I had the idea first and then used the Nickelback conversation as a segue.  The truth is that if I told the straight up story of how the idea was formed, the intro would have been too long.  After the Nickelback conversation, I did think about all of these things — just not in its current form, and definitely not intending it to be an article.  The real way the idea was formed went like this:

Joe Garden from The Onion, thinking hat David Wong and I were the same person, emailed him some compliments on the last article I wrote on Stupid Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor.  In that email, he talked about that judgmental bullshit you have to put up with as a kid, eating the same cheese sandwich everyday at school lunch.  Since Wong saw that email, it got him to thinking about different ways people scoff at you in life.  Like meaningless, bullshit things they judge you by.

He ran the idea by me with “sleeping late” and “dumb taste in comedy” as talking points.  I ended up coming up with an 8-point list that we later whittled down to six.  When I was writing the piece, I thought, “You know, I did have that Nickelback conversation not long ago that led me to the same ideas.  I should use that as an intro because it not only paints the same picture, but it happened with me doing the bullshit judging, which comes off better than me just bitching that other people do it.”

That was a huge point for me in that article.  I didn’t want to come across like I was saying, “You guys all do this, and you need to stop!”  These are things that I still do to this day, and I’m trying to get past it becsause it really does make a peson an incredible douchebag.  But I wanted to keep that tone throughout the article, showing that I’m as guilty of this as the people I’m making fun of.