#the guy who drives you home from the airport might be a turbo-misogynist

[thedoubteriswise]

so I get to my shuttle at the airport to go home and it turns out the other group that's supposed to be in my van is really late, so they're putting them on the next time slot and I have this van all to myself. cool, that means the trip home will be relatively short. this was a greater stroke of luck than I could possibly have imagined, as I have been awake for uh. I'm not going to do any math right now but it's been a lot of hours, and this driver is a guy who loves to hear himself talk.

at first this is fine. he starts telling stories about the awful job he used to have working at a piece of shit movie theater in pasadena 13 years ago. it's vaguely concerning that he leads with (while speaking to a woman he just met, with whom he is alone in a van) a story about a frequent flier they used to have who would sneak into movies, sit next to random women, jerk off, and then escape before they could identify him conclusively, but admittedly I do find this story compelling and am not offended, so that's whatever. he proceeds to tell a longer story about how he got fired from this job, and how his manager also later got fired from this place for, seemingly, embezzlement. this also amuses me, even if I'm puzzled by the combination of hatred and admiration he seems to have for this manager. the specific cadence of his speech is ringing some alarm bells, and he seems to find a woman to dislike in every story he tells, and also I was unsure why he needed to specify that The Phantom Masturbator (his title, not mine) was black, but like. okay man proceed with your fascinating narrative I guess.

this is the point where we get into what he was doing in the LA area in the first place, and that was trying to be a TV writer. this didn't work out, but it turns out he had a fairly popular youtube channel for a while. and he asks me.

"so, have you heard of gamergate?"

"uh, sure."

"oh boy. yeah, sorry."

he then runs down his entire involvement in gamergate, because boy was he involved.

well. I say "entire," but he definitely left out some details!

for 50 straight minutes my new best friend does not stop talking. he expresses regrets about some of his past choices and says he's "absolutely a leftist" now, and that he has two daughters, which apparently changed his perspective on things. he has still found a woman to hate in every story he's told me. we finally arrive at my house. I get out of the car and realize that at the beginning of this story he told me where he lives, which is the same town where I live. god help me there is a nonzero chance of me running into this loser in a bar.