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How to Not Suck at Life

Let’s face it – at some point or another we have all crossed paths with someone who just sucks. You can call them annoying, obnoxious, or just plain worthless all you want, but they still exist and function in our world, and thus, we must deal with them. If right now you’re considering yourself lucky for not having met one yet, there is a good chance that you may be the one who sucks (and if so, fuck you). To help clear your name, here’s a list of five things you can do to not suck as a human being.

1. Calm the fuck down

This one should be fairly obvious. A person who sucks (PWS) is always uppity about something or another. No matter how trivial the situation is, a PWS is always the first to find something wrong and bitch about it. “If she’s coming with you, then I’m not going.” Trying to start a fight over every little detail is even more worthless than sitting at home and moping about all the parties you missed or all the friends who won’t return your calls — and neither work. I promise. You’ll just end up with friends who will avoid you at all costs.

2. Stop being passive aggressive

Your best friend won’t call you back and she’s off with that girl who’s prettier than you raging bitch, so you text her one word answers and pretend not to care while bitching about her to everyone you’ve ever met. We’ve all been there, right? WRONG. If you act like a little insecure child whenever something doesn’t go your way, you can bet your friends will consistently prefer to hang out with anyone who isn’t you.

3. Don’t constantly ask why everyone’s mad at you

While a PWS can pick up fewer social cues than your 70 year-old grandmother, they have an astoundingly acute sense for when someone’s mad at them. They’ll start off asking innocently if their friends are mad, then move onto full-blown pestering about why they’re mad and why they won’t talk about it until said friends have no choice but to answer. At this point, a PWS will automatically play the defensive and turn it around so she looks like the victim, and her friends will be left to pick up the pieces to avoid any more unwanted drama. This cycle will repeat until it’s no longer worth avoiding the bullshit and all of her friends will cut the cord and move on to a happier future.

4. Stop talking about yourself

Even after a very short period of acquaintanceship, you will know everything there is to know about a PWS. No matter where you are or what you’re talking about, there will be, without fail, some way to relate the topic of conversation back to the PWS. And not only that, but whatever a PWS has to say will always be better than your story. Oh, you just adopted a new dog? Big deal. She rescued four stray golden lab puppies, breast fed them back to health, found them homes, and kept two. People innately like to talk about themselves, but if you do it all the time, you’ll end up sitting alone telling your cool new stories to your parents’ answering machine while they ignore you for the 20th time that day, because they can. Plus no one likes a story topper.

5. Have a personality

I feel reluctant to say that this is the most important rule, but this can essentially be a cure-all for suckiness. Talking to a PWS is like talking to a wall…while being hung upside-down over a shark tank with small children throwing pebbles at your head. From experience, most people who really suck are the ones whose insecurities lead to all of the aforementioned scenarios. The only cure for this is to say, “Fuck it” and be yourself. There are plenty of people in the world; one of them is bound to find you at least mildly charming, and hopefully that’ll be enough for you to strive to be a better person. And if not, then at least you won’t be quite as boring.

There you have it, five ways to stop sucking as a person. If you managed to get this far in life without allowing your personality to get in the way of your having friends, keep up the good work! And remember, there’s no shame in passing this list along to your friends. We could all use a world with a few less PWS.

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