From best friends to old friends to the friends you go to shows with to the friends you

actually can't stand.

A little while back, I took it upon myself to compile a list of every annoying person you're
friends with on Facebook. I did this for you. Anyway: in an attempt to inject some positivity
back into the world, I have now made a list of everyone that you are friends with, period—
although admittedly at least 60 percent of them are also annoying pricks. And on Facebook
– JG

Us humans with our stupid monkey brains can't actually cope with having more than 150
stable social relationships, is the thing. That's according to British anthropologist Robin
Dunbar, anyway. Here's some science about it. Because think about it: You can't, can you?
Name your best friend. Name ten more good friends. That's it, you're probably done. Name
every one of your Facebook friends. You cannot.

But, you know, friendship is a beacon of light in the dark abyss of existence. And it's a very
natural, basic function; we've been learning how to do it since we were kids. Isn't that wild?
Next time you're at a party with someone new and you go, "So, uh... do, uh... what are you
getting up to this weekend?" just remember that a literal child is better at making instant-
connection smalltalk than you. Every time you sweat because you have to make eye contact
with someone you don't intimately know, just know that five-year-old children outperform
you at this. Making friends is easy. Staying friends—with all the fucking text messaging, all
the checking in, all the entire evenings of your life set aside to go to art galleries or pop-up
taco vans with them, infinite taco vans, taco van after taco van after taco van, each taco
more mediocre than the last—that's the hard part.

But then one of the true pleasures of having friends is categorizing them neatly into groups.
Your best friends! Your one-bracket-out-of-the-best-friends-category-but-still-quite-good-
friends friends! Those people you see annually and hate! Friends of all shapes, sizes, colors,
and creeds. Friends you're only friends with because they have a car and sometimes you
really need a lift somewhere. Friends who have children and you never see again.

Anyway, here's every last one of your friends.

BEST FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1–5)

Come on, dude. You don't need someone explaining to you what a best friend is. It's your
best friend. They are probably WhatsApping you right now. "You gotta read this list on
VICE, man!" your best friend is saying. "It is so wrong! Again! I hate this guy!" That's you
and your bestie: united in love, united in hate, always in touch via instant messaging.
OLD FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 10)

There's an old friend of mine who—and there's no good way of saying this—who looks like
Terry Nutkins died from a toxic shock-type reaction to anti-baldness medicine and
somehow, in death, became incredibly hench. That's the good thing about old friends: You
can say they look like Bodybuilder Zombie Nutkins, because you know the exact line you
cross with them, the exact parameters of their sense of humor, the exact thing you can say
before they flex their massive Nutkinesque arms and put you in a slightly-too-tight
headlock. Essentially: if you haven't got someone in your life who you can comfortably call a
"cunt" to their face, then you haven't really got any good friends, have you? You've just got
people who Facebook you when they need the numbers to make a house party event look
live.

There's that comfort level with old friends that is unparalleled, like climbing into a
comfortable old gray sweatshirt and just wallowing around in it. And what's great is the
upkeep with old friends is so much easier: occasionally text them the punchline from an old
shared joke, or some memory of that time you got kicked out of a nightclub because
another mutual friend took his trousers down to show two girls his leg tattoos, and boom:
Your Pal-o-Meter is topped up.

Old friends are the bedrock on which your friendship mansion is built: nailed-on best men
or maids of honor, they remember how fat you were at school (hella fat), how weird your
first girlfriend or boyfriend's nose was (extremely weird), and why you're afraid of the
concept of leprosy (particularly harrowing Blue Peter appeal). You have almost certainly
pissed yourself in a sleeping bag while staying at their house. You should probably give
them a call.

