Be Bad
Being bad is all attitude. Even if you're secretly a sweetheart–shh, don't tell anyone!–you can learn to cultivate a bad personality with some tricks of the trade. Learn to project a bad attitude, talk like a bad kid who's got trouble following behind, and learn to look bad to keep 'em all fooled. Being bad can be fun, if you do it right.
Contents
Steps
Acting Bad
- Be the life of the party. If you’re going to be bad, having fun needs to take the front seat. Ambitions, responsibilities, and high seriousness can take a backseat to grabbing life by the fun buttons. As a bad kid, you've got to always be looking for the scheme, the party, the angle. Always be laughing and having a good time.Don't be good,
- When you walk into the room, your friends should all be equally glad to see you and terrified. Everyone should take notice of your attitude, your walk, and your style. You've got to ooze danger.
- When you walk into a classroom, never hustle right to your seat and sit down quietly. Poke your friend in the ribs, say "What up, teach?" and burp before you sit down. Put your feet up on the desk. You're bad.
- Don't take on new responsibilities. It’s hard to be a rule-breaker if you’re worried about getting back to your dorm room to feed your roommate’s fish, or if you have to walk your little sister home from school every day after school. A bad kid will flat-out refuse to take on unnecessary responsibilities. You've got only enough energy and attention to look out for one person. You. Don’t take on unnecessary responsibilities that will keep you from doing more important things. Like napping.
- It's important to be responsible for yourself. If you absolutely have to do something, do it. You're not being responsible for your own fun if you get in trouble and have to stay home all day. If someone else is depending on you, come through. Then cause trouble.
- Be late for everything. Being on time is for dorks, brown-nosers, and teachers' pets. The bell's ringing for class? So what? Your coffee break is over at work? Who cares? There's no sense in being on time. The party starts when you walk in the door anyway. They'll wait.
- A bad kid never shows up to a party until it's in full swing. Roll up late, a couple hours after it was supposed to start. Never be the first one to show up.
- Break small rules to assert your badness. Little rules are meant to be broken. That's how people will know you're one of the bad kids and not some rule-abiding citizen. Find little things that you can do wrong without getting into serious trouble and you'll quickly get a reputation as a rule-breaker and a bad kid.
- Break the dress code by wearing jewelry, or the wrong colors on the wrong day. Always chalk it up to a mistake. "I didn't know," should be your catch phrase, followed closely by, "What'd I do?"
- There’s a difference between acting bad and being a real-life trouble-maker and criminal. Don’t break laws or engage in dangerous illegal activity that could get you into serious trouble.
- Relax in bad ways. Being bad is hard work. You've got to learn to relax and be evil at the same time. Never let up on your bad ways. When you've got some free time, consider the following hobbies:
- Play golf and lose badly, then blame your teenage cabbie. Berate the kid and complain about him to the manager. Get him to quit.
- Go for relaxing Sunday drives on the interstate at rush hour. Let your rage bubble. Cut people off. Safely, of course. No sense in denting your Corolla.
- Hunt big game. Go on hunting expeditions to exotic locations and kill large beautiful animals that have absolutely no way of defending themselves. Save their heads and put them on your wall.
- Assemble a team of miscreants. From wolves to teenagers, the bad travel in packs. Find a wolf-pack of other bad kids and form a little gang. If you want to be all greaser about it, you could even get leather jackets with patches on the back and make it official. Walk and snap, buddy. Walk and snap.
- Pretend you don't care about punishment. If you're bad enough, you're going to end up spending a considerable amount of time being punished. When you're a kid, that might mean going straight to bed without supper, being sent to time out, being suspended from school, or even worse punishments. As you get older, the punishments will get more severe. Whatever the consequences, face them with icy and stoic poise. Be cool in the face of your punishment.
- When you learn your punishment, say something cool, like "Sounds fun." You'll take all the wind out of your punisher's sales.
- You always need to be aware of the consequences of your actions. Never break a rule you're not willing to pay for.
- Find gainful villain employment. If you're going to be bad full-time, it's a good idea to find some kind of job that will allow you to put your hard-earned skills to good use. Some good career fields for bad kids might include:
- Working in media as the propaganda tsar for a logging corporation. Be the face of forest destruction.
- Work in a slaughterhouse. Kill cute pigs, cows, and other farm animals for a living. Strong stomachs required.
- Be a trial lawyer and only defend criminals. The worse their crimes, the more satisfied you are when they walk off free.
- Be a mall cop or a security guard. Find a tiny kingdom and lord over it with extreme badness. Wear sunglasses.
Talking Badly
- Criticize instead of complimenting. When you're talking to someone, never pay them any compliments. Instead, find reasons to point out things they've done wrong. Point out little failures and big disappointments. Go off topic if necessary. Never let anyone else succeed.
- Practice the back-handed compliment: "You're so good looking. I bet you wish you were smarter, though."
- Practice the humble brag: "Oh you went to France, huh? I went there like five years ago. It's ok I guess. I was kind of bored. I guess you like it though."
