What is pissbait?
Dear Dale:
I came across a new word recently. Pissbait. I know what clickbait is. People write boring articles and try to trick people into reading them by giving them exciting titles like “Do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cause cancer?” and “Which hot supermodel belongs to a Satanic cult?” But what is pissbait?
Signed,
Please don’t tell me it involves golden showers
Dear PDTMIIGS:
Don’t worry. It doesn’t. It comes from the British expression “taking the piss” — which means pretending to be serious about something to make fun of it.
Which, believe it or not, I’m often accused of by my English readers.
Ya joking me? they ask. Fuck off.
Angus, my Scottish reader, is even more direct.
Ya canna be serious, he says. Not with shite titles like Does Yoga Make You Horny? Is Bestiality Wrong? and Why Can’t the Jews Be Like Everyone Else? Stop taking the piss, ya silly cunt.
(So much for the fabled British politeness.)
But I’m not. The world is full of troubled people, sad souls whom society has failed, and, as a last resort, they turn to me.
(Only the truly desperate would come to me for help.)
Mate, they ask, how long have ya been faffing about like that for?
(Thought they were talking about masturbating at first.)
All my life, I answer. For as long as I can remember, people have sought me out for advice and guidance (i.e. sat down on the bar stool next to me).
And I’ve given it to them. Whether they wanted it or not.
But I never thought of taking it up seriously until I met a newspaper guy who used to be a war correspondent but pissed his boss off by being insufficiently pro-war and was given the advice column as punishment.
(Who knew Ann Landers was a man? It’s like finding out Santa Claus is a chick. Turns your whole world upside down.)
Used to come into The Drunken Skunk and regale us with stories of people who ran themselves over with their own car, fed bears marshmallows with their mouth or shot their spouse for buying the wrong kind of toilet paper.
He treated it like a joke but you could tell it was eating him up.
So much so one night he tried to off himself by eating the greenest, foulest egg in the pickled egg jar.
Unfortunately, it didn’t kill him. But his face did turn as green as the egg he ate and he promptly puked.
As luck would have it, I was standing right beside him so I grabbed one of the bartender’s rubber boots and held it open for him to spew into.
(Probably should’ve told the bartender before he put his foot into it but what am I, his mother?)
Impressed both by my presence of mind and concern for my fellow barfly and desperate to make a deadline, he begged me to write his column.
And, soft-hearted fool that I am, I agreed.
The letter was from some guy who was feeling frustrated because he couldn’t walk around with his cock hanging out.
Now, as a full-fledged member of the giant cock club, I totally understand: it’s hard keeping Mr. Friendly penned up in your pants like that.
(Especially when ladies are around.)
Most people probably would’ve made the mistake of citing common sense, telling him what he wanted to do was wrong because it violated social norms.
But I knew that wouldn’t work on a guy like him. So instead, I appealed to his sense of pride: I told him women would lose control of themselves, stopping whatever they were doing to gape in wonder at his huge cock — which would result in all sorts of serious accidents, like car crashes and kids falling off cliffs.
(Not to mention make other dudes inordinately envious.)
Which he totally got. So much so he wrote back to tell me how much he appreciated my advice and that, except for special occasions like streaking, settling a bet or urinating on a cop car, he would keep his monster in its lair.
(Talk about noble: it is a far, far better thing I do by keeping my penis in my pants than by strutting about with it erect in the air.)
The newspaper was so impressed they gave the war correspondent his job back and begged me to take over the advice column.
The only downside is my editor, that dork Darrell, who I have to run my articles by — for spelling mistakes, factual errors and possible lawsuits.
(Not that I give a shit about any of those.)
And the rest, as they say, is history.
So next time you’re surfing the net and you come across an outrageous statement, don’t just assume it’s bullshit. You’ll be glad you didn’t. Because the world is full of fucked up people and there are more things in people’s minds, PDTMIIGS, than are contained in our psychology. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
