I’m more off the derech than you are

I was recently at a meetup of a bunch of folks who are off the derech and I could have sworn that if you changed the conversation just a tad it would have sounded like a bunch of Baal Teshuvas trying to one up each other. It’s as if people who go off the derech are trying to show how frum they are in going off the derech by talking about how far off they went. Like the one guy who bragged about eating bacon wrapped gorgonzola with bits of beetles and larve. This wasn’t good enough for the girl who walked into a shteeble naked on shabbos during a tish and stole the Rav’s car keys and proceeded to smash his mini van into the garage where the tish was being held. 

You would think that once someone left frumkeit they would have gotten out of the main goal of orthodoxy, which is who can be frummer than who, but one upping each other and trying to show who’s less frum or who has gone off the farthest is merely the same thing – except in this case they are going to hell instead of enjoying a nice large chelek in olam habah for wearing an enormous cowboy hat on shabbos and beating up women who wear red.