This word has slipped into our vernacular like a drop of cyanide in our collective Kool-Aid. If you don’t know this word already, then you’re either someone’s great grandmother, an exchange student from Finland, or you haven’t the use of your ears. Douchebag is now pervasive in American slang, stolen from the clutches of feminine hygiene and made frat-tastic by guys with popped collars and Ed Hardy t-shirts.  Dane Cook helped push it over the top, facilitating widespread imitation by bringing it to the forefront of pop-speak. Like it or not, it’s everywhere.

I’m not sure it’s a positive trend, taking words from the world of lady-products and making them useful to college sophomores with no Friday classes and on first-name basis with the beer keg guy. Taking already-known things and twisting them to find new meaning is yet another in the current-sphere’s annoying addiction to remaking things. Seems like all we do anymore is revisit classics, whether it’s an old Skynyrd song made even dumber by a shirtless skeeze wearing a hat that’s meant to be worn with a suit, or taking a great old film and diluting its familiar perfection by stacking the cast with Disney’s latest harvest of airbrushed, doe-eyed lab-tweens and completely murdering the script. I don’t care what the revenues say or what the focus groups reveal—this kind of thinking is the hallmark of a civilization set adrift.

“Douchebag” is just a word that means, well, “that guy.” The one you want to punch but you know has the connections to sue you. The one with the tone of voice you can’t stand and reads Tucker Max like it’s the I Ching. He’s into money and scoring chicks. That’s it, that’s all. Sports addiction can be a common addition to this skunky brew, as well as a tendency to get into “business opportunities” selling “products.” This guy is everywhere and nowhere. Every interaction is a business opportunity for The Douchebag, whether the business be money, sex, or power. Usually all three, if he can swing it.

So we come to the point, and here it is: I’ve had it. Seriously, up to here (waving hand way over my head). I can’t take it anymore.

There’s this guy named Spencer Pratt. He’s married—still not entirely sure if he understands what that means—to an implanted bobblehead named Heidi Montag. Heidi and Spencer came from The Hills, MTV’s now-classic (how scary is that?) episodic acid trip designed to turn teenagers into texting, card-swiping little monsters. With a shallowness previously reserved for porn producers and mustached pimps, these two have flipped the morality switch completely off, deciding to bet it all on the pop value of paparazzi.

“I’ll say this: I love that I’m the first person your editor wants you to go to when they want publicity. They know that Spencer Pratt will give the readers what they want. The realness. The rawness.” —Spencer Pratt, on his public persona

This guy goes around and gets hotels, nightclubs, and any sort of entertainment venue to pay the two of them to show up and be obnoxious. They’ve managed to make the paparazzi their very own digital cash cow, taking the chaos of the internet and the public’s insatiable desire for celebrity gossip and making it their business.

Spencer’s latest douchebag move is to demand that the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort pay him for lounging at the pool while Heidi is rehearsing for the Miss Universe pageant, a fact that should leave most if not all of you scratching your head and/or chucking your Diet Coke at your computer screen.

He wants to be paid. For lounging at the pool.

In classic douchebag fashion, Spencer arranged for a Playboy pictorial featuring his wife Heidi.

“A lot of miracles have happened in my life to take me here, and to me, the reason why we’re all on this earth is for God, and that’s the way I live my life.”—Heidi Montag, on faith and why she whores out for cash

They’re all about God, folks. No, seriously, it has to be true because that’s the quote. While it’s well-documented that Spencer used to keep entire walls of his bachelor pad covered with various Playboy centerfolds, he has since reformed:

“Now when I’m peeing I get to see a 10-foot naked photo of my wife, and I’m like, Damn, I’m one lucky motherf——!” —Spencer Pratt, in response to his wife’s Playboy pictorial

(With no other recourse for encountering such withering stupidity, Charlie punches himself in the head until the pain stops)

I know these guys are everywhere. I’ve seen them in bars, on television, in movies—I’ve even seen them in churches. Like the flu virus, there will always be a certain subset of these hollow-men roaming the earth and making life less pleasant for the world and its citizens. I am not here to take them all on, though—Lord knows I only have so much RAM in my head, and it’s frustrating enough that I’m wasting time by writing this much.

But this guy is a Pratt. He’s got my last name. It’s killin’ me. The messed-up thing is, he’d be the first one to be delighted about receiving internet mention here, even though I’m sitting here giving him the verbal finger. But he just sits there on a stack of credit cards, sanding his horns and making deals with the devil, laughing and drooling, praying to God the cameras keep rolling.

“If people aren’t hating on you, they don’t care, and if they don’t care, that means you’re not doing anything right.” —Spencer Pratt, on the public’s distaste for his methods

This is without a doubt the saddest and the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. This man has derailed his soul from his chest, replaced it with a few fistfuls of cash, a counterfeit wife, and has decided to let internet trends be the compass for his absolutely useless endeavors.

Spencer, from one Pratt to another: Get some help, man. You’ve enter-stained us long enough.