*Bzzrrppt.*
Man-Robot #5451136832 reporting for duty — ready to think, do, and say everything expected from a typical male. Recently, I installed the newest upgrade to my Men’s Health operating system, maximizing my compatibility with the rock-bottom expectations of blabby, crabby Woman-Robots.
My programmer, Men’s Health editor-in-chief David Zinczenko, is the Bill Gates of man software. Thanks to him, 97.9% of all Man-Robots function predictably and identically. And just like Gates’ Windows, we’re also a giant pain in your ass. But what can you do? Zinczenko’s software is pretty much the industry standard, and trying to run something else simply makes you weird or gay (same as Mac users).
It’s fun being a Zinczenko droid. For example, we have a rich database of the all-time most irritating movie quotes that we reproduce when properly stimulated:
You talking to me? He’s not sure you can handle the truth, so it seems like what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Frankly, my dear, he doesn’t give a damn that you don’t like that he quotes movies. Why? Because using movie lines means he can convey any emotion at any time without ever having to do it himself. They allow him to be confrontational (“Houston, we have a problem”), angry (“go ahead, make my day”), romantic (“you had me at the … red lingerie”), and anything in between without having to actually break his steely exterior. Hoo-ah!
Thinking takes up a lot of energy. It’s far more efficient for Man-Robots to regurgitate corny sentiments expressed in disposable studio fare than generate original content. Best of all, movie quotes are a commonly understood API on both the Man and Woman platforms, ensuring our output can be processed correctly.
But it isn’t all upgrades and optimization-fests between the Robots. Zinczenko has also programmed Man-Robots to be wary of Woman-Robots’ more powerful memory chips, especially when it comes to the data we output on Woman-Robots with whom we used to interface:
We’re also quite aware of how much better your memory is than ours, and we’re afraid that you’ll remember every little factoid we divulge and one day, long after we’ve forgotten it, find a way to use it against us. (“Oh, of course you know how to get whipped cream out of upholstery, because that trashy ho sprayed Reddi-Wip all over your apartment back in ‘98 … and there’s still some of it in your refrigerator!”).
While Man-Robots might be light on memory and communication APIs, at least we’re designed for hard work above all:
The question comes up over and over again in relationships. She says to him: If you gave me the same amount of attention as you give your boss, we’d be topside on the Love Boat rather than ballast in the Titanic.Kinda true, right?
Zinczenko’s OS operates on the simple premise that those quirky Woman-Robots can’t work for shit, and that they’re jealous of our sizable processing power. Clearly, their primary function is to remain at the factory and oversee the assembly of other Robots. And also to annoy the cooling fans off us Man-Robots.
The world can never have too many cheesy, brutish, simple machines overheating and generating blue screens of death out there. Thanks to the vision of David Zinczenko, we may never run out.
*Bleep. Blort.*
NIce man robot. Very efficient!!
“Danger!!! Danger, Will Robinson!”…
So, speaking as a woman who uses movie quotes a lot, Optimus Prime over there on Yahoo! doesn’t even get the Cool Hand Luke line right. It’s “What we got here…is failure to communicate.” My only point is if he’s going to drone on about how using movie quotes is some super, special, secret man-language, he could at least speak it properly.
Abe Sapien: Remind me why I do this again.
Hellboy: Rotten eggs and the safety of mankind.
Abe Sapien: Ah!
Zoey: “Remember that sex we were planning to have, ever again?”
Or do TV shows not count?
Zinczenko has also programmed Man-Robots to be wary of Woman-Robots’ more powerful memory chips
…Why didn’t he just give them more powerful memory chips, if that’s such a problem? Does his own operating system need to be upgraded?
So, if Microsoft supply’s the (flawed) “Manbot” software, where does the “Wombot” software come from?…
”Oh, of course you know how to get whipped cream out of upholstery, because that trashy ho sprayed Reddi-Wip all over your apartment back in ‘98 … and there’s still some of it in your refrigerator!”
I just want to highlight this comment, because it seems to me guys who delight in the thought of their girlfriends being jealous of their past sexual partners are the ones who are themselves jealous that their girlfriends have had more interesting sex lives than they have. I wonder how Nice Guys came to have such influence over so many popular gender stereotypes.
[...] Register « I, Man-Robot [...]
[...] Have you been reading Men’s Health online content for weeks, if not months, treating their words though they were the bible and scrupulously following every inane lifestyle suggestion? I know. Me too. Yet, I still find myself occassionally not sitting alone and in the dark, abandoned by all who loathe my vapid mind and compulsive need to quote movies. [...]
[...] Remember David Zinczenko? He’s the star quarterback of Men’s Health and Yahoo’s resident expert on dudery. He’s also one of my favorite whipping boys, due mostly to: 1) his appalling lack of basic congitive functions, and 2) his sincere desire to pretend like all of us must be wired that way. [...]