As someone who acts like him and totally realises that it makes me look like an asshole , I ' ll play the devil ' s advocate and say that he might just not be able to respond well in certain situations . I go into shutdown sometimes , and unfortunately , when that happens I act just like someone who is just being a dick about it . In fact , I have a bit of a theory of how most assholes aren ' t actually being dicks , and just have poor coping mechanisms twinned with social ineptitude . They are trying to be nice , they just have no idea how to . And the problem comes when these people do actually manage to mimic normality so well , they look good , they talk like normal people , they dress well , etc . , that it makes everyone assume that they are normal . So that when they shut down a bit and can ' t interact properly , instead of just obviously being people who are having social troubles , they just come across as arseholes because people assume that they ' re otherwise normal . Seriously man , I ' m pretty certain that most of the time , when someone looks like they ' re being an arsehole , it ' s usually not the case at all . It ' s usually just behaviour caused by either personal inabilities or weaknesses or simple bad habbits that they either havent identified or been able to overcome yet . I ' ve waffled on about this way too much and it probably really doesnt matter .