Things they should have told you.

August 6, 2008 11:59 PM

Things they don't tell you.
posted by Dipsomaniac (71 comments total)

It's like an illustrated bible for furries.

Also: your parents brought you into the world knowing full well that you would die someday.
posted by Avenger at 12:06 AM on August 7

I love Subnormality, but this was pretty weak and obvious.
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 12:07 AM on August 7

If you turn out to be pretty, people will view you with resentment because everyone assumes that attractive people are just charming their way through life and thus a bunch of empty-headed parasites. You will not find any sympathy, because everyone knows that attractive people have perfect lives. This will result in a bitter, lonely existence

Not true, Lots of people will feign sympathy to get into your pants, and lots more people will automatically have sympathy for the same reason without realizing it, and so their sympathy will feel sincere, even to to them.
posted by delmoi at 12:10 AM on August 7 [9 favorites]

Way to make a bleak insight even bleaker, Delmoi.
posted by GooseOnTheLoose at 12:24 AM on August 7

Backing up delmoi: studies show that better looking people get quicker attention and better care in emergency rooms.
posted by orthogonality at 12:24 AM on August 7

Early to bed and early to rise
makes you a member of the working class.
Wealthy people get to sleep in.

Actually all the wealthy people I know stay up late and wake up early. Lots of smart, artistic, and ambitious people I know, too.
posted by sourwookie at 12:36 AM on August 7

Not true, Lots of people will feign sympathy to get into your pants,

Actually, I'm astounded daily by the novelty and cleverness people utilize just to get into my pants.

But that's just me--I ain't judging.
posted by sourwookie at 12:39 AM on August 7

None of these struck me as true at all and all of them struck me as easily refutable.

The whole thing was a bit depressing and seemed to me like that world-view and easy generalization of that bitter friend of yours who has been kicked around by life a bit too much.
posted by vacapinta at 12:40 AM on August 7 [5 favorites]

Wealthy people get to sleep in.

The funny thing is that this directly contradicts another point where he points out that wealthy (successful) people work themselves to death and poor (unemployed) people have it easy.
posted by vacapinta at 12:45 AM on August 7

If you turn out to be pretty, people will view you with resentment because everyone assumes that attractive people are just charming their way through life and thus a bunch of empty-headed parasites. You will not find any sympathy, because everyone knows that attractive people have perfect lives. This will result in a bitter, lonely existence.

It's not really insightful, it's claiming that everyone realizes that they're susceptible to the halo effect. Not even remotely true. Some people understand the halo effect; the vast majority have no clue.
posted by mullingitover at 12:51 AM on August 7

I don't know, I laughed a bit at many of them. Of course, I don't expect great insight on life from a webcomic either. Worth the minute and a half of my life it took to read, and far more rewarding than any of the hours I have wasted, say, watching David Lynch's films.
posted by IvoShandor at 12:53 AM on August 7 [3 favorites]

I like the one with the lion contemplating eating his antelope buddy.
posted by XMLicious at 12:59 AM on August 7

This one is the only funny one for me, but it is definitely funny (in other cases, the animal people weren't really motivated).
posted by leibniz at 1:01 AM on August 7

shit!... well at least we agree
posted by leibniz at 1:03 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Unoriginal. Reminds me of Life in Hell but without the funny. And David Lynch is a Brilliant! I like to watch Blue Velvet.
posted by longsleeves at 1:25 AM on August 7

longsleeves: I will give him credit for Blue Velvet, and Eraserhead was cool. But he lost me later on, everything he does is disjointed film noir wanna-be nonsense. It drives me crazy.
posted by IvoShandor at 1:36 AM on August 7 [2 favorites]

this just reminds me of desiderata and books telling you how to live a successfull life without chicken soup, husbandry or old wives' tails, i.e. the meaning of Liff.
posted by toliman at 1:38 AM on August 7

The author should take his own advice, yes?
posted by naju at 1:44 AM on August 7 [2 favorites]

Errr... have you ever read The Meaning of Liff? It is nothing like what you seem to think it is.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 1:50 AM on August 7 [4 favorites]

"You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 2:02 AM on August 7

pessimistic (though generally accurate) life advice:

