A reader recently suggested that the time has come to retire the term douchebag. We agree. It's been a dear friend, but it's time to find a new word to describe the people we despise.

It might be better if people protested right-wing radio talk show host Michael Savage on those rare occasions he said something reasonable. It's getting too hard to keep up with the phoned-in shock and outrage whenever he wishes gays would die of AIDS, Muslims would quit the continent, or parents of autistic children would realize — as he told them to yesterday — that "In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. ... They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. ... Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.'" Or at least go on the air and make money doing it. Sounds like someone's overcompensating after reading about how much Limbaugh's pulling in. Many angry moms and dads lined the street outside Savage's WOR building in Manhattan today, calling for his termination. He in turn maintained a posture of defiance, then issued the following "clarification" on his website:

Once upon a time, a junior Yalie named Aleksey Vayner sent a C.V. with a link to a hubristic, ill-advised "video resume" to a Wall Street bank. It featured him lifting weights, doing judo, and spewing truisms about the nature of success. He was mocked, but he followed his own advice: failure is simply not an option. (He wrote a self-help book.) Now he's back on the internets, "helping" us about the "latest trends in hedge funds" and "how to win a street fight." Weird: if you read his advice on winning a street fight correctly, you can also find information on how to survive, say, life in the New York media mob:

We can stop posting about Eric "I Can't Believe I'm Still Single, Even Though Every Other Sentient Life Form On Planet Earth Soooo Can" Schaeffer any time we want. Really. Okay, but before we take a vow of silence about Eric (who is also on the MySpace, in case you missed him on Nerve or Match) forever, we just have to share these latest tips. They're all thematically linked somehow. "How?" you're probably wondering. "I am racking my brain and I can't figure out what they're getting at based on that mysterious headline?!" Well, click on past the jump, little ones. But heed our warning: not safe for . . . just not safe. NOT SAFE.

Well, we knew it would happen eventually: our best efforts to never post about Eric Schaeffer again have been thwarted. The reason? We've started getting emails from women who've not only "winked" at Eric on Match and talked dirty with him on Nerve, they've actually met him in person (or they have a "friend" who has met him in person). So, uh, how'd it go?

We tried to resist, we really did. But much as we'd like to ignore this in the hopes that it'll go away, we can't help but heap scorn on it (even though that is exactly what it wants). Such is . . . our job. Anyway, meet Eric Schaeffer, a 5'8'' semi-failed screenwriter whose blog is the latest addition to the stable of the Rudius (ugh, we feel like we just said "Voldemort"!) blog empire of sickmaking, unfunny douchebaggery. He's looking for a woman to spend the rest of his life with, but he has some pretty stringent requirements:

Now that we've been given permission to use the word "douchebag" again, we figure it's time to enlist a new member into our Hall of Fame. Today's inductee will go on the rolls as Anonymous Swinging Douchebag (a.k.a. Johnny Massengill) until someone out there is able to identify him. He comes to us from the pages of Craigslist, and combines the orderliness of Lucy Gao with the sexual stamina of Peter Chung. Join us after the jump for the entire, horrifying thing.

Our latest inductee to the Douchebag Hall of Fame comes recommended by our globetrotting brother Gridskipper, who calls Shandong Erge, "China's answer to Aleksey Vayner". Whereas Aleksey turned to self-promotion to land a Wall Street job, the self proclaimed "China's sexiest man", Erge is in search of a wife and has started a blog to promote his effort.

Given all the understandable excitement over the Douchebag Hall of Fame, we decided to figure out which of our current crop of douches — in and out of the Hall of Fame — seem to draw the most reader interest. Brave Intern Mary descended into the comment pits for a quick tally, though unfortunately she was down below when recent inductee Steve Damion made the list, so he's not yet accounted. But for comparison's sake, we included a few names which have not technically made it into the Hall of Fame, but are virtual locks for future inclusion due to clamorous reader insistence on same. After the jump, examine the numbers and draw your own conclusions.

