Lately, I've been pondering on the prevalent theories
surrounding the human phenomenon known as David
Gonterman, which is what I guess I could call the
Davey as a Child theory -- that he is basically a
child inside a grown man's body -- and further
branching from that, the Davey as a Mediator theory,
the idea that he is caught between two worlds, the
world of the mature and the world of the innocent,
trying to mediate between the two, being ultimately
(subconsciously?) unsuccessful. These are absolutely
glorious theories, perfect for such a glorious screw
up like Gonterman. However, I take a different view on
the Dave's psyche. Don't get me wrong.. I've never
even met the guy, nor have I taken any psychology
classes (although I just pulled off a 3.7 in Sociology
101.. maybe that counts for something), but perhaps my
own rudimentary explanation can launch another school
of thought... we can have the 3+ Theories of
Gonterman! C'mon people, get involved!

But I digress.

In trying to realize what Gonterman is, we as his
internet following must first realize that we only
know him through the internet as it is. I don't see
many people mentioned in the Shrine who have claimed
to personally know Davey (although Anonymous wrote
about a person who confessed being a schoolmate of the
Dave). So then, we must also realize that what we see
of Gonterman is what he -wants- us to see. He portrays
himself online the way he wants us to think he is in
real life. (Pretty scary, huh?) In this sense, it's
easy to understand why he draws/writes himself as the
hero that packs the hardest punch, that all the women
dig, that all the villains cower before. It's easy to
understand why he's such an "internet geek". Online,
he could be whoever he chooses to be. That he makes
such pathetic, blatantly mark-missing attempts is
beside the point. It's hard to say... well, scratch
that, we -know- Gonterman isn't getting the chicks and
saving the world in real life. What is hard to tell is
if he is really so opinionated and outspoken in the
real world. For all we know, Davey is a social phobic,
who never voices his opinion in public and hangs his
head and watches the sidewalk when he trudges to
work/school/the comic store. Actually, this is quite
likely. He's even alluded to it in certain stories
that the internet is what set him free. (Of course.. I
haven't read many of his stories.. the only one I
read, 'The Rangers of NIHM,' was in MiST format..
funny as hell, really, I recommend looking for it on
Website #9, but I digress again). So, understanding
that what we see of Gonterman is in effect what he
wants us to see, or is attempting to make us see, is
another step towards understanding what it is he's
doing.

Many of you have noticed how Gonterman will use adult
humor, situations, and language in his works, but
censor them completely. Many have commented on the
futility of using these situations, if all he's going
to do is black them out. This is what lends fuel to
the Davey as a Child and Davey as a Mediator theories.
However, this is where I disagree. My theory is much
simpler in application: Davey struggles to be
nondeviant -- in  word, perfect. Deviance, as a
sociological term, is the concept of violating a rule
of society. In theory, all of us are deviant to some
degree (if you've ever told a lie or gone over the
speed limit, you're deviant), so the idea of being
completely conformist is sociologically impossible.
The idea of being generally nondeviant though is one
most all of us try to acheive: Don't kill anyone,
don't steal; be a smart, independant, successful human
being. Gonterman, like many of us, tries to accomplish
as many of these goals as he possibly can. We can
probably deduct that Gonterman felt as though what he
was in reality, before he got online, was not good
enough for society. (When I say society, please do not
think of it in terms of conforming to mass media and
buying sprite. I use the term society to define all
the social aspects Gonterman has grown up around --
family, school, work, possibly religion.) As we've
heard various accounts of, Gonterman was less than
fond of his family life, and his time at school --
most likely because he could not live up to the
standards they had set for him, labeling him a deviant
and unworthy of social attention. Upon noticing the
internet, however, he found an outlet, something he
could escape into. Gonterman tries as hard as he can
to be the paragon of humanity in his internet life.
He's rough, he's tough, he has bunnygirl robots giving
him "Clinton jobs" (may I just say this, for a second?
BAAAAARRRRFFFF...) He's the perfect American hero.
But, as some of you may notice when trying to live up
to all of society's expectations, many roles conflict
horrendously. The American hero is rough and tough...
but he is also a gentleman. Davey's response? Edit the
swearing, allude to the sex. There. In Gonterman's
mind, this is his ticket to perfection and social
acceptance. He is, impossibly, nondeviant.