01. The universe is unbelievably vast, mostly empty, and there's no apparent reason why it exists.
02. Neither infinite nor finite time/space is satisfying.
03. There is no magic.
04. You are your body and you will die.
05. Even compared to the number of people in your city you are insignificant, let alone the planet or the whole of history.
06. There are dozens of ways you could be killed at any given time. Count them!
07. Everyone shits and farts.
08. People are often unfaithful and neurotic, even unattractive people.
09. People will judge you within a few seconds of meeting you and rarely change their minds.
10. It's almost impossible to convince anyone of anything unless they are already pre-disposed to believe you.
11. People respond more to authority than reason.
12. Authority is best backed up by violence.
13. Everyone believes in something just because they like to believe it.
14. Some people will dislike you for little or no good reason.
15. At least 90%* of all cultural products are rubbish *+/-10% depending on your standards.
16. The world doesn't want you to be great. It wants its burger on time.
17. Even people who are in love get into terrible arguments. Imagine what people who aren't in love do to each other.
18. Everyone is lazy except (some) crazy lonely people.
19. Most people don't know what they're supposed to be doing and are faking at something.
20. You will always have to do something that you don't like for money, even if in other ways your job is good.
21. Bureaucracy is inescapable and the only thing you can do is hunker down and do it bit by bit.
22. Nearly everything is priced above its value, because after a while you'll get used to it.
23. The only way to do anything well is to work really really hard.
24. As soon as you complete something you'll just have to start on something else.
25. Everyone has a boss.
26. Whatever it is, somebody else can beat you at it, or will do.
27. Freedom and love tend to contradict each other.
28. The things you long for will not give you joy, but relief from longing.
29. True joy is brief and unreliable.
30. There are always reasons to be sad, angry, scared, and amused.
posted by leibniz at 2:34 AM on August 7 [49 favorites]

Bitter, not even funny.
posted by Wanderlust88 at 2:54 AM on August 7

These are all things I've been told dozens of times before.

But then, if you haven't lived a totally isolated life, there isn't anything that somebody hasn't already told you by the age of 30.

But then you already knew that.
Unless they didn't tell you.
posted by wendell at 3:28 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Blahblahblah. Life is a sexually transmitted fatal disease. Blahblahblah.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:51 AM on August 7 [2 favorites]

awww, did de sad wittle guy make hisself a comic book to feel aww bettah
posted by poppo at 4:23 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

I really want to relabel it GNUadvisor v.02
posted by a robot made out of meat at 4:39 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

studies show that better looking people get quicker attention and better care in emergency rooms.

Studies even show that attractive people will get more anonymous help, even when the helper and the attractive person have zero chance of ever meeting.
posted by DU at 4:45 AM on August 7

If you breathe on a spoon, it will stick to your forehead.
posted by swift at 4:53 AM on August 7 [2 favorites]

Actually, I'm astounded daily by the novelty and cleverness people utilize just to get into my pants.

Eventually one has to hire a Pants Bouncer.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:58 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Yea, we're all smarter and cooler than the fuzzy bitter animals. They don't believe in Candy Moiuntain. Shun the non-believers. Shuuuuuun!
In other news, I thought it was pretty good but I'm a frickin unicorn.
posted by ElvisJesus at 5:05 AM on August 7

Cynical and lame.
posted by oddman at 5:22 AM on August 7

Someone call Baz Luhrmann; I think we've got his next big club hit here.
posted by Spatch at 5:27 AM on August 7

It doesn't look like the guy in the "early to bed, early to rise" picture went to bed early.
posted by Flunkie at 6:17 AM on August 7

I sorta want This one in a subway sized poster for my home and office.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:18 AM on August 7

31. Bitter weirdos end up drawing sarcastic comics.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:08 AM on August 7

Disiderata? Pah! Deteriorata!
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:20 AM on August 7

optimistic (though generally accurate) life advice:

