There have always been a few nail-biters who've had to wear plasters on their fingers for a week after Lad culture's gone a bit too far. Ever since it seeped into the minds of young people across the UK, it has become one of the English language's most assertive declarations: "LAD."
There were a few amputated fingers over the possibility that Lad culture was contributing more-than-significantly to the UK's binge drinking problems, and there was a soar in plaster sales around last summer when, nationwide, people over the age of 30 finally began to understand the boom in the tourist trade of Kavos, Napa, Malia and Zante.
I chimed in with a few "LAD!" declarations at the start. Come on - it was, after all, just a bit of banter. Sometimes it was a grunted signal of respect. That guy who downed three Irish car-bombs in a minute? LAD. I managed a half before the rest curdled.
But I joined in because I never, never expected it to get to the stage where rape was openly and explicitly condoned in an online article to hundreds of thousands of readers... and all in the name of the LAD.
A sick feeling in my stomach rooted itself pretty fast the afternoon a friend linked me to a Uni Lad article, in which they notified their readers that if a girl didn't want sex after a date, "85% of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds." With similar speed, the website was closed down and an apology issued. But a very, very frightening number of comments on their Facebook page simply said that those who had complained and got the site taken down should themselves be raped.
Trawling through Uni Lad and LAD Bible in the name of research, I've realised that I'm regularly feeling that kind of desperately uncomfortable nausea, and it started the afternoon I realised Lad culture and its banter had stepped completely outside the lines of rational, acceptable, human behaviour.
Possibly the comment at which my gag reflex suffered the most was the following Top Tip from Uni Lad: "Unfortunately, it's easy to mix up a chubster for a preggers, so you could possibly end up prodding a poor innocent foetus with your giant willy. At least you'll finally be able to claim a threesome."
For those of you who don't know, this idea is in fact plagiarised anyway, lifted from a rap song, the Creator of which is, wait for it... regularly criticised for inciting rape. Regardless of its origin, it remains the same: I don't know about you, but I don't know many friends of mine who fantasise about intercourse with an unborn foetus.
The top article at the time of my research was "Dating Tips: Uni Lad Style", which details the method that should be used to deconstruct a girls confidence to the point where "her insecurities have mounted" and "she'll be so relieved that someone actually cares that you'll have her in the palm of your hand" ready for "the appreciative sex she'll be sure to offer".
Other articles on the site have advised, for example, that in order to "knock some sense into her", you could slam a girl's head against a wall during sex.
It is the continuous flow of articles like this that plant the seed in young men's brains that women are merely objects to be thrown around and battered according to their sexual desires. It's "banter" like this that means 1 in 7 Australian 12-14 year olds surveyed recently agreed that "it's ok to force a girl to have sex if she has been flirting with you".
These Lad websites have degraded girls in every possible way, and frequently suggest horrific, disturbing ideas. But they keep being read, they keep being shared, and they keep being 'liked'. And, although the reason is just that age-old classic recipe of plain and simple, old-school bullying - a case of follow-the-leader so familiar from our childhoods it might as well be in your Memories Box - I'm starting to wonder: how far will this go?
I know that, sadly, at the end of the day, there will be at least one, probably many, many more people reading this who are thinking I just can't take the banter. Hi there. How are you today? If you're around, I'd love to do an interview sometime. Something along the lines of, how does it feel to take one of the world's most serious and soul-destroying crimes and turn it into a joke?
Keep me posted.