Who are the world’s reigning social media douchebags? FIB breaks down the contenders and presents the world’s first douchebag Olympics (we know, it’s a tough job but someone has to do the reporting).
We don’t know about you, but at FIB we couldn’t help noticing that a certain breed of grade-A douchebag men have cropped up on social media darling, Instagram to match the Insta-girls and Rich Kids of Instagram phenomena. These uber-rich, uber-obnoxious, uber-wankers have made it their life’s mission to rack up as many followers as they can by shoving their general douchebaggery fuelled by extreme (unearned) wealth in front of everyone’s faces. Often featuring some combination of assault rifles, yachts, and scantily clad women, these tossers are the human equivalent of shit on the bottom of your shoe. Honestly, these guys make the Kardashians clan look classy.
While it might be said that these guys have the collective mental ability of a group of third graders (this may be doing an extreme disservice to actual third graders), they do seem to know exactly how to cater to their loyal fanbase. These devoted young and old alike, men lap up every Instagram offering and slavishly hang on every word as if God is speaking to them.
However, it also a well known truth of life that those with the biggest egos are also those with the highest levels of insecurity and these men are no exception to that rule. They are all so insecure that despite their staggering inherited fortunes, their entire self-worth comes down to the number of likes their Instagram of [insert some variation of tits, booze, race-car, private jet etc.] gets. These men also don’t exist in their own vacuum and each carefully devote their time to checking out the competition and they circle each other like dogs sniffing the butts of other dogs at the park. And of course, no social media douchebag portfolio would complete without a good feud (preferably over number of Instagram followers, gotta stay on brand ya know?) with another social media douchebag. Now that you know how these certifiable professional douchebags operate, allow us to present the First Social Media Douchebag Olympics.
The poor sods that didn’t even medal…
John Gustafsson
How do you describe a man who fills his toilet with Moët and even bathes in the stuff? Yep, that’s right, capital D-bag. If he’s not getting sponsored by them, then he’s the real sucker.
Chase Zimmerman
This guy wakes up each morning and sartorially coordinates his bracelet with his fancy watch and then to his even fancier car. Then he religiously documents it on Instagram. Every goddamn day.
Scott Disick
Listen, we know the man is obnoxious personified (I mean, he calls himself Lord Disick for christ’s sake) but I think we can agree that he is mostly harmless. Plus, living in the shadow of the Kardashian Klan must do something twisted to the human psyche and that’s enough to have us feel almost sorry for this poor douchebag.
In the Bronze medal position…
Meet Gianluca Vacchi, 49-year-old Italian business man. His only real claim to fame? This viral video clip on Instagram of him dancing with his model wife, Giorgia Gabriele.
Some may say, if you’ve got it flaunt it, but on the other hand, sometimes less tatted up, fake tanned, half-naked dancing Italian man in your face is more.
Of course, what social media douchebag would be complete without an entourage. Vacchi scored 10 bonus points on the douchbaggery scale for including all-American poster boy for general douchebag vibes Zac Efron. Vacchi hit it off with everyone’s favourite eternal frat boy, Efron in 2014 and they were soon holidaying together, bonding over their shared love of doing activities shirtless. They went horseback riding together (shirtless), did synchronised backflips off of yachts together (shirtless) and drunkly danced on tables in clubs to Jason Derulo’s “Wiggle” (surprisingly, not shirtless for once).
However, the real reason Gianluca takes the bronze medal position must be his “GV lifestyle”. Having no shortage of disposable income (Vacchi heads manufacturing company SEA Group -Società Europea Autocaravan) Vacchi is free to spend most of his time promoting his lifestyle brand. Listen, one sure way to tell a douchebag from a regular joe? If they take their initials and then add the word ‘lifestyle’ to and pretend it’s the highest form of aspiration man could hope for (while adding the hashtag #gvlifestyle to each and every Instagram post).
The GV lifestyle includes everything from lounging on luxury yachts, standing on the seat of Harley Davidson’s (wearing pyjamas), riding on jetskis (wearing a full suit) and travelling in private jets (mostly naked, with Hermès luggage in tow). Gianluca Vacchi is the ultimate figure of envy for every middle-aged, ordinary man out there.
Perhaps objectively the worst position (so close to winning and yet so far!), the silver medal goes to…
Australia’s answer to Hugh Hefner, the tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon, self-titled “the Candyman”. This ex-footballer, ex-model, ex-decent person, lives in the “Candyshop Mansion”, with his wife, her best friend and a non-stop revolving parade of hundreds of women. The 3.7 million dollar mansion on Australia’s Gold Coast was built off the profits of the tobacco industry, a product killing roughly 15,000 Australians a year. If that wasn’t bad enough, the house even has its own logo, a version of Versace’s Medusa Head, pimped out in candy colours of course. Not one for bashfulness, Beyon has described himself as “a cross between The Great Gatsby, Hugh Hefner, The Wolf of Wall Street and Tony Stark, with a taste for Versace, who can easily turn into a Willy Wonka character.” Ummm? Do you think this loser knows movies aren’t real?
Of course Beynon knows he is a product of the same toxic cesspool that spit out Kim Kardashian and continues to churn out talentless reality tv stars by the handful but he just doesn’t care. Beynon’s Instagram post in which he is leading his wife and another woman by a dog leash is to him what sextapes were to Kim Kardashian, launching him into infamy. This single Instagram post made Beynon infamous and since then he has only doubled down on the Candyman persona. His latest “Release Your Inner Beast” mansion party, featured 500 revellers, elephants, crocodiles and ‘bondage queens’ before being shut down by the police.
Part and parcel of being a social media douchebag means feeding into the cult of personality and online trolling. Last year, A Current Affair journalist Leisa Goddard aired a segment on Beynon that exposed his frat-boy-on-crystal-meth lifestyle. Beynon’s response was to host a party in which guests were entertained by a mock murder scene, with Beynon pretending to shoot a woman portraying Goddard as audio of her voice played over the speakers. He then took to social media of course to taunt her, captioning an image of the staged assassination “[f]or those of you that didn’t catch me firing my money shot all over Leisa’s face”. Even more of a grade-A asshole more was his justification that this was ‘guerilla marketing’. Its totally okay if you feel like vomiting right now, we do.
And the gold medal goes to…
America’s Dan Bilzarian, objectively speaking, one of Instagram’s most despicable self-aggrandizing millionaires with daddy issues and obsession with a pair of tits ever. His surname sounds like a clownish representation of ridiculous amount of money, kind of like the one he inherited from his fraudster father. Dan, a trust-fund baby, former US Navy trainee (he has kicked out for a ‘safety violation on the gun range’) and self-described ‘venture capitalist’ splits his time between Los Angeles and Vegas, the latter being where he pretends he is a good poker player. Instagram famous, Dan spends most of his time shooting guns, flying in private jets, partying and posing for photos surrounded by a harem of mostly naked women.
Lest you think we are being too judgemental, let’s just run through some of the things Dan Bilzerian’s life consists of (as documented on social media) without judgement. He makes eight-digit bets on poker matches. He plays video games with Steve Aoki. He spends a lot of time on yachts with at least thirty bikini clad women at all times. He spends time organising his collection of anti-tank guns and assault rifles. He customises his Gulfstream IV jet by painting a headshot of his pet goat, Zeus, on the tail. He once tweeted, “My greatest fear is that someone will break in and I won’t be able to decide what gun to shoot them with” as the caption to a photo of his dining room table covered with every type of firearm imaginable. He sued the producers of the film Lone Survivor as he has loaned the production $1million in exchange for at least eight minuted of screen time and eight words of dialogue, but this was later cut to less than a minute and just one line. He has suffered from three heart attacks before the age of 32, precipitated by extreme drug use. Honesty, we don’t even need to say anything else, this record speaks for itself. This man is absolute garbage. He is society’s proverbial dog shit on the bottom the shoe.
Of course while all this makes Bilzerian the ultimate toolbag, it doesn’t actually compare to the numerous incidents he’s been involved in which reveal him to not only to be a Instagram douchebag but a dangerous one at that. In August of 2014, Bilzerian was banned from LIV nightclub in Miami and sued for pushing model Vanessa Castano off a banquette and then kicking her in the face. Later that same year, Bilzerian was once again in hot water in December when he threw pornographic actress Janice Griffith off the roof of a house and into a pool for a stunt organised by Hustler magazine. It almost killed both involved as 18-year-old Griffith who was naked at the time, panicked at last second, tried to grab onto Bilzerian’s shirt and ended up falling short of the pool, hitting the edge and breaking her foot. Later that month (finishing off 2014 with a bang), Bilzerian was arrested at LAX Airport on bomb-making charges. This is a man in which millions follow on Instagram, vicariously living out their fantasies of being the ultimate dude-bro, or as we like to call it, the gold medal winner for biggest douchebag on the planet. Seriously. This man is a steaming hot pile of complete and utter shit. Just in case that wasn’t clear enough.
