“Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned. Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” – William Congreve.

This is a satirical and playful tongue-in-cheek guide to unleashing your venomous forked tongue with panache.

Touché!

Being nice all the time is highly overrated. The traditional Asian practice of helping others to “save face”, which is the culturally acceptable act of sparing douchebags from incurring any public embarrassment is merely a taught social conditioning. Boldly calling out the abusive behaviours of others, and setting necessary boundaries against narcissistic sociopaths and preachy holier than thou lunatics is actually an essential life skill to master. Someone has got to take the initiative to tell it like it is, and sometimes circumstances call for the cold, hard, brutal truth.

You are actually doing everyone a favour. Your straightforward candour, albeit caustically biting, could potentially inspire positive transformational changes or perhaps even save a life, as well as garner you the respect, applause, and admiration of your peers. Besides being gratifying, it is also good for your sanity to periodically let off some steam by dropping scathing remarks every now and then. Instead of accumulating it all up, only to explode into a catastrophic mania once your threshold is being breached. When push comes to shove, a well-delivered catty comeback can be amusingly entertaining. The hilarity might even do the trick to defuse the tension. At the very least, your flippant wisecracks would lend a touch of humour and whimsy into the fray.

The age-old adage goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cannot hurt me.” Quite frankly, that saying does not hold true, as most people feel intrinsically insecure and are capriciously inadequate as they have been indoctrinated and conditioned since childhood that they are not enough by a commercially driven society that perpetually markets the concept of perceived lack and inadequacy. As such, stinging criticism can often feel like a devastating slap in the face, especially for those have not worked on ridding themselves of their past traumas, and thus still harbour plenty of self-worth issues as a result. In which case, they would imprudently and obtusely project their shadows and unhealed wounds onto others. These scourges of humanity unwittingly create a proverbial hell on earth by hailing down affliction, misery, pain, and suffering onto strangers and loved ones alike. Unjustly and unfairly bleeding profusely onto those who did not cut them, to begin with.

Good riddance!

Many people subconsciously have a propensity towards creating drama in their own mundane existence, as well as in the lives of their innocent victims. The dubious reason for this is because these people are unconsciously addicted to the constant adrenaline rush accompanied by receiving shots of the neurohormone dopamine that is being secreted by the brain when triggered by the “fight or flight” response garnered during stressful situations.

As such, do not feel the least bit guilty to slay these psychopaths without any restraint nor impunity. This is their just reward for testing your patience. Bite back by releasing your inner bitch at them. Show those that try their luck at pushing your boundaries who the real boss truly is. Unleash your maximal fury and rain down Armageddon back upon them. Deliver a verbal lashing that they will not soon forget. Give them a taste of their own medicine, and attack them where it hurts most. Knock some sense into these poor, unfortunate souls by helping them to kick the habitual need for a quick adrenal fix and dopamine high. Teach them a life lesson or two, and perhaps even make them weep so that they will remember never to be a malevolent bigot towards you or others ever again. Thereby ending their reign of terror, negative karmic patterns, and oppressive vicious cycles.

Are they emotionally challenged? Assail them on their low EQ. Too smart for their own good? A smart Alec is as annoying as a dimwit. If they are smarter, mock their arrogance while keeping a straight face. If they are stupid, pick on their lack of mental agility with aplomb. If they are incompetent, antagonise their sense of self-worth with your sagacity. If they are self-absorbed, annihilate their ego by lambasting their pompous vanity. If they are not eloquent, prey on their shoddy language skills by using gargantuan vocabulary with rhetorical finesse. If they lack logic and pragmatism, remind them that common sense is anything but common especially since wisdom is only garnered through experience. If they lack grace and class, reprimand their heinous social etiquette with your snooty stiff upper lip. If they have abhorrently unrefined taste, mock their vulgarity with dignified disdain by looking the other way like a regal aristocrat. If they are not talented, then constantly torment their inferiority complex by repeatedly reminding them of their banal mediocrity. If they reek, spare our noses by rebuking and lecturing them on their rancid and nauseating lack of personal hygiene. If their personalities are deplorably prosaic, further pulverize their already lacklustre character into smithereens with some sardonic wit.

When to hold your tongue?

There are occasions and situations when it is truly not appropriate to insult someone no matter how much they might deserve it. Do not put down a person when he or she is going through a rough patch, is severely ill, or someone closed to them just passed away, etc. A crippled, handicapped, or spastic person never deserves to be disparaged for what they were born with. We should also be sensitive and spare the feelings of those who just got their hearts broken. Lend the broken-hearted a listening ear and some tender loving care instead. Finally, those that are suicidally depressed need professional help and support, not sarcasm and scorn.

En Garde!

A nerd is an admirable iconoclast with eclectic intellectual pursuits, while geeks are laudable nerds that have a proclivity towards a specific area of esoteric passion. Emotionally retarded dorks, selfish pricks, obnoxious assholes, reckless drivers, and nefarious jerks, on the other hand, ought to be bitch slapped and run over with a monster truck multiple times over. By mercilessly taunting nincompoops with scathing rancour and derision, you are putting them in their place, teaching them humility, and making the world a better place while you are at it.

Here are 21 snarky insults for you to get started with delivering the finishing coup de grâce with utmost flair. Use them verbatim or get inspired to create your own chaffing retort to chastise those that warrant a serving of humble pie to be shoved down their throats. So what are you waiting for? Bring it on! Line up all those hypocritical two-faced Geminis, arrogant attention-seeking Leos, critically judgmental Virgos, and toxically vindictive Scorpios to face the firing squad. Off with their heads!

It takes one to know one.
You are as smart as a balloon.
Your father should have pulled out.
You’re so dumb, blondes tell jokes about you.
You need twice as much sense to be a half-wit.
I beg your pardon, but was I supposed to laugh?
You should get a refund on your education.
You are not even worthy of my contempt.
If you spoke your mind, you would be speechless.
No, I’m not insulting you. I’m merely describing you.
It must be nice to be freed from the burden of intelligence.
Brains aren’t everything. In fact, in your case they are no-thing.
If I wanted to kill myself, I’d climb your ego and jump to your IQ.
People treat others the way they feel about themselves. It must be so hard to be you.
Both your insecurity and inferiority complex are fully justified.
Anyone who ever told you to just be yourself could not have given you worse advice.
If I agreed with you, then we would both be wrong.
Clearly, you have chosen to be a know-it-all over having friends.
When something happens to you over and over again, what do you suppose is the common denominator here?
Why don’t you just spare us the agony and go get yourself a lobotomy? While you are at it, do humanity a favour and also get yourself a vasectomy.
It is impossible to underestimate you. I am jealous of those who are lucky enough to not have met you.