I’m a Disruptor

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Photograph by Frederic Desmette / Getty

I’m a disruptor. I disrupt things. I grab people’s phones and I chuck them into rivers. I question the status quo. I went to my nephew’s piano recital and made crow sounds the whole time. If I’m invited to his birthday party, I’ll do the same thing, only it will be a bigger bird. Listen up, because in today’s global economy, we can’t rely on traditional ways of being annoying. We have to take bold new risks. We have to spit on parked cars.

I reject the old paradigm about what constitutes terrible behavior. I’m not your father’s unpredictable jerk. I envision a world that other people don’t want, and I make it so. I shoplift candy and then I throw it away. That way, no one can have it.

I go to the movies and yell out spoilers—in Spanish! Do I speak Spanish? No. I speak what Spanish will be.

Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk. Evan Spiegel. These are the visionaries of tomorrow who filed restraining orders against me for throwing raw turnips at them. They get it. Do you?

Me being awful is what’s hot right now.

If you have a wedding, I’ll ruin it. When the officiant asks if anyone objects, I’ll yell out, “I object—to the institution of marriage!” Hear that, mental slaves? Monogamy is dead, and I killed it. Better have a funeral. Only don’t invite me, because I also ruin funerals.

The old guard is on its way out, so get with the program. Specifically, the program of me hiding a bunch of shrimp throughout the mall so the mall smells bad.

Picture this for a second: a duck with shoes. Pointless, right? Well, that’s a second you’ll never get back. And if I could give it back, I wouldn’t. You’ve been disrupted! (“You’ve been disrupted!” is what I yell at people after I shake them out of their dazed, bourgeois slumbers.)

Being a disruptor takes commitment. I once spent eight years going to church. I learned everyone’s name. Baked lemon squares. Became part of the community, through ups and downs, the good and the bad. It sounds corny, but we were a family. Anyway, after eight years, I stole all the Bibles and replaced them with new Bibles where Jesus has a rat tail and everyone calls him J-Bone.

Disruption accomplished!

Here’s the deal: it’s easy to be liked. All you have to do is listen to people and say nice things to them and not rig up their front doors so a bucket of snakes falls on them when they open it. But no one ever changed the world by being liked.

My mission is to open up insufferable new horizons.

Being a disruptor isn’t about making friends, O.K.? It’s about taking outmoded ideas and turning them on their ears. You say stealing is wrong? I say I stole your car and drove it to Wendy’s and slept in it. You say you already knew that? Joke’s on you, because I already knew you knew that!

I am currently in jail.

When you think about it, being in jail is on the cutting edge of not being in jail. I’m in the vanguard! But the world refuses to see things my way. Like the uptight fossils who work at Sunglass Hut. They looked at me like I was crazy when I walked in and ordered a pepperoni pizza. “You’re thinking of Pizza Hut,” they said, but they were wrong. You see, Sunglass Hut made the classic mistake that far too many traditional businesses fall victim to: not having pizzas at a time when I am hungry. So I came back and stole dozens of their sunglasses.

This is not the first time I’ve been in jail.

My attorney says I should stop being a disruptor. He says the criminal-justice system doesn’t agree with me on what constitutes brave, twenty-first-century innovation. But what does he know? He didn’t even stop representing me when I took his day planner and threw it on a tire fire. He just asked that I please not do that again. But guess what? I’m going to.