You can also be friends with a dog

TRENDY NEW FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 20)

Oh, these trendy new friends with their trendy new ways! Those whirlwind first days of a
new friendship. Because it's like dating, isn't it? Dating without erections or the covert
handing of a 2-for-1 voucher to a waiter at Zizzi's. You're texting each other—"Should hang
out again soon m8!"—you're round each other's houses. Your ex-trendy new friends are
texting you, jealously. "Let's go shopping together!" your new pal says, and you do, you end
up in Gap, watching them try on chinos. Harps play. Angels sing. You two go down the
arcade and play fucking Time Crisis together. They introduce you to their existing mates.
"Come over!" they say. "Party at mine!" And you find yourself stood in front of the mirror
before you leave going: Why do I even care what I look like? I'm going to my mate's house
to drink Breezers. You are going: Why did I spend 45 minutes doing my hair? I've lost my
mind. And then you see them at the party, dancing with someone else, and your stomach
drops through your body like a lift in a Japanese horror movie, and you put down the
commemorative edition of your joint favorite film (S Club: Seeing Double), and you storm
outside in tears, and you go: Actually I should probably have a word with myself, here. I'm
meant to be an adult. Then you just end up relegating them to any one of these other
fucking categories, and the cycle begins, anew, marching forever onwards.

NIGHT-OUT FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 5)

Ah, the fragile human tie between two night-out friends. You know a night-out friend: you
don't actually really know their surname, but they are in 80 percent of your selfies; you
know their drinks order but you don't really know where they work; you have woken up in
their bed or on their sofa, platonically naked, and covered in your own sick, on multiple
occasions. And yet: can you imagine spending a Saturday afternoon with them? You cannot.
In fact: Have you ever seen them in daylight? You sort of worry that one day you might be
doing something semi-embarrassing—routine piss test, buying crotchless underwear, that
sort of thing—and then you look up, and lo, who is it you are passing your beaker of (as it
turns out) exceptionally infected piss to but your night-out friend, their eyes resolutely not
on ecstasy, their work shirt grimly functional, and neither one of you quite knows what to
do. "S–see you at Inferno's on Saturday?" But something has broken, something has
changed. You can't do greasy tequilas with someone who has held a warm canister of your
piss. You cannot watch someone twerk when you know they work for Waterstone's. "No,"
you think, getting a taxi home, judderingly sober. "Can't see them again."

SEX FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1–2)

Sex friends are great because you get to have sex with them but they are also the worst
because you're always too confused to know whether hand-holding or communal breakfast
is weird. Can you link arms when you walk down the street, or is that like kissing a
prostitute? Like, yes: The sex is explosive, orgasms glitter through your body like fireworks,
but you don't really know if you're allowed to leave a toothbrush over so you have to brush
your teeth with just a load of toothpaste and your finger. It's confusing, isn't it? On one
hand: You're getting it, on the regs. You're getting so hellaciously nailed it's not even fun
anymore. On the other hand: cavities are bad. Maybe it's time you had a chat.

MUSIC FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 3)

"Do u want to go to gig," the text says. You get this text every six months, like clockwork.
"Gig happening. Do u want to go." And so you say yes, to this friend, because you do want
to go gig—it is Arcade Fire, or one of those bands you like, you know the ones—and then
the long slow dance of logistics unfurl. "Got 2 x tickets, can u send me money." And you ask
this friend how much money, and they always say "$100." Can you PayPal it to them? You
cannot PayPal it to them, because it is the Year of Our Lord 2015 and somehow they have
gone through life without buying anything on eBay. You phone the bank. You transfer the
money. You do not see them for six months until the gig is actually happening.

I mean you have forgotten about the gig, is the thing. Because this friend is not a regular
friend: This is a gig friend. You actually can't remember where you met this person and you
can't imagine an opportunity to bump them from your friend roster, so they are there, on
the periphery, swaying slowly in time with an Arcade Fire song. You wore a band T-shirt to
the gig. They did not. You meet in a pub next to the venue beforehand and you both drink a
pint in silence. "Seen any good gigs lately?" your gig friend asks you. You have to admit that
you have not. They wince with empty disappointment. You do not read Pitchfork as often
as they read Pitchfork. You do not read popular youth-centric music blog Noisey. Or Thump,
which is also a website. "So what," your gig friend says, "what have you been up to?"

