After having been summarily shot for giving advice purely off of the terminally online references in my head, and having been resurrected by a joint effort of ReadMe staff and the biochemical engineering majors due to staff shortages, I am now fully embracing the magic of science and consulting with experts in their fields!*
*Their fields being anxiety, mostly. †
How long is too long for a handshake? Am I gripping too hard? Is it too late to switch the eye I'm making eye contact with right now?
Ideally, a nice firm handshake should last until either your hand is honorably broken or you honorably break your opponent’s hand. As we all know, social interaction is a zero-sum game and someone must win. Consequently, there’s no such thing as gripping too hard– your grip should ideally be on the stronger end of “limp fish” to “forbidden by the Geneva Conventions oh god why do you have a three-pointed knife concealed in your palm.” Switch which eye you make eye contact with as often as you like–even if you lose the handshake portion of the game, you can get half-points by winning the staring contest bit.
-With help from Dr. Et. Al
what does it mean if someone who never uses punctuation or capital letters in texts sends me a text that begins with a capital letter? (they didn’t use a period or anything, which would unambiguously mean they hate me, but im still worried)
As you said, this one is a bit more ambiguous than using a period. It is, however, not so ambiguous that we can’t flowchart it out!
-With help from Dr. Et. Al
do you think if i got a concussion and i couldn’t make excellent points about the role of the social contract in french salon art my art teacher would still love me
This one’s for your art teacher, actually, I’m going to need you to avert your eyes and convalesce in a Swiss sanitarium with leeches for a few seconds-
Okay, you can look now.
-With help from Dr. Et. Al
Is my incessant allergy-based sneezing getting on the nerves of my lab partner?
Depending on what kind of lab you’re in, it’s probably more just concerning. For example, what are you doing sneezing in a physics lab? What are you, allergic to the fundamental particles of reality and the strong force as a whole? Or what are you doing sneezing in a forensics lab? Cocaine?
Is the sneezing allergy based or do I just want to assume that?
If you’re sneezing in an epidemiology lab, I also just want to assume that it’s allergy-based!
i ran into someone i met briefly before and they remembered my name but i didn’t remember theirs. do i have to fall upon my own sword now?
Not at all! You have three incredibly obvious paths from this junction–two good ones and one you should avoid at all costs:
The Good Options
Generate the statistically most common first name and surname for your region and address them by that. Drop decreasingly subtle hints that you are a benign fae who has generously decided to forget your acquaintance’s name. This puts them immediately in your debt, and from there you can placebo effect a geas on them and enjoy small offerings of fruit and nuts.
The Bad Option
Go “Hey, I’m sorry, but could you remind me what your name was again?”
- With help from James Smith and Author Who Asked To Be Credited Only As ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named’
What is the optimal distance for making eye contact with a person walking in the opposite direction as you before waving at them?
The trick is to always catch your friends and acquaintances off guard, so they spend just a bit more time trying to recognize you than you do them. Time travel to become a past iteration of yourself! Try out that pair of breeches and colonial tricorner hat sitting in your closet! Inexplicably carry a musket around!
Once they’ve spent those extra few seconds staring at you, that puts them in the position of being the embarrassed and awkward one. You now have the high ground–this is your Bunker Hill and you will not wave ‘til you see the whites of their eyes. Once you do, attach your bayonet and commence the charge. The British are coming! There’s no time to waste on pleasantries.
-With help from Author Who Asked To Be Credited Only As ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named’
how do I tell if people close to me are in a relationship?
If one of them reads this godforsaken column and applies all of its advice on the other person, and the other person still chooses to associate with the advice column reader, that’s either true love or insanity. Which is still kind of a coin flip, but seems better than what you’re currently working with.
-With help from [Author Who Asked To Be Credited Only As ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named’ II, who has been summarily shot for lack of faith in this column and, by extension, ReadMe]
† Have you considered getting evaluated for anxiety?
This is my advice column, not yours.
