I’ve spoken to several people about this post during the past couple days, and I’ve decided that I need to lay down the law about both douches and bros. Though both types of people are a large part of our lives, we don’t often distinguish between the two in our disparagement. I’m here to set the record straight about when and how to classify people as a both a douche and/or a bro.

The first thing I need to do is define my terms. I draw no gender or sex line for either term. There are both male and female bros and douches, and no matter what the origination of either term in the context of a gender or sex, it is quite obvious to me that those distinctions have been eroded past recognition. I also acknowledge the fact that “douche” is a term that derives from a derogatory understanding of the female sex and their menstrual cycle. While I take a personal stance against such derogatory statements, I also realize that we have to understand the reality of the term “douche.” It exists in use, and to understand how it is used, we have to go “up the douche river,” so to speak.

So, with that, my common definitions. A “douche” is someone who, regardless of circumstances, will always be negative and confrontational toward other people. Douches are also often self centered and passive aggressive. A “bro” is someone who, by use of normative standards of social interaction, wardrobe, and self worth, assimilates themselves into a culture so heavily that they realize a Nirvana of assholery that follows them around like a personal singularity. I will address this singularity at length later in the argument.

In conversation, we oftentimes conflate the bro with the douche, but that simply is not true. While ALL bros are inherently douches, not all douches are bros. I will elaborate on how this Venn diagram works later, but keep this in mind as the argument develops.

The reason that I state the above is that there are many types of observable douches in the world who are not bros. The is the nerdy douche who speaks of Mario and 4Chan all day long while debating the merits of the Wii over the 360 with an air of complete dickishness. There is the sports douche who will always claim that others could have better technique. There is the drinking douche who, for some reason, believes that a sole measure of one’s life is how much alcohol and cigarettes one can consume in an extremely short amount of time. These three types of douche share the same qualities: self absorbed, one upperery, and total dickitude when it comes to other people and their opinions. While that could be said of a lot of people (myself included), the key difference between your average asshole and a douche is that the douche cannot defend their douchery.

The ability to defend their lifestyle as a douche is a necessary quality that all true douches lack (there are also neo-douches, but I will abstain from any analysis of that subgroup in this argument). For example, say that a douche throws a chair on top of a car. A normal person will ask, “Why, sir or madam douche, did you do such a thing?” A douche will oftentimes smirk and look about for members of the opposite sex to chat up. A causal relationship with the throwing of the chair is at worse denied, and at best it was “cool.” I, like many others, think that is fucking stupid, but it is here that we find the core of the douche. The reason the douche exists is simply for the douche and the douche’s pleasures. Their self-centered assholery follows them around, but it is only volatile when it comes in contact with another person (speaking, interacting with, hearing speak.) Oftentimes the douche is camouflaged in his or her douchedom; there is no “douche uniform.”

This is where we encounter the bro. While it would seem that the term “bro” would come from the term “brother,” it is a dubious point in the least. Single children can grow to become bros. Others would say that a bro is a fraternity member, and that the “bro” comes from having “fraternity brothers.” That is also a falsehood, since not all fraternity brothers are bros, and a bro can exist outside of a fraternity as easily as in one. My personal theory is that a bro is a bro from birth. You could track a million babies from birth and determine the bros, then rebirth those same babies in a vacuum, alone, and they would still be bros. It may, in fact, be some terrible deity punishing humanity for past transgressions. However, we can never know this, and so I must make postulations based in the information that I have.

While douches do not have a distinct uniformity to them (they can be anyone, everywhere), the common bro has a general look about him or her that identifies them. I’m not going to go through all the permutations of the bro uniform for men and women, but suffice to say that we all know them when we see them, just like pornography. The bro has all of the characteristics that are attributed to the douche above, and like the douche, the bro has no logical defense for the way that the bro acts. However, the bro has a unique way of subverting the concept of defense: hive mind.

The concept of the hive mind is necessary to explain the bro. You see, the bro carries a singularity with them. You can see it from a distance. It is part and parcel with the clothes and the hairstyles that are a key part of all bros. The singularity can suck anyone into it. It creates fights, chest banging, standing up real tall, throwing back mad liquor, and all kinds of other crazy shit that can’t be put into words without setting your eyes on fire.

The singularity is made up of two separate things. It is first created by the sheer assholery of the bro itself. It is wildly exacerbated by the hive mind itself. The singularity actually becomes more dense as more people enter the bro’s vicinity. This is possible because of the inverse relation of bro’s self centeredness to their surroundings: they actually become more self centered and assholish as the number of people around them increases. This allows them to draw in more fights, drinks, and women, all of which simply add to the epically proportioned density of the singularity itself. The hive mind distributes this singularity across time and space with bromagic, which allows even a single bro to possess a relatively powerful singularity around them.

I hope that this gives some people a better glimpse at the difference between bros and douches. Obviously the former is a semi-magical thing of physics and power dickery, and the latter is simple your common asshole-for-no-reason. I did a lot of direct observation for this article, and I hope that it was as beneficial for the reader as it was harmful for my well being as a person.