Over on popular youth-centric music blog Noisey: Which Top Lad Said It – Finchy from The
Office, or Catfish and the Bottlemen?

Do you ever get this with someone so boring—someone so singularly focused, the kind of
person who buys records in lieu of having a personality—do you ever get this with someone
you have one, thin strand of shared reality with, that when they ask you a straight-up
question like "What have you been up to for the last six months," you cannot answer it?
Your brain frets at the edges. I mean come on, you had a pregnancy scare. You moved flat.
You had both of your legs taken off at the knee in that motorcycle accident, remember. And
you look at this person in front of you, and you go: Oh not much, really. They do not
mention your tin legs. I mean, not much has been going on. All that rehab, all that physical
therapy. All those agonizing first steps on the frayed bones of your past. We should
probably make a move to get in early, you know how those queues get. And you do, both
queuing in silence, checking your respective phones, begrudgingly paying $10 a throw for a
gig pint, dancing emotionlessly, walking home in a separate direction from your gig friend
even though they live in the same direction, doubling back on yourself 25 minutes later
when you are sure the coast is clear, just hoping to get away from them for six sweet little
months until they text you again about Sad Boys.

THE FRIEND WHO DOES NOT KNOW HOW ROUNDS WORK AT THE PUB EVEN THOUGH THE
CONCEPT OF ROUNDS IS POSSIBLY THE MOST BASIC CONCEPT IN HUMAN EXISTENCE
(NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1)

"What?" they say, coming back from the bar with a single pint and change from a tenner.
"What, you mean you two wanted one?" These men are always called "Shawn." Always.
"Yes, Shawn," you say, pointing at your empty glass. "We obviously fucking wanted one."
And he turns on his heels and rolls his eyes, making a "Well fine, if you're going to be like
that about it, I guess I'll go back to the bar" motion with his arms—even though this is all his
fault, even though this is one of the most basic social conventions he has fucked up by
coming back with a pint of mild and a single packet of peanuts grasped between his teeth,
like: even a monkey can buy a round—and secretly, in your head, in ink instead of pencil,
you cross him firmly out of your top 150. When he comes back he does not share his
peanuts.

THE ONE WHO CONFLATES GENUINE FRIENDSHIP WITH AN AIRBNB (NUMBER THAT YOU
HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 5)

"Hiya," the text says from you friend who is most likely Australian. "Going to be in [CITY
WHERE YOU LIVE] for a few days. Can I crash with you?" And you are young and you are
foolish and you have never been hurt before, and so you say: "Yes." You say: "Yes, that
won't be inconvenient to me at all." Only there is something hardwired into the brain of
people who do not pay for their accommodation that makes it so they need to take a 45-
minute shower at scientifically the most inconvenient time for you possible. They say things
like, "I ate all those Peperami out the fridge. They were for the house, right?" And you are
like—you have taken a 90-minute bus journey from work, and you have had a bad day, and
you have been rained on, and all you want and all you have been craving is a sweet, salty-
hot chew on a Peperami when you get in, and you sprint to the fridge and find nothing—
and you say something like, "No, that's fine." And then you go and make tea and your
friend is like: "Oh, I made a lot of tea." There is a towering pile of teabags on your work
surface, on the side. There is that tiny bit of milk in the milk bottle that people leave to try
to distract you from the fact that they used all the milk. "I made, like, all the tea. Are we
going out? Where are you taking me out?" And you think—quietly at first, but it gets
louder—and you think: I am the only one who knows he is here. I could kill him right now
with a knife and nobody would ever know.

