worse, TheTrixie.com's registrant address means he still does it in our fair city (U of C grads, congrats! He's one of you!)

So apparently, when you’re at 14:59 in your fifteen minutes of fame, the way to get your name back on the lips of people with way too much leisure time is to jump on a bandwagon that’s far removed from the cultural zeitgeist.

We know we’re only serving to give this douchebag more publicity. And perhaps ignoring him would mean he’d go away. But, children: sometimes the only way to kill the darkness is to bring it into the light.

First, there’s the “asshole” proclamation. At first blush, we thought it was very clever for Mr. Max to try and deflect any criticism of his womanizing douchebaggery by beating the haters to the punch. It’s as if by proclaiming himself to be an asshole, he could therefore not possibly be an asshole, right? Wrong. It’s more like truth in advertising.

Then there’s the idea that posting about your own misogynist exploits and then becoming “famous” for them means that said behavior is OK and nothing more than “boys being boys.” It’s not. See, Tucker, your exploits aren’t funny. They aren’t cute and they aren’t charming. They’re demeaning and disrespectful. Mostly to women, but also to thinking people everywhere. You perpetuate a rape culture that not only encourages other men to act like this, but also encourages women to trade in their self-respect for a good story to tell on their blogs.

Sure, we realize we might be part of the problem by merely posting this. But we’ll risk feeding the publicity beast here, because as Newton’s law of inertia states: “an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

Consider us the unbalanced force, looking to put the brakes on the phenomenon that is Tucker Max.