Get a tiny violin out for the depressed Twitter playboy who’s shagged 400 women

One thing you can’t take away from humanity: we’ve never stopped finding ways to totally fuck ourselves over. It’s quite inspiring really, considering all the potential ways you can ruin your own life. Obliterate your consciousness with drugs and alcohol. Tell everyone you know that you’re “really into” juicing and watch every friendship you’ve ever had evaporate.

Or you could do the usual thing of waking up one day when you’re 60, still working a job you hate, with grown up kids who don’t speak to you, watching television every night, wondering where your life went, wondering why it had to be this average and unspectacular, wondering if you’ve ever really been happy.

One person who’s asking that question is Benny James,  a 22-year-old builder from Croydon with a 90k strong Twitter following. Benny’s fire social media game has helped him sleep with over 400 women. And he says it’s fucked everything.

“I look at them and all they want from me is sex but I can’t give it to them. They could be Rihanna but it doesn’t matter. I’m really bored of having sex all the time. Sex has ruined my life.”

This is what Benny looks like:

Question: why do people who say they’ve shagged loads always look like Benny? Why do they always look a bit grim, a bit day out at the Arndale Centre? Why do they always have two first names? They never look like Michael Fassbender do they – and Benny’s story is essentially Shame, but far less glamorous, playing itself out in Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club in Croydon, rather than gilded Manhattan.

Now look, I’m not sitting here at my desk with Eddie Redmayne’s cheekbones or anything but you have to ask, you have to contemplate and dwell on the brutal fact that 22-year-old Benny James has shagged more people than you ever will in your entire life.

Benny looks like he uses too much hair product, giving it that crackly, flaky texture of a handkerchief covered in dried snot. I imagine Benny owns a huge number of those T-shirts with the word “LA” laid over a Instagrammy background of cars and palm trees.  He has a Maori arm tattoo. Benny is what happens when Olly Riley grows up. He’s Russell Brand for the UniLad generation. If you brought Benny home to meet your parents they would get you sectioned or take you out of their wills.

Due to a heroic lack of perspective and the kind of Topman bargain bin misogyny that your younger sister writes angry blog posts about, Benny truly believes all the shagging has ruined his life: “All they want from me is sex – I just can’t find the one. I feel objectified and disgusted that they only want sex – a lot of girls are so much more open about it now.”

“Most of my girls have been one night stands,” he adds. ‘But now that I’m trying to find a girl to fall in love with I take girls fishing, to the zoo, or to feed the ducks.”

I’m going to wrap this up by making a pretty bold statement. I want you to think about it. Is Benny’s pain the most get out a tiny violin moment of all time? I mean it’s very much of the world’s tiniest violin category isn’t it? It’s such a tiny violin moment that I literally Googled “worlds tiniest violin” + “shop” to see if I could celebrate it properly. They didn’t have anything so I wrote this instead. Tchaikovsky is playing in my head though.