After we inducted Steve Damion to the Douchebag Hall of Fame yesterday, some of you wanted to know whether Steve and his fianc e.

We're not sure how to view the latest Aleksey Vayner dispatch from the kids at IvyGate. On the one hand, the idea that a couple of "friends" of the Yale internet sensation are pitching a "memoir" of the douchebag's life says nothing good about Ivy grads (and, potentially, the publishing industry). On the other hand, who hasn't been trying to make a quick buck on the rapidly-dwindling interest in the wannabe i-banker's story? Let's face it: These are Yale graduates who, for whatever reasons, have to live in Louisville and some San Francisco exurb. This may be their only shot. But, on reflection, we're gonna go with the first impulse: the douchebag may have been outdouched. Full, repellent book pitch after the jump:

First off, we thank you for submissions for the Douchebag Hall of Fame, but we would also like to clarify the criteria, because sadly, many of your suggestions simply are not douchey enough to be inducted .

The Aleksey Vayner tour makes today's stop at Inside Edition. Host Deborah Norville doesn't let him off lightly: There's some manufactured outrage when Aleksey admits that he's not exactly sure if it's him in the skiing segment of his resume video. It's an awkward—and therefore delightful—moment. A couple of quibbles: How many "first interviews" with this kid can there be? Also, when Norville introduces the segment and says that Vayner is"better known as 'the college kid with the super-sized ego'"? Uh, no, Deb: He's better known as "douchebag."

Aleksey Vayner finally showed up for an interview today, appearing on MSNBC's Rita Cosby Live and Looking for Work. Aleksey is deeply hurt by the way people on the Internet who don't even know him assume that he's some sort of douchebag. We feel for the kid. Also joining him was attorney Christian Steuben, who once again suggested that Vayner's privacy should have been respected since "it's not like he was applying to sell hamburgers." Agreed. Because you know everyone who's working the night shift over at Hardee's sends out their douchebaggy video resumes with the full foreknowledge that it's likely to be passed along.

The suit, the clasped hands, the arrogant expression: you don't even need to read the article or know anything about the story, this photo says it all. And what it says is douchebag. Oh, yeah, Aleksey may decide to go into real estate. This story just writes itself.

A wise woman once said, love is a battlefield, and the world of dating is fraught with many perils. But we get past the bad dates and look forward to the next, knowing that the worst that could happen is that we wouldn't hit it off and resign ourselves to moving on and changing our phone numbers. Today's bad date becomes yesterday's news.

This is why we love the internet so hard. Mere hours after we inducted Citigroups intern Lucy Gao into our Douchebag Hall of Fame, we received photographs from her birthday festivities she planned ever so carefully.

Today's inductee made a splash this summer, when her birthday e-mail made the rounds throughout the English-speaking world. She's Lucy Gao, the Citigroup intern whose sheer anality (analness) extended to attempting to stagger her friends' arrival at London's Ritz. The whole winking, heheheing, sphincter-cringe-inducing e-mail after the jump. Be prepared for douchery on an epic scale.

Our latest inductee is Boston-area attorney Diana Abdala. You might argue that her profession alone warrants her induction in the Douchebag Hall of Fame, and you would have a point.

So has the Aleksey Vayner story run its course? The folks at IvyGate, who have been at the forefront of the Hall of Fame Douchebag's internet ubiquity of late, are prepared to draw down the shade on the whole sordid tale, although not before revealing some of young Mr. Garber's outright plagiarism. We're not so sure; the mainstream media is cottoning on to the kid's charm; Inside Edition ran a piece about it today (which actually referenced yesterday's Today Show segment; it's getting a bit meta). And while brand new douchebags bring themselves to the forefront of our consciousness every day, we're not quite ready to let go. You know how it is: You never forget your first. Especially when they're nuclear-waste handling Tibetan-monk killers. We want more.