Smarmy is a word that describes an attitude that is quite prevalent today. I have been awash in Smarmy people for quite some time and I find this trait highly irksome. It's like people are infected with it or something. I really wish they'd get over it but Smarmy seems to be here to stay so if you're continuously in an environment containing a lot of Smarmy people, I don't have to describe the identifying qualities of Smarminess to you but if you aren't out in public that much, here's a primer:

Smarmy people carry a particular attitude, sort of like they Know It All coupled with Been There, Done That even if they haven't Been Anywhere or Done Anything much. Maybe they saw 'it' on  a web page, on TV, or they watched a video. They've 'been around'. Exuding from them is comparison, coupled with scorn. Whatever it is they are surveying they survey it with jaundiced eyes. 

Young women are usually Smarmier than young men, but the men can be surprising in their ability to be Smarmy. I've seen them one-up some of the Smarmier women that I have encountered. "Well done, son!" think I. "Touche!" Older women and men can also unexpectedly stun you with Smarminess who woulda thunk it?

Smarmy men tend to be young, late twenties into their early thirties, while the women tend to be Smarmy at an even younger age (think Valley Girl) and somehow, through innumerable interactions with their like-minded sistahs, they can hone their Smarminess to a razor's edge of sharpness, which they casually whip out and employ should any occasion for Smarminess arise. It is at these opportune moments when these adepts at Smarminess let loose some exquisitely voiced disapproval, which can be devastatingly effective while being simultaneously awe inspiring in the way the Smarminess was so effortlessly crafted. Truly, to observe this is to see mastery in action. 

Smarmy people like to dress down those they deem worthy of being Smarmed, which could be just about anybody. They also like to rain down Smarminess on just about everything they observe, always comparing, comparing. Whatever is being measured against their golden standard always falls short and thus justifys the unleashing of utter and complete disdain, for Smarminess never comes out in varying degrees, only at full force. 

Contemptuous might be another word for Smarminess, it is as if the Smarmy one is aghast at just about everything he or she encounters, which is a world falling far short of expectation and needing to be corrected but it won't be the Smarmy one fixing anything, for he or she is above it all.

'Critics of life' might be still another way to describe the Smarmy tribe. Smarmy ones strut around like cosmopolitan dandies, noses in the air, perhaps ideally peering through a single eyepiece like the icon of The New Yorker magazine does, examining that which is before him while running through his mind a plethora of experiences, words, and scenarios in which to conjure up the absolutely precise way in which to describe in devastating fashion to his equally astute companions what he is witnessing oh my God these people.........

.....can be pretty damn annoying but I suppose they are necessary for without them we would be as unaware as backcountry bumpkins so it's good that cultured, urbane, studied, and intelligent ones should appraise for the rest of us our shortcomings for without them in the picture we would be hopelessly lost. Generations might go by and slowly and imperceptibly we might indeed become denizens of The Planet Of The Apes were it not for them curbing our impulses to (gasp) continue down that road, that path, one that they wouldn't set foot on in a million years, it containing mud and all. 

Thinketh I exaggerate? Not at all. Smarmy people would tell you exactly that, were they to even bother, which they won't, for to them a mere raising of the eyebrows is all that should ever suffice. 

Where does or did this come from, this creeping malaise? Is it the internet? The hipster phenomenon? Are people so different than they were before, now that they are armed with information and trivia galore, so that they think they know everything and if they don't the answer is only a click away? Are we Instagramming ourselves into thinking that we know everything that is going on and can ever go on for now we have our fingers on the pulse of life itself and are steering it according to our incessant tweets about what is happening this very minute and if ever we consider writing an actual paragraph that's the domain of Facebook and blogging where we, if pressed upon, may even go so far as to include a link to a video......

Ok, enough! I gotta run. I'm sure to encounter many Smarmy ones today, they're unavoidable anymore. At least they're not walking around and scanning me with those damned Google Glasses. 

Not yet.