THE FRIENDS WHO ARE GOOD AT COOKING (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 5)

Hey, take some advice from a wizened old man who is spinning like a top towards the
yawning abyss of death: if one of your friends is good at cooking, never let them go. Never
let them go. Because here's how you decide whether you like someone and want to hang
out with them, at various different ages:

0–13: Your mom makes you be friends with them;

13–15: They are socially adept and they smoke cigarettes. You want to be friends with this
person because you are a nerd;

15–18: They are socially adept and drink alcohol. You want to be friends with this person
because you, too, like alcohol;

19–25: They know one or more person you want to have full sex with and there is a
constant 40 percent chance that they are carrying some cocaine, and;

25+: Good at making pie.

My God and my Christ, you do not know true joy until you've gone round to your mates'
house and they have cooked you a pie. Do you know how much fucking hassle it is to cook a
pie? You have to fold fat into flour with an icy cold spoon. You have to lovingly cook an
entire casserole just for the filling. You have to roll stuff out and dust it and roll it again. You
have to buy a special pie tin. You need to make cheesy mash. Has anyone ever made a pie
for you? It's like an all-day event. And then they put a big slice down in front of you, and
you go: Cheers, I guess. You drink all the wine you bought and go: What's the situation with
the pie? Is there any more pie? After 45 minutes in their presence, you go: Welp, probably
got to make my way home now. Got to do some damage to the toilet pan with this pie.
Fact: Pie only tastes better in your mouth the more you age. If any of your friends offer to
cook you anything—a roast, a pie, some fucking buns—hug them tightly and never let them
go.

UNIVERSITY FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 20 – 25)

"Do you remember the fun we had?" they say, over single pints of beer. "Yes," you reply. "I
remember that one time we had fun." "Haha," they say. "Wow. Have you heard from
[MUTUAL FRIEND] lately?" You have not. "How about [MUTUAL FRIEND]?" You have not.
"Did you hear [MUTUAL FRIEND] had a baby?" You heard it but you didn't care. "Remember
the fun we had?" You do not remember the fun. The fun is a distant memory now,
dwindling down to a fine point. The fun of your past is earth and you are reversing through
space past Venus. You have had more fun since and you will have more fun again and both
instances of fun have entirely eclipsed your previous benchmark of fun. You do not need to
go back and remember the bad haircut you had and all the rice you ate in halls. You do not
need to remember that study abroad student who waved a big knife around when the
washing up got too bad. That is something you want to actively unremember. And you feel
yourself, floating distantly away, on a breeze in the night sky, away from your memories
and away from your past, away from that night you bought two-for-$10 cocktail jugs and
ended up falling over and splitting both your palms open in a piss-soaked men's urinal,
crying—and you were crying, you were weeping—crying at your bloody, pissy hands, going
"DO I HAVE AIDS, NOW?" screaming, "DO I HAVE PISS-AIDS?" holding on with a fragile
bleeding human sadness to a trainee doctor whose name you cannot remember. You did
not have piss-AIDS. And then that voice opposite you chimes in, tugging you back from the
memory hole into which you were drifting: "God, we should go back there, for one
weekend. Old time's sake." And you look at the wrinkles on their face and their decent
adult haircut and the sad quiet note playing behind their eyes that says 'I still pass for 21,
right? I still pass as young?' and you lean close and you whisper: no.

THAT FRIEND WHO KEEPS MAKING PLANS WITH YOU AND THEN ALWAYS CANCELS THE
PLANS AND YOU SORT OF WONDER HOW THEY GET ANYTHING DONE IN THEIR LIFE, LIKE
HOW DO THEY HOLD DOWN A REGULAR JOB, LIKE WHAT ARE THEY DOING EVERY SINGLE
ATOMIC SECOND OF EVERY DAY THAT MEANS THAT CAN'T GO FOR A PINT, I MEAN MY
GOD, WHO BOOKS UP THEIR SOCIAL CALENDAR ANYTHING MORE THAN A WEEK IN
ADVANCE (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 2)

I mean come on Jesus Christ I am clearly #149 on your 150-strong friend list stop pretending
you like me enough to spend a solid hour in my company.