- Never start conversations, but end them with negativity. You should be like a black hole for other peoples' ability to communicate. Sit with a scowl on your face and never contribute anything to conversation. If a topic comes up that you're interested in, just sneer and scoff. People will steer clear of you eventually, but that's part of the gig, buddy.
- Don’t keep up your end of talking. Don’t ask questions or act like a good listener. Just stay focused on yourself.
- Play “Debbie Downer.” If someone brings up their recent vacation to the Philippines, talk about Ebola. If someone talks about the wonderful meal they just had at an upscale restaurant, talk about e. coli.
- Talk loudly. When you do speak, it should be uncomfortably loud and intrude on other peoples' conversations. Pay no attention to personal space and the noise level appropriate for the occasion. Speak loudly, shouting at your friends even when you're sitting right next to them. Bonus points for bad breath.
- Make your conversations drastically inappropriate for the place. If you're in church, talk about death metal and Call of Duty with your brother. If you're at a Young Liberals meeting, start talking about the "welfare state" and how much you like Ayn Rand.
- Use four-letter words whenever possible. Good as adverbs, adjectives, and interjections, curse words are pretty useful for the bad kid. Befriend them and use them in as many different ways as possible. Watch Scorsese movies for creative suggestions.
- Ignore the body language of others. Don't forget the nonverbal methods of communicating badly. If you notice other people around you looking uncomfortable, as if you've offended them, of they're put off by something that you're talking about, that means you're on the right track. Keep talking about whatever it is. It's doing the bad trick.
Looking Bad
- Make your resting face a scowl. Practice this in the mirror: furl your eyebrows into a scrunched up scowl, as if you were concentrating really hard. Turn your nose up like something smells terrible. And frown. Turn your smile upside down, like you had two fishhooks hanging from the corners of your mouth. Beautiful. Make this face at all times.
- Avoid eye contact. Bad kids never look anyone in the eye. That communicates that you're willing to talk and you're interesting in them as a person. A bad kid is never interested. Look over people, as if you're bored by what they're saying, or focus on the floor. Look anywhere but in another person's eyes.
- Alternatively, if someone challenges you–another bad kid, or an unsuspecting goodie-goodie–then you've got to stare them down. Lock eyes and channel your death rays. Be an alpha.
- Use closed body language. A bad kid should look totally unapproachable. That means crossed legs, crossed arms, slouching, and a drooping head. Look as if it's physically painful to sit up straight. If you have to sit next to someone, sit as far away as possible from them, as if the idea of physical contact would make you nauseated.
- Smirk instead of smiling. No matter how bad you are, eventually–somehow, someday–you're probably going to crack a smile or two. Something will be funny, especially the misfortune of others. But when someone slips and falls on the ice, or you learn about a terrible school bus accident, you can't smile like a doofus: ya gotta smirk. Learn to smirk instead of smiling.
- Try this: imagine you've got a fishhook through one corner of your mouth, and someone's pulling it up. Now squint your eyes and nod slowly, as if you're totally satisfied with what you're seeing, but can't be bothered to really care about it one way or another. Perfect.
- Dress like a bad kid. Bad kids make friends with the color black, especially if it's black leather. Learn to start dressing like a bad kid and giving yourself a nasty reputation instantly.
- For boys, black metal band t-shirts, leather jackets, and combat boots are a quick way to look bad. You could always rock some camo pants if you want to get a commando thing going. It should always be dark and severe. For more of a corporate look, wear a tight-fitting suit and constantly talk about how expensive it is. Don't let anyone touch it.
- For girls, styling your hair in a-symmetrical fashions and using severe make-up is a good way to stand out as a rule-breaker. Bright red lipstick, dark eye make-up, and chunky Doc Martens under a baby-doll dress. Put some safety pins in your jacket and you're ready for the punk show.
- Consider a tattoo or a facial piercing. No bad kid can complete the image without some ink and some metal. If you're of the right age, or can get parental permission (or better yet, an older brother who'll sign for you), you can get a tattoo to make your badness permanent.
- Good tattoos for bad kids: skulls, panthers, anything sharp and barbed-wire-like. Sailor Jerry tattoos are popular, as well as Japanese-style ink. Any combination of the above is also acceptable.
- Good piercings are typically facial piercing. Eyebrow, nose, or lip are common bad-kid piercings. Instantly iconic and recognizable. If you've got your ears pierced, add a second for increased danger cred. If anyone asks, it didn't hurt.
Tips
- Don't suddenly change into someone you're not.
- If you earn a reputation it is hard to get rid of it.
- Become the popular bad boy or girl or the mysterious bad boy or girl.
- Ignore rude comments unless they're so bad you have to do something.
Warnings
- Be prepared for trouble.
Be prepared to loose a lot or all of your friends
- Be prepared for suspension, expulsion, or even being arrested if you go too far.
- If you pull it off you can offend lots of people.
- Be prepared to be isolated.
- Don't let anger overcome you.
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