the New Rules

Reading my Wired magazine from August, I found the following tips in the borders of the article “Behave Yourself! the new rules for highly evolved humans. Scientific approaches to 21st century predicaments.” These were about a font size 6 in the page borders. Take them for what they are worth (which probably is not much).

1. Never post a picture of yourself shirtless in your dating profile (men only).
2. When returning a Zipcar, turn off the radio.
3. Hide your porn downloads in a folder named March Madness ’03.
4. Create a Facebook account for your grandmother — but don’t create one for your dog.
5. CC’ing your boss after hours does not impress him.
6. Don’t send out a follow-up email apologizing for a typo in a previous email.
7. For marital peace, keep separate Netflix queues.
8. Tidy your room before recording a vlog.
9. Rotate your photos before you upload them. Don’t quote Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail at a funeral. Stick to Life of Brian.
10. Acceptable: WTF?, LMAO. Unnacceptable: effing, A-hole, byatch.
11. Never end an email with “take it sleazy.”
12. Don’t perform quid pro quos with LinkedIn recommendations.
13. Stop arguing Boba Fett vs Batman. (it’s Batman.)
14. When flying, don’t watch movies with sex or decapitation scenes.
15. Tag Flickr photos freely — there’s no such thing as too many tags.
16. Turn off “Sent from my iPhone” email signatures.
17. Back up your hard drive. Right now.
18. Invite friends to new Facebook apps as often as you like.
19. Eat at your friend’s restaurant — or read his book or listen to her music — before you post a review.
20. Things that are OK to do in an elevator: Stand there; have sex with Steven Tyler (ladies only).
21. Keep music mixes for friends to 60 minutes or less.
22. Ask for free tech support only from immediate family or significant others.
23. Photoshop your picutres as much as you want, but remember: Your real friends know what you look like.
24. Never read the manual first.
25. Avoid looking at other people’s screens.
26. Don’t waterboard terror suspects.
27. Nobody cares how good your uncompressed audio files are.
28. List your high school on Facebook, not on LinkedIn.
29. Upload videos, don’t email them.
30. Never go dirty Larping.
31. Hide your speaker wires.
32. FWIW, don’t use chat slang if you don’t know what it means.
33. Free T-shirts are for the gym and sleeping — not work.
34. Cartoon profile pics went out with rickrolling.
35. Give credit when repeating tweets and blog posts.
36. Need an insult to use on Xbox Live? Try “boogergina.”
37. Don’t solder on the couch.
38. Fleece and company logos don’t mix.
39. It’s OK to make fun of furries only if … oh, never mind. It’s always OK to make fun of furries.
40. Kill your zombie brother. He’s not your brother. He’s a zombie.