LOS ANGELES – In December, Marvin Tzatziki, the man who became instantly and globally reviled after his company purchased and astronomically raised the price of oxygen tanks for COPD patients, was arrested by the FBI on 483 counts of aggravated assholism. Two days later, Tzatziki received a direct message over Twitter from a 29 year-old resident of Los Angeles named Matt Culolik: “Yo — whassup Marv?”

Culolik’s next message led to the two men working together as mega-douche and mega-douche adviser.

“I wanna rep you, dude,” Culolik typed. “Not like lawyer. That takes like degree N shit. More like PR guy, only 1 w/out actual quals or PR exp.”

According to Culolik, Tzatziki was so impressed by the random direct message, he hired Culolik on the spot as his personal sushi chef.

Later, when one of Tzatziki’s aids pointed out the aspiring sushi chef actually was the 40-year-old from Portland who hit up Tzatziki via Instagram andCulolik was the one interested in a PR position, Tzatziki corrected his error and agreed to bring on Culolik as a freelance social media consultant.

(I should probably mention at this point Culolik gave evidence of his association with Tzatziki by showing me a pile of rumpled $20 bills, which did indeed smell like they’d been in the pocket of an egomaniacal dickhead suffering from persistent delusions of grandeur.)

Culolik admitted he’d never actually done any crisis PR or image management before contacting Tzatziki. He had, however, been able to focus attention on porn industry clients through brilliantly clever publicity stunts, some of which had only been done several dozen times before. Offering jobs in porn to people on trial for murder, for example.

“It was all in-your-grill and totally hilarious PR stuff — unless, you know, you’re the family of one of the victims, I suppose,” Culolik said. “But fuck them. I mean, they’re acting all offended toward me, but they really should have thought about all that before allowing a member of their family to be brutally killed, know what I mean?”

I spoke with Culolik about his attempts to resuscitate Tzatziki’s reputation and whether he thinks his efforts have produced a positive impact on the man’s self-tarnished image.

YNOT: Unlike most people, you’ve had the opportunity to speak with Marvin Tzatziki personally and get to know him a bit. What’s he really like?

Culolik: You know, it’s funny. He has this terrible reputation, but in reality he’s a really great guy who just wants to help people with COPD. Everybody knows he raised the price of of oxygen to $650,000 a tank, but what people don’t realize is he also innovated the Tank Bank Oxygen Buyer’s Club punch-card program, in which every 10th tank is free. So, nobody is being denied oxygen here, and it’s a much better deal that people realize.

Tzatziki has said he wants to be viewed as a villain, and he gets off on being hated. Why would he seek help with improving his image if he actually wants people to think of him as an asshole?

The PR game is totally different these days. If you want to stay relevant on social media, controversy and drama are the way to go. All the stuff people used to think about PR and brand marketing — the stuff about positive associations with your brand, consumer loyalty, trust, all that shit — has jumped the shark. These days, it’s all about views, followers, mentions and visibility.

So, as a modern CEO, even if the reason everybody is talking about your company is they think you’re the single worst human being currently on the planet, that’s a good thing?

Now you’re catching on. Look, before I took over as Marvin’s social media adviser, he had only 40,000 Twitter followers. Within two days after we put out the one video of him setting hundred dollar bills on fire and using them to burn his initials into the side of a puppy, he shot straight up to 300,000. That’s a triumph of public relations, my friend.

Impressive. So, how much money did he make from that increase in followers, anyway?

Uh, good question. I’ll have to get back to you on that — but what I can tell you is the buzz was amazing and carries on to this day. Right now, he averages over million views a day on his live feed.

Really? When I checked with the hosting company yesterday at 5 p.m., they said the stats showed he’d had 17 viewers all day.

Right — but the overnight traffic is beyond fucking massive.

All he does on the live feed is play video games, listen to rap and occasionally turn to the camera to say something shitty about poor people. How does that help his public image?

You’d be surprised. Now people have seen the other side of Marvin, the softer side. Sure, on the one hand he’s the guy who raised the price of oxygen, but on the other, he’s also the guy who is close enough to the kids who hang out on the PlayStation network to mercilessly taunt and insult them during marathon Call of Duty multiplayer sessions.

Wait… Wasn’t he banned from the network following the suicide of a 12-year-old whom he had bullied relentlessly?

Yeah, that was totally the parents’ fault, though. How could they let a 12-year-old play Call of Duty? It’s shameful, really.

Actually, they were playing Little Big Planet and were supposed to be cooperating.

Right — and the kid totally refused to do everything Marvin told him to do. That’s not cooperation; it’s insubordination. Martin was merely trying to make it a “teaching moment” by showing the kid what happens in the real world when you’re insubordinate.

So, in the real world, people call their insubordinate underlings “retards” and threaten to buy their parents’ house and force them to move into a bad neighborhood?

Absolutely — especially in the oxygen supply business. At any rate, the real point here is people used to hate Marvin, but now we see tweets all the time talking about how they like him and how unfairly he’s been portrayed in the media.

Really? Can you send me a link to one of those tweets?

I absolutely would send you one, but I think they might have all been deleted.

Why were they deleted?

I’m not 100-percent sure, but it’s possible people thought the Marvin being discussed was Marvin the Martian from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, then deleted their tweets when they realized the error. What’s important, though, is the tweets were there, and they were completely sincere, even if they were meant for someone else.

So, since you’re not working with Tzatziki anymore, do you have your eyes on any other controversial celebrities as potential clients?

Oh, for sure. With all the faux outrage on the internet, there’s a new villain born every minute. You know how it is: They innocently say one virulently racist thing or raise the price of one lousy life-saving drug by 7,500 percent and everybody just starts unloading on them. My job is to stand between my clients and the lynch mob and get everybody to think about something else.

By having your clients torch the flesh of a puppy or talk shit to kids while playing video games?

Well, every client is different, so you have to approach each situation individually. Who knows? Maybe next time we’ll offer the puppy a job in porn and have my client burn his initials into a teenager.