What makes Gonterman's censorship of himself so
intriging, though, is that he does it all the time.
Usually, an author will censor him/herself, to show
that while the behavior is indicative of the
character's personality, the author him/herself does
not approve of it. This happens rarely in a book.
(Michael Crichton does not put symbols in all of his
swear words in all of his novels.) But Gonterman,
fascinatingly enough, insists on using scenes of
nudity and strong language in all his comics and
fictions, even to a gratuitous point, and censoring
them all. (I draw from 'The Rangers of NIMH,' where at
one point in a dream the female mouse Gadget is
stripped naked by a storm, for no apparent reason at
all, but quickly clothed in a seashell bikini top and
grass skirt. Completely pointless and useless to the
rest of the plot, even to the rest of the dream, but
nontheless Gonterman felt it had to be included, and
consequentially censored.) So, what's the analysis?
Along the way, Gonterman was taught that having sex
and swearing was a sign of virility and masculinity,
but mentioning it was BAD. This can be directly tied
to his wish for everyone to view him as the
Uber-Gonterman, but it also screams of repression.
Gonterman, through his own pathological wish to be
sociologically perfect, is amazingly repressed.
Likely, he will, if he does not already, have serious
problems with this later in his life.

Another factor stemming from his self-ascribed social
perfection is that of his agression when people
ridicule him. He tries his best to scare the shit out
of us if we MiST him or kill off a squirrel in a comic
book. He assumes that we, like the internet sheep we
are, believe what he writes about himself, that he is
a god among men and saving the world as we speak. If
we are going to MiST him.. well, who the hell do we
think we are, making fun of a sociologically perfect
man such as himself? Not only could his senseless,
albeit amusing aggression stem from his belief that he
is allpowerful and thus scary, but no doubt it stems
again from his insecurity in the real world. If you're
going to think he's not doing something right, he will
try his best to scare you into thinking he is, for
fear that you would ruin his internet perfection.
Attempting to belittle MiSTers (such as in the
anecdote Frobozz provides us with) helps Gonterman to
reassure himself that yes, he is the best, and yes,
everyone who's good and holy does love him. He is so
desperate to believe in his own sociological
perfection that he writes off MiSTers and others who
speak against him as subhuman and evil -- hopelessly
deviant, as they would have to be to think someone as
nondeviant as him was less talented than them. This
could also explain why, soon after ridicule of a
certain work begins to spread, Gonterman will take it
offline. It stands as a testament to what people think
is his imperfection -- he can't have people thinking
he's deviant, now can he?

David Gonterman, in my opinion, is a classic case of
society's drives gone wrong. Forgive my
quasi-conflict-interactionalist interpretation, but
Gonterman seems to be motivated by powerful drives to
conform to everything society tells him to, in
whatever way he can, and fails to realize he can't do
this and is not succeeding in any sense of the word.
To draw from my conflict theory side and the wish to
help Davey, if by some cruel twist of fate he's
reading this (which is why I'll ask to have my email
and real name not be published.. the last thing I need
right now is a cameo appearance in a fanfic or an
invitation to be roboticized), I would simply say...
"Gonterman, stop trying to be perfect. It's not
working, and it never will. This ego we ascribe to you
is only further reinforced by your insistance in
making yourself seem the perfect example of American
humanity." However, I do believe that if Gonterman had
been reading this, he gave up after the first
paragraph and began to write me into a fanfiction as
Sailor RW Brass Monkey, the lesbian negascout out to
convert him to my homosexual ways, about to be
destroyed by Davey-kins' own rampaging Sailor
fangirls. In either case, now you know another
Gontermaniac's take on the Dave himself. I can only
sit and wait now for more material to prove myself
right.

n_n
-RW