FRIENDS YOU DON'T REALLY LIKE (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1–5)

You'll have these: One day, you'll realize, you've never been alone in a room with this
person even though they've been there, at the edges of your vision, for years. You always
see them at parties. Always smiling and leaning into group conversations. And then, one
day, everyone goes outside to smoke or get drinks or go home, and it's just you two, in a
room, and there is a lull in the music, and suddenly—and you didn't even know it—
suddenly you don't like this person. Because you know nothing about them. And then you
look into their eyes – deep, familiar, animal-like eyes—and you forget entirely how to make
friends. It is too late to make friends. This is the sound you make: Euhhhhhh? They look at
you. You look at them. You do not like each other, and yet you are friends. You have at least
five of these, and you might have ten. If you don't have one: You are someone else's.

RICH FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1)

Here are some things rich friends say: "No, fuck that, let's get a cab. I'm not fucking waiting
for a fucking bus"; "God this Wetherspoons is like inhaling a warm bucket of turds, I'm
taking us to a champagne bar"; [ SOUND OF SOMEONE INHALING SOME VERY EXPENSIVE
COCAINE AND THEN OFFERING SOME TO YOU] "Ahh, gak." But sometimes they go missing
for a really long time with one of those well-bred pedigree posh people who you will never,
never have sex with, and you are milling around some posh person party where everyone is
wearing $10,000 cream tuxedos and weird masks, and then a waiter comes up to you with
a bill—the bill is served on a silver tray, is how expensive this is going to be—and you have
to stand outside in the rain on the phone to NatWest asking to extend your overdraft so
you can buy these three peach bellinis that somehow cost $170 while your rich friend is off
somewhere having honking loud rich person sex on some pillows that cost more than your
house.

PISSHEAD FRIEND (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1–2)

"OH WEY OH WEY," your pisshead mate is saying. You are balancing six pints across two
hands. "OH WEY OH WEY, OH WEY OH WEY, OH WEY—" and then they pause, and look at
you. "Feeling hot," you say. You're still holding the pints. "Feeling hot, hot, hot." They shout
"WEYYYY!" again and flip the pints into your face. It's 20 minutes until you can get served
again at the bar. Three separate people ask you if you've pissed yourself. "Do you really
think," you say, "do you really think that I piss out six pints of urine at a time?" They stare at
your clothing. "Do you really think I piss up as well as down? Do you really think I was
moving my dick in a frenetic and pendulous north-to-south motion while I was taking that
last piss just then?" When you get back to the table your mates have all been kicked out for
smuggling in cans of Grolsch and not even pouring them into pint glasses before drinking
them. Ah, pisshead mates: so much fun.

FRIEND WHO CONSTANTLY HAS A BIG SET OF SHELVES THAT NEEDS MOVING, EITHER
FROM ONE SIDE OF THE FLAT TO THE OTHER OR OUTSIDE ONTO THE CURB, OR IN RARE
CASES, FROM THE HOUSE OF A GUMTREE SELLER TO THEIR OWN HOME, AND YOU
APPARENTLY ARE THE ONLY PERSON PHYSICALLY CAPABLE OF HELPING THEM MOVE THESE
SHELVES – THEY ARE SLIGHT, THIS FRIEND, SLIGHTLY BUILT AND ALONE – AND SO YOU FIND
YOURSELF, ONCE EVERY HALF-YEAR OR SO, WITH THE CORNER OF A SET OF SHELVES IN
YOUR FACE, PIVOTING AROUND A STAIRCASE, THINKING: HOW MANY FUCKING SETS OF
SHELVES DOES ONE PERSON NEED TO HAVE? THINKING: GOD HOW MANY PILES OF HIGH-
QUALITY PRINT MAGAZINES AND LITTLE CACTUSES IN SPECIAL PLANT POTS DOES ONE
PERSON NEED, AND NEED TO STACK VERTICALLY? (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE:
1)

A man and a van only costs $30 an hour and doesn't require the flimsy pretext of
friendship, Shelley.

