Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?: Confessions of a First-Class Asshole

by Justin Ross Lee

  So, with absolutely nothing to do, I started to post things on Facebook. I began to disassemble the working environment around me, pointing out characters, making up a few incidents, throwing in a few zingers, and generally bemoaning the shitstorm I presently found myself in. This was in the early, early days of Facebook. I don’t even think the Like button had been invented yet. But people started to respond to my stories, asking for more detail, egging me on.

  Obviously I loved this attention and gave the people what they wanted. I talked about how fugly the nurses in the hospital were (I thought nurses were supposed to be hot) and how I’d rather bang one of the cadavers than go anywhere near any of the staff with my dick. I jokingly mentioned licking all the tongue depressors and putting them back in the jar. I talked about how lame my boss was. And, of course, I constantly talked about how I had no clue what the fuck I was doing.

  That was day one. I arrived on day two to discover my previous work space was now occupied. “We need somewhere to put you,” a harassed administrator told me. “Let’s have you work in here for the time being.”

  They set me up in an incredibly plush doctor’s office. Big oak desk, bookcases filled with medical journals, huge leather chair. You get the picture. This was great. Something else I could offer to my audience. After one day of doing nothing, I could tell my Facebook friends that my brilliance had been recognized and suddenly I’d been promoted and here was my beautiful, grandiose office to prove it.

  I needed the perfect picture to show off my achievements. I spent hours—hours—setting up my camera, balancing it precariously on a pile of anatomy manuals, then lounging in a chair with my feet up on the desk, looking like Gordon Gekko post–blow job. It was magnificent. But I just couldn’t get the fucking thing looking right. I’d adopted my thousandth smug pose when my boss burst into the office and caught me floundering behind the desk.

  “I thought I saw a flash going off in here,” he said as I whipped my shoes off the surface and frantically tried to look like I was busy doing the thing that I was being paid for, whatever that was.

  “Oh, I think it’s these halogen bulbs in here. They’re a bit flickery,” I offered lamely, feeling like I’d just been caught pulling my pud at a funeral home. By some miracle he didn’t notice the camera that was just out of his eyeline. He looked at me suspiciously and left.

  Of course, I finally got the picture and stuck it up on Facebook, and people loved it. Lots of positive comments and encouragement. My growing audience wanted more. That was day two.

  Day three began with a phone call. I’d been moved out of the office and onto another anonymous desk. So I was surprised by the phone ringing and assumed it wouldn’t be for me. But by fuck was it for me.

  “Justin, this is Dr. Berman.” This wasn’t my boss; this was my boss’s boss. My sphincter tightened. If I’d been back in my old office, I could have looked up the medical term for that.

  “Some alarming information has been brought to my attention. I received an anonymous e-mail this morning containing various screenshots from something called the Facebook . . .”

  At the time Facebook was still a novelty and your whole fucking bloodline wasn’t on there bothering you constantly and asking you to play FarmVille.

  “Did you talk about the appearance of the nurses working at the facility? And did you say that you tampered with the tongue depressors and returned them to their jars? And did you mention my looks and my abilities? And was there a photographic image showing you in a doctor’s office, pretending to be a senior member of medical staff?”

  Obviously I denied absolutely everything. I told him I’d been hacked (I might have been the first protocelebrity to use that excuse) and I had no idea what that stuff was and how sorry and ashamed I felt by the entire experience and that it would never happen again. It made no difference.

  He pointed out to me how much trouble the hospital would get into if this information leaked. If there was someone inside the facility talking about the size of cadavers’ dicks and the attractiveness of the staff and soiling the sterile equipment for a joke.

  I was fired. I wasn’t just fired; I was fired. In fact, I was lucky just to be fired. I’d violated pretty much every clause in my contract in only forty-eight hours. I was immediately led off the premises. My ID was confiscated. In any discussion of the incident, I was referred to as an “intern.” I was told that any items I had left on my desk would be shipped to me at a later date and under no circumstances could I ever enter the building again.

  As you may have guessed, my parents were less than thrilled. In only two days, I had destroyed not only my career prospects, but also my father’s relationship with hospital cronies. And, if it were possible, I had disappointed them even further.

  It seemed I had acquired my first hater. Someone had seen what I’d been posting on Facebook, taken offense to it, and taken the trouble to record it and send it to my employers.

  And if I knew who that anonymous whistle-blower was . . . I’d fucking hug them.

  I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to entertain. All I needed was a platform. But after this workplace debacle, I realized I had a captive audience right there on Facebook. They responded to the shit I put up there. They loved it or they hated it. And, to be honest, I didn’t care which way they fell. I just loved generating material and getting a reaction from it.

  I realized that this was a whole new way to broadcast. My followers and my reputation slowly grew. I understood the power of the words I was posting and the effect they had on people. It was a gradual learning curve. Having an idea, posting it, seeing how it went down. I’d whittle and hone and target my material, trying to maintain the perfect level of outrage that tickled my fans and provoked my haters.

  This was material that I was generating and I could control. It allowed me to perfectly develop the wider world’s vision of me and then audit the responses. It was all one-way traffic. And once the comments and the abuse started to flow, I could direct that, too. I just kept stirring the pot, squeezing the last bit of energy out of everything I posted.