01. The universe exists, even though you didn't ask for one.
02. Learning how to make the most of the finite time and space granted to you is a satisfying lesson.
03. Everything is made of magic.
04. Your body is an amazingly versatile instrument and a surprisingly durable vessel.
05. It is a testament to the power of human bonding that even though individual humans theoretically seem expendible, they care about each other enough to establish lasting relationships, and on the large scale even codified human rights and a widely shared sense of basic morality.
06. You could get hit by a bus today, but it's not very likely.
07. Everyone shits and farts.
08. Learning how to trust and how to be trusted is a difficult but rewarding thing.
09. First impressions make an impact, but it is perfectly possible to change your mind about someone. Especially good humans do it all the time.
10. It is perfectly possible to change someone's mind if you can get them to see for themselves - not tell them - why what you're saying is true and important.
11. It is perfectly possible to think for yourself and simultaneously exist in a societal framework with authority structures.
12. Violence is pretty ineffective for solving macro-scale problems.
13. The human capacity of faith is testament to the species' ability to anticipate future events and circumstances, and hope in dire times.
14. Everybody needs a hug.
15. Just because there are a lot of bad films doesn't make your favourite any worse. There's so incredibly much great art and entertainment out there.
16. You can decide not to care about what the world wants from you, and just carve your own path.
17. People fall in love.
18. Laziness did not prevent societies from emerging, stuff from being built, you from reading this, or you from having a good life. So I'll guess that you aren't really that lazy.
19. Asking questions is a good thing, and there is no such thing as a dumb one.
20. We are the richest, freest people in the history of people. We're generally not cold, hungry or being eaten, and in our free time we can draw comics or fly kites. And with the money we make doing things we may or may not like to do we can pay other people to do things they may or may not like to do.
21. Everyone is just doing their job - but asking questions is a good thing. With a smile and a good plan, real change is possible.
22. You really don't need or want so much stuff.
23. The only way to do anything well is to work really really hard.
24. As soon as you overcome a challenge a new challenge is right around the corner.
25. Everyone's boss has a boss. Who shits and farts.
26. You can't be the number one in everything, but that doesn't prevent you from striving for self-improvement and learning new skills.
27. Love is the sweetest cage.
28. Abandoning your useless desires is enlightening.
29. True joy exists.
30. There are always reasons to be happy, caring, brave, and amused.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:23 AM on August 7 [63 favorites]

eponysterical
posted by longbaugh at 7:27 AM on August 7

gnfti: I was actually typing out a similar list. For 9 and 10 I had

9. Starting off as nothing more than a brief glance, lifelong loves and friendships can form.
10. No matter how odd and strange your beliefs, there are undoubtedly lots of people out there who agree with you!
posted by vacapinta at 7:46 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

I'll chime in saying I really liked page 356 (lion/antelope) too. The rest were amusing in an "early morning head not quite screwed on right yet" way...
posted by birdsquared at 7:47 AM on August 7

My favorite:

Early to bed and early to rise makes you a member of the working class. Wealthy people get to sleep in.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:18 AM on August 7

04. You are your body and you will die.

"Your body" is a temporary organization of matter and energy. "You" do not exist, as far as the universe is concerned. Science has been unable to determine any discrete division between you and the universe. All of the matter in the universe was here when it was created. Death and extinction are impossible.

05. Even compared to the number of people in your city you are insignificant, let alone the planet or the whole of history.

I would suggest that everyone and everything in the universe has "significance."

Son of Sam. BTK. Mohammad Atta. Timothy McVeigh. John Yee. It's not that hard to be significant, if your aim is to unleash horror upon modern civilization. Just make a bomb and detonate it in an urban metropolis somewhere. 50 lives, 100, 1,000 ... how many do you have to kill before being significant?

I thought the comic was mixed. But aren't we all.
posted by mrgrimm at 8:19 AM on August 7

I thought Leibniz was supposed to be an optimist; isn't that why Voltaire caricatured him through Doctor Pangloss?
posted by ornate insect at 8:21 AM on August 7

nice to see those turned around gnfti (and vacapinta), though I'm not entirely convinced.

mrgrimm:
Death and extinction are impossible.
Sir, if I may refer you to proposition 13.
posted by leibniz at 8:36 AM on August 7

All of the matter in the universe was here when it was created. Death and extinction are impossible.

I doubt you even really believe this. Do you look both ways before crossing the street? If so, why?
posted by Justinian at 9:01 AM on August 7

See also: despair.com
posted by blue_beetle at 9:05 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

There's a huge difference between thinking about something and actually doing it. Try to choose appropriately.

