It usually starts innocently. You’re minding your business, living your life, convinced you’re a decent human with solid morals, good intentions, and at least a baseline understanding of how shopping carts work. Then one day, something happens. Maybe you cut someone off in traffic and justified it. Maybe you ignored a text for three days and blamed “being busy.” Maybe you loudly complained about slow service while actively standing in the wrong line. That’s when the discovery begins.
The idea that other people are assholes is comforting. It’s clean. It’s simple. It gives structure to the chaos. There are good people, bad people, and then there’s you — obviously on the good side. Except that logic starts falling apart the moment you replay certain memories at 2:47 a.m. when your brain decides sleep is optional but self-reflection is mandatory.
The Early Warning Signs
Discovering the asshole within doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a gradual unraveling. First comes defensiveness. You catch yourself saying things like, “I’m not rude, I’m just honest,” or “If people can’t handle me, that’s on them.” These are not red flags — they’re red banners waving aggressively in the wind.
Then there’s the internal monologue. The one where you narrate your own behavior like a documentary: Here we see a grown adult explaining why returning an item without a receipt is actually the cashier’s fault. This is where things get interesting. Awareness creeps in, but ego still has the wheel.
The Mirror Moment
Every journey has a defining moment, and this one usually happens in front of a mirror, literal or metaphorical. Maybe a friend goes quiet. Maybe someone calls you out and doesn’t laugh after. Maybe you see a meme that hits a little too close to home and you immediately send it to someone else to avoid accountability.
This is when you realize assholism isn’t a personality type — it’s a behavior pattern. A lifestyle choice. A series of small decisions stacked on top of unchecked confidence. Nobody wakes up and says, “Today I will be the villain.” It’s more like, “I deserve this,” repeated over time without peer review.
Justification: The Asshole’s Favorite Tool
Once the seed is planted, justification kicks in hard. You start building a case for yourself like you’re on trial in your own head. Exhibit A: you were tired. Exhibit B: they deserved it. Exhibit C: you’ve been through a lot. Suddenly, your internal legal team is undefeated.
This is also where manipulation enters the chat. Not always the dramatic kind — sometimes it’s subtle. Selective storytelling. Strategic omission. Editing reality until you’re the hero again. It’s impressive, honestly, how efficient the human brain is at protecting its own nonsense.
Growth, Allegedly
Here’s the thing no one likes to admit: discovering the asshole within is actually useful. Painful, yes. Humbling, absolutely. But useful. It’s the difference between repeating the same cycles and at least pretending to do better next time. Awareness doesn’t cure assholism, but it does slow it down.
You start catching yourself mid-behavior. Mid-text. Mid-eye-roll. You don’t always stop — let’s not get unrealistic — but you notice. And noticing is dangerous territory, because it removes plausible deniability.
Living With the Knowledge
Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. You’ll still mess up. You’ll still have moments. But now there’s context. Responsibility. A quiet understanding that the line between “good person” and “asshole” is thinner than anyone wants to believe and heavily dependent on caffeine, stress levels, and Wi-Fi strength.
Discovering the asshole within isn’t about self-loathing or public confession. It’s about realizing that growth starts the second you stop pretending you’re immune. Everyone has it in them. Some people just refuse to look.