SERIOUS CONVERSATIONS AT 5 AM FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1–5)

For some reason there are some people who you end up outside in the smoking area of
some house party with at 5 AM, hunkered on a doorstep in that way that moms say gives
you piles, and you both have your arms huddled around in front of your knees, and they
go—they say something innocuous, like, "So, how's it going? Been ages since I've seen
you"—and you suddenly break and get all serious—you go on and on about that leg
accident you had, how you can't sleep any more without the revving of a motorcycle engine
screaming in your ears, how you miss the way your feet feel in slippers—and they just
quietly nod and say "ahuh" and "ahum," and then they go: Hey, mate, and give you a big
weird one-armed hug, and you walk away – clinking, remember, on your robo-legs – you
walk away as the sun rises in the east and the birds flock into the sky, and you go: Hold on.
You go: I don't even know that fucker's name.

Some of your friends will not like you

HARD FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1–3)

Hard friends, you think, are good: because look at you, right? It's a wonder you don't get
beaten up more. You need hard friends for the next time someone lunges at you for your
bad opinions, or the next time you misjudge the mood of a pub and legitimately say "totes."
But truly hard friends have a certain soft fragility inside them, and before they die for your
cause, you need to show them that they are actually your mate. Like, yes: They might be 80
percent ready to bottle someone at literally any given minute of the day, but you need to
check in with them a minimum of once a week before they turn that misplaced, clumsy
brutality on you. I once spent an hour of my life at a bar cornered by a 6'5" bloke I'd only
otherwise met twice who was on the verge of tears because I hadn't accepted his Facebook
request. Like, I think if I had said: "I hate you, mate. You look like a big prawn," he would
have sobbed. Is it worth the protection having him around gives me? It is not. Do I have to
deal with a lot of Farmville requests and angry updates about the parking situation outside
ASDA ("How many fukin ppl what park disabled spaces? no?")? Yes I do. Life is about giving
and taking, and hard mates are rarely worth the tug 'n' pull. Plus: way more likely to, for
absolutely no reason, step on your head.

WORK FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 10–15)

Thing with "work friends"—and I wouldn't know, because I work at VICE, and everyone
keeps saying to me, "No, we don—we definitely don't hang around at the pub. No, we don't
all sneak out when you've left and congregate together to laugh at you behind your back.
Nobody is friends here, Joel. Go home."—but the thing with work friends is they are a grey-
to-black spectrum that goes from "someone you nod at in corridors" through "person
you're pretty sure you spoke to at the Christmas party and now have to make small talk
with in the kitchen while waiting for the kettle to boil" to "people you actually think are
alright." And it's tough, because there's always the doubt in your mind: Do I actually like
this person?, your mind is saying, Or am I just really desperate for the warmth of human
company, and also someone to go eat lunch with? You just don't know. Are you friends? Or
do you both just hate the same printer? You don't know. You'll never know. Work friends:
the doubt that never goes away.

Night! Out! Friends!

FRIENDS WHO ARE FRIENDS WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND OR YOUR GIRLFRIEND (NUMBER THAT
YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 5–10)

The reason sports were invented is to give boyfriends something to talk about with the boy
mates of their new girlfriends. That is all sports are. "So, what about that Rooney, eh?"
every man in Britain has said at some point or another, staring at a screen mounted high in
the corner of a busy pub, while a man slowly chewing gum and crossing his arms watches
rapt at a Norwich game. "Yes," the other man will say. "Left peg." And then the new
girlfriend will turn and say: I cannot believe how well you two are getting along! And then
she will say: You two should be friends! And then, later, alone together and after the sex
has happened, she will go: Kent wants you to be his best man and you are like Kent? and
she is like Yes and you are like Fucking REALLY? and she is like Yes, he doesn't have any
other friends, and then you realize you have been used: that you are not really in love, you
have just been seduced into being this man's best friend because his girlfriend is best
friends with your girlfriend, and you are stuck with him forever now, and in the best man's
speech you start: "If there's one thing I know about Kent, it's that he likes football!" and
then you just sit down again, and his dad shakes your hand and says it's the best speech
he's ever seen and/or heard.