  Facebook was the launchpad. It was from there that the New York blogs started to glean information about my increasingly outrageous life and churn it into news. That first blog post—which, like so many others, was along the lines of “Who does this prick think he is?”—was a defining moment. I was so proud. I felt legitimized. I didn’t really know what the fuck I was doing, and obviously they didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but whatever it was drove people crazy. Which generated interest. Which increased page impressions. That kept them coming back for more.

  It’s a clichéd term, I know, but I was developing my “brand.” The brand was JRL: this shiksa-shtupping, doorman-aggravating, nightclub-bothering, celebrity-badgering, Jew-Jetting prick. I started to exploit my Jewishness and my family and my girlfriends until the wider world was hooked. I considered myself a satirical social media commentator surveying the world around me from my ivory tower.

  Once the blogs started to take an interest, the so-called news media, desperate to fill their websites and broadcasts with anything vaguely human, followed suit. I think the first was a local Fox News website post about me and my devious, unfathomable ways. The usual stuff. That’s when I knew I had arrived. I’d crossed over from being of interest only to some no-name in his bedroom piecing a blog together to attracting an actual media organization with offices and parking spaces and reach suddenly taking an interest in my exploits. That meant something.

  From there I delicately cultivated infamy. Creating or appearing to create something noteworthy, whether it was a run-in with some nightclub doorman or a JewJetting incident or a celebrity sighting, I made sure to leak it to the blogs. As other outlets picked up on the stuff, my relevance and my standing grew. And as I became more of a name, everything else became easier. Easier to get closer to celebrities, easier to be approached by news sites for quotes, easier to get into places to cause mayhem and generate st
ories of relevancy.

  That’s when I buried Justin Lee. That guy was dead. Too many Justin Lees in the world. Only one Justin Ross Lee. JRL rose from the slab like the fucking beautiful monster he was. Then I couldn’t stop the snowball rolling.

  It was a two-pronged attack. First, they couldn’t fucking work out what I was. I was this unfathomable abomination: questionably affluent, but with no immediate indication of how I became this way or why I acted the way I acted. I presented myself as a celebrity. I was a celebrity. There just wasn’t a pigeonhole to conveniently shove me in. That drove them crazy.

  Second, there was the celebrity aspect. All the gossip rags and the tabloids (and, increasingly, the quality press) desperately want celebrity stories. They don’t care who they are or where they come from. And I generated celebrity stories constantly. All I needed was a photo.

  I can’t overemphasize the power of a photograph. I loved doing a shtick on my Facebook page. I adored doing bits and writing material. But that was nothing compared to a single picture. Especially when I came up with the idea of adding thought balloons to the images (à la Star Jones with the Devil Dogs) and posting them on Facebook. Ride the tidal wave of coverage, hilarity, and abuse. Spin it out, with me claiming that Star’s “people” were outraged and had me turfed out of the Hamptons polo scene. Have them deny it. Have me comment on the denial. These things could go on forever.

  As long as I could get near a celebrity and get a picture, I could generate a story. And as I became more renowned, thanks to the stories I was generating, accessing the celebs and being at the events that they attended got easier. Then, once there, I could grab a shot of some actor or familiar face and anonymously leak some story to a gossip rag, who would then approach me for comment. It was beautifully double ended. I was a puppeteer, playing the celebrity-obsessed media at its own game and yanking everybody’s chains in the process.

  JewJetting really helped. I was able to get access to first-class cabins and lounges using my various aviation schemes. And that’s the best spot to hit celebrities. They are usually away from their minders, they have their guards down, and they’ve probably got a couple of drinks inside them. I basically stalked the 4:30 p.m. United flight from LAX to JFK. That’s the one all the celebs took. They weren’t getting the red eye. They were on this one particular flight. And so was I. I’d just jet back and forth between Los Angeles and New York, spotting notoriety and grabbing a picture. If something notable happened, I sold the story.

  I’m not proud of that. I realize it’s utterly despicable. But I saw it as crawling my way up the ladder. It was the equivalent of a bimbo blowing a casting director to get a part. I’d sell out these celebs for my own ends. And they don’t give a shit. It’s all part of the business. They need the coverage as much as I do. When people stop talking about them, they disappear. It’s a game and they know it. As I may have mentioned, celebrities aren’t people.

  And I got better and better. Better picture selection, better captions, more followers, more interest. As Facebook became this global phenomenon, it took me with it. I was known as a “Facebook celebrity” just as Facebook was entering everyone’s consciousness. Then the “real” press took notice. Suddenly the New York Times was taking an interest and featuring me. That’s when I became legitimate. The New York Times is the newspaper of record. If you want to dig up information about something historic, that’s where you turn. And I was in there, messing up their pages. And even though they still had no idea what I was trying to do, it kept my parents off my back for a while. If I was in the New York Times, I must be doing something right.

