4

Only Have One Friend

Sherlock, House, Luther -- what do they all have in common? They have only a single friend in the world in which to confide, an intellectually inferior man Friday who serves as a dumb, kindly foil to their cutting ingenuity. But this practice is obviously only applicable to the realm of fiction, because it's nearly impossible to pull off in real life. I mean, how does one acquire a

"Dan! My intellectual inferior! How's it g-"

"I don't want to be your friend," Dan replied instantly.

"How did you know what I was going to ask? Shit, are you savanting, too? I gotta warn you: Observation turns into racism and misogyny reeeeaaaally quickly."

"Ask? I didn't know you were going to ask anything. I just don't want to be your friend. Ever. In general. It's literally all I have to say to you."

So, long story short, I built a robot:

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3

Have a Nemesis

So now I have a friend programmed to love and understand me unconditionally (and also to exterminate all Dans), but something is still missing. Sherlock, House and Luther all have one friend, true, but that's not the only person in their lives. They also all have one nemesis: Sherlock has his Moriarty, House has his Cuddy and Luther has his Alice Morgan. But which direction do I go?

Do I want a compelling and effective pure villain, like Moriarty? I suppose Soren Bowie fits that description, but we were having lunch one time and I think he said something about Plato. That makes him waaay smarter than me. I mean, it could've been "burrito," and we

So I gave my robot an eye patch. Now he looks totally nemesissy. Nemesisish. Neme ... he looks badass.

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That's a relative term, of course.

2

Be Addicted/Obsessed

Another aspect of the rare Troubled Savant that separates him from the Common Asshole is his affliction with a crippling addiction. This weakness serves to highlight his frailty, thus implying that his brusque demeanor is caused by some tragic psychological damage, rather than by your being fat and in his way.

Well hell, at least there's one step I can get right! I am, if nothing else, a collection of interesting addictions bundled together in man shape.

But wait, if my addiction has to define me, that means I have to narrow it down to just one. I have to choose between painkillers, alcohol, hallucinogens, opioids and public train frottage? That's goddamn unreasonable, is what that is. What am I, fucking Ian MacKaye over here?

Fine. No, that's fine. One addiction. I can do that. But it has to be something fresh, unique and exotic. Junkies and workaholics have been done to death already. So what does that leave me with? Pretty much just the crippling sexual perversions.

That's good, though. I can work with that: I haven't seen any shows about Troubled Savant Exhibitionist Frots, have you? But man, I think it needs even more of a hook than that; it needs an M. Knightian twist to really trick audiences into mistakenly believing I'm doing something clever.

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"You should fuck the robot." -- A real thing that M. Knight Shyamalan actually said. Look it up. I'll wait.

Oh God, of course. It was right there all along.

It's

1

Solve Mysteries

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Finally, the most important difference between the rare blossom of a Troubled Savant and your Garden-Variety Asshole: mystery.

It makes sense, doesn't it? The Troubled Savant's only contribution to society has to be solving mysteries; it can be nothing else. The very fact that they are spurned by humanity at large means that they are forced to view it from the outside. You chase a suspect into a crowd and you lose him; you watch that same crowd from atop a nearby building, and you can see his every move. The natural byproducts of being an asshole are isolation and separation, which, as any scientist will tell you, are both absolutely necessary to properly study any phenomenon. The only difference between a Troubled Savant and an Asshole is context. They both deal with the same issue -- it's just that a troubled genius answers the question, while an asshole

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For example: "What's that guy's fucking problem?"

In other words, a dickhead might get drunk on Work Wine and piss on Dan's keyboard for spurning all of his friendly, adversarial and sexual advances; a troubled genius would

So, long story short: I peed on your keyboard, Dan. This column is the only way I know to apologize for that.

Friends?

Frienemesexual partners?

You can buy Robert's other book, Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead, or follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

For more from Brockway, check out Science is a Dick: The 5 Most Evil Robots Ever Invented and 6 Insanely Awesome Things The 1900s Thought We'd Have by Now.