I mean, for girls it's different. All a girl needs to do to adhere herself to a group of boys is to
quickly drink one beer and burp. They will all then cheer and someone called Lee will
pronounce that she is an "honorary lad." He has a trophy. Does he always carry a trophy
around with him? Does Lee constantly have a trophy on hand for these moments? The
point is: Men are essentially chimps and drinking beer is their version of bum sniffing. But
it's still a special ordeal new girlfriends have to go through.

The thing about the strata of friends who are friends with your boyfriend or your girlfriend
is that they are changeable: When you dump or get dumped, you will lose 30 friends in an
instant. They will ebb and they will flow. But there will always be a silent, gum-chewing
man called Kent—the kind of man who "doesn't like texting" so just phones you when he's
bored, as though phoning people on the phone isn't a sign of mania—and he will always be
your friend, and he will never let you go, ever, and he will wait outside your house, and he
will ask you what you are doing on Sunday, and he is always there, everywhere you pivot,
everywhere you look, every day, forever.

THAT FRIEND WHO THINKS THE GYM IS AN ACCEPTABLE PLACE TO HANG OUT (NUMBER
THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 1)

12:43:03: yo sup what up sup yo u wanna hang out today

12:43:47: yes good that sounds fun

12:43:48: yo ok cool meet at fitness 1st in like one minutes time?

12:43:59: what

12:44:00: yeah it's cool we will lift weight and talk in strained voices while we lift weights
and I will run like literally 15 miles on a treadmill while you just sit on a rowing machine
drinking one of those weird little triangular paper cups of water and panting like an
exhausted dying dog

12:44:21: have you heard of pubs. have you heard of cafes.

12:44:22: yo I am outside your house already somehow! even though I live a 45 minute
drive away! I am wearing a vest today

12:44:37: please

12:44:38: I bought you a protein shake! we are going to have some fun today while lifting
things up and sweating!

12:44:48: please no

FRIENDS WHO KEEP FALLING OUT WITH YOU, MAINLY BECAUSE THEIR LIVES ARE QUITE
BORING (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 5)

You ever been in a social situation—a party, you know, a big fun meet up at a pub, hanging
outside work while you wait for the fire alarm to stop going off—and you see someone you
know from a distance and they give you a tight little smile and then turn to the person they
are talking to like: no. You ever get that? Those people are mad at you. And they are always
mad at you for some perceived slight, rather than a real reason. You forgot to wish them
happy birthday on Facebook even though you said it in real life with your mouth, that sort
of thing. You didn't invite them to something. You said their grandma is "an extremely old
and smelly-ass old bitch" and that the biscuits she made were "exceptionally shitty." That
sort of thing.

I have a theory, and it is five people I know are mad at me, constantly. The people who are
mad at me change, but they switch in and out like K'Nex pieces: someone is mad, then their
anger cools because it was never based on anything anyway, and then someone else gets
mad. In and out, like a sewage pipe, a constant energy of anger. Turds flowing into the sea.
That is my theory, and if you don't like it, you just became one of the five.

ALL YOUR OTHER FRIENDS (NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR LIFE: 14, CONVENIENTLY
THE REMAINING NUMBER OF FRIENDS YOU NEED TO MAKE UP 150, AS IN LINE WITH THE
MAJOR CONCEPT OF THIS ENTIRE LIST)
Oh, you know the ones. They do those things. You know. Those things you don't like.
Dreadful, those ones. Ughhhh, right? The worst.