  And once I was in the newspapers, then television soon came running up to me and humped my leg. I can come up with great shtick off the top of my head and look good on camera, so I was perfect for rag-type shows. Plus I was easy to hate and make fun of. It was shooting fish in a barrel for them. You don’t need a bank of top Hollywood writers to come up with some insulting remarks aimed at me. I was ideal for the reality-show circuit. As far as they were concerned, I was rich, single, and outrageous. Ideal fodder for their endless churn. More exposure translated into more notoriety and a further climb up the ladder.

  Monetizing this was always difficult. I was projecting this vision of wealth and excess . . . on a shoestring budget. As I became more notable, things like personal appearances started to happen. Soon people were paying me thousands to show up at their nightclub and wave a champagne glass in their general direction. Then there were sponsorship deals and mountains of free stuff. It’s a depressing truth that as you gain notoriety, you pay for less and less. The biggest stars on the planet could buy anything they want, but they don’t have to pay for anything at all.

  Soon people were paying me to be seen with them. Rich kids and millennials (my audience) would pay cash to have lunch with me or even just stand beside them as they got a selfie. A cult of personality emerged. I was a “legend,” and fucks with more money than sense were actually willing to part with currency to rub up against JRL for a moment.

  But I knew I needed some signature thing to help keep the coffers healthy. I think it was in 2010 that I had my eureka moment. Pocket squares. They are garish, luxurious, and have absolutely no function except to be decorative. The perfect epitome of me. Once I had that off the ground, all my appearances and stories would have a pocket square shoehorned in there somewhere. It was the perfect item to give away to wronged enemies and new celebrity friends. Someone would turn up on the red carpet peacocking with a Pretentious Pocket piece, and my sales would shoot up. It was ideal.

  Plus it provided something for the press to hang off me. I was a “fashion designer” or a “haberdasher.” Utter bullshit, of course, but anything to help the personification of my brand. And it meant I could be represented without even being there! They wouldn’t just mention Pretentious Pocket—it was always Justin Ross Lee’s Pretentious Pocket. It was perfect. An artifact that represented me wholly, which also brought in much-needed cash flow.

  Now I’m at the point where the thousands of followers and millions of page impressions are having an adverse effect. My notoriety has brought some celebrities to even shy away from me. They know that a picture with them might translate into some story in a tabloid somewhere, and they don’t want the aggravation. And then I have my own JRL clones, trying to do what I do, replicating my style. They have no hope of getting anywhere near what I do with as much originality, of course, but it’s flattering that they try.

  Now everyone has figured out that saying controversial shit on Facebook can get you fired. So, in a way, I was a pioneer. One of the first to have Facebook “ruin my life.” And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The Millionaire Matchmaker Mayhem

  This was an ideal showcase for my full set of media-manipulation techniques. It had everything: lies, brutal exaggeration, misdirection, anonymous tip-offs, and, thankfully, no one too clever to deal with.

  Now, I know that everyone likes their television to be completely escapist pap and aren’t interested and don’t like to think about their beloved shows being entirely mired in bullshit. But they are. All television is bullshit, and ironically, the reality shows are the biggest bullshitters of all. They are so unhealthy they should have a surgeon general’s warning before each airing.

  So you won’t be surprised to know that Millionaire Matchmaker tends to feature people who neither are millionaires nor need to be matchmade. They are usually douchey guys with girlfriends at home, who look good on television. Some are instigators like me who are there to cause a scene and get into a fight with Patti that will look great in the promos.

  I knew my role and was determined to play it to the hilt. What I didn’t expect, until I’d passed through the audition and screening process, was how fucking cheap these people are. As you are playing the role of “millionaire,” they actually assume you’ll be happy picking up the tab for every fucking thing—the trips and the meals and the dates. The production company didn
’t want to put its hand in its pocket once. They expect you to foot the bill. So that was the first angle I had to work.

  There was no way that I was spending a single dime on this fiasco. But I didn’t want them to know that. So I played along at first. I borrowed a luxury uptown apartment from my friend Ben Richman and pretended it was mine. Went over there the night before the shoot and threw a few portraits of yours truly on the wall. The crew and producers were impressed. It really looked like I had plenty of fuck-you money to throw their way.

  I told them I had a pal with a private jet that would be an ideal place for the luxury date that would be the centerpiece of the show. I made it clear that I was happy to organize everything and foot the bill. All I asked was, in case of some unforeseeable disaster, that they line up a plan B for me. Of course, they ate up the idea of a private jet. That would look really fucking good on camera. So they went along with it. While I sorted out the “jet,” they had a yacht lined up in case it fell through, which I insisted would never happen. But of course that’s exactly what happened. There was never a jet.

  At the last minute, the plane exploded, or the pilot broke his pelvis, or the insurance company wouldn’t cover it. Some total crap. I assured them we’d use their yacht and I’d sort out all the payments once we were through shooting. Which I had no intention of honoring, obviously.

  By this time, my date had been selected. Of course you have this endless conveyor belt of skanks to pick from, displayed before you like you’re some sort of sultan selecting the latest harem member but with a lot less class and hummus involved. But the producers knew who I was going to get. And I knew who I was going to get. Or at least which woman was shoved in my direction. I didn’t actually know a single thing about her, but I was determined to find some dirt.