Nickie Muir: 'Virgin killer' should have been reined in years ago

Nickie Muir

Someone should have told him. It's easy. It goes like this: "You're being a dick. Stop it or you will have no friends."

I know it's not popular and there's probably a law against it, but there are times that it just has to be done.

"You hurt my feelings," the small person launched her personal grievance. "And ... she said just working up to a courtroom final flourish, "you called me a dick."

I have to admit I was a bit taken aback at this. The argument was at least five minutes ago and I'd already moved on ... had I really used the "D" word?

Yes apparently. And I'd told her she'd have no friends if she kept speaking to people in a way that treated the world like room service on permanent call.

"OK. Maybe I shouldn't have used that word ... but you kind of were being a dick."

"I know. But you didn't have to call me one."

"Umm. I think I really did have to."

For some reason, this was hysterically funny. Also revelatory. Surely if you know you're being a dick then you'd stop by yourself. I do a quick mental recall and realise with dismay that this never works for me so was unlikely to work for a 10-year-old. I have to rely on friends and the mad Latin to point out when I've breached the borderline of dickdom about something and they are only too happy to oblige.

Someone. Someone should have told that young man who is now going by the ridiculous "virgin killer" title in the after-life.

Someone should have told him, before they gave him a $40k luxury car, before they let him travel first class everywhere, before they employed a film director who specialised in trite romantic comedies to teach him how to pick up girls, like girls were a easy skill to pick up, like tying knots or changing tyres, before all of that, someone should have told him that the world is not his oyster for his consumption alone. Someone also should have told him girls are not prey. That you don't need a "killer instinct" to "pick them up" and that it is normal for girls not to throw themselves en masse at a boy, especially if they whinge or are self-indulgent or are, well, being a dick.

Even more radically; they certainly don't need to die should they fail to meet his expectations. It is difficult to determine where acute mental ill health starts and where an over-indulged ego that has never been curbed ends.

A seething underlying hatred of women in general, fostered by a screen industry that continues to portray women in boringly negative ways; ultimately made being a dick - utterly deadly.