Damn it, this would have been useful advice to have before the whole everything-around-me-needs-to-be-on-fire incident.
posted by quin at 9:20 AM on August 7

Awwww, gnfti's list made this thread worth it! The comic itself started off amusing and then made me want to curl up in a ball and tell my kitty that it's ok, life isn't THAT bad!

HUGZ!
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:25 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Grimm is right, in that the cells in our body are completely turned over within the span of a few weeks. There is no permanent "you" aside from a messy system of organization. Conveniently, that system is telling you not to off yourself. But the only death that occurs is the death of that intangible organization.
posted by naju at 10:07 AM on August 7

There is no permanent "you" aside from a messy system of organization.

Okay, thanks a lot, now the Neil Diamond song "I am, I said" is running through my head.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:21 AM on August 7

naju--somatic organization is not messy or intangible unless it's viewed dualistically. If the brain is seen as embodied, and the mind is seen simply as what the brain does, the functional unity of the individual is no longer a metaphysical conundrum. The self-identity of a given object over time is likewise not an a priori ontological "problem" if one begins to re-frame the question pragmatically and linguistically: our language makes certain ontological commitments to notions of permanence and selfhood, and does so because we do not have the luxury of re-creating language after every Heraclitean flux in the river of our own time-consciousness. This relative fixity of language is a stop-gap measure for us to make sense of the mind-independent world, but is sometimes confused as being the world itself. Everything, even our most cherished and hard-one scientific laws, is subject to potential revision. The lesson here is that our knowledge of the world is inherently provisional. But this should only seem terrifying if one still dwells in the absolutist atmosphere of 18th century philosophy. The limits of our thought are the limits of our bodies, and the limits of our bodies are the limits of our selves; the limits of our knowledge about the world and our selves are the pragmatic limits of our language.
posted by ornate insect at 10:26 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

hard-won, not hard-one
posted by ornate insect at 10:27 AM on August 7

Ornate - I'm not sure we're actually disagreeing. I was referring simply to biological death, and the organization of matter and energy (matter is tangible, I suppose, so I should take that back.) I don't mean to make any flat statements about identity aside from the physical one. Personally, I find our limits to be cause for celebration, not terror - there are vast possibilities outside of our limited perception - and I'm more of a nondualist than a dualist. :)
posted by naju at 10:47 AM on August 7

naju--I'm sure we don't disagree; I think I was trying to tease out a new way of thinking about the strange question of the relative impermanence/permanence of selfhood--whether selfhood is viewed biologically, psychologically or phenomenologically: a derail if ever there was one...
posted by ornate insect at 11:03 AM on August 7

I'm going to print both leibniz's & gnfti's lists and put them side by side on my mirror (if I may). Perspective.
posted by green herring at 11:09 AM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Ah, we cool then!
posted by naju at 11:10 AM on August 7

I'm going to print both leibniz's & gnfti's lists and put them side by side on my mirror

Ah, the middle way.
posted by ornate insect at 11:12 AM on August 7

I stopped reading at the "Tall people only date other tall people" page. Stuff and nonsense, I say, and easily refuted. Hell, my (tall) girlfriend had a grudge for years about "short women stealing tall men."
posted by jtron at 11:38 AM on August 7

Hell, my (tall) girlfriend had a grudge for years about "short women stealing tall men."

Tall men dating short women is common. Tall women dating short men is very uncommon. Not unknown, but it sure isn't the way to bet.
posted by Justinian at 12:42 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Almost everyone in the world watches television, and millions of people are involved in television production, and yet there is not a single show on TV that accurately depicts real life.

Pardon, but I beg to differ.
posted by papafrita at 1:32 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Eventually one has to hire a Pants Bouncer.

Hire?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:24 PM on August 7

Here's the Cliff's Notes on that thing:

"KILL YOURSELF LOL"
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:53 PM on August 7

Tall women dating short men is very uncommon. Not unknown, but it sure isn't the way to bet.

Depending on how you define "short", I've done this, and it's indeed quite regrettable. If I had a nickel for every guy who told me "Oh, you're six feet tall? I'm about six feet tall too!", then managed to charm me into liking them (for awhile, anyway), I'd have... a pile of nickels that I could throw at something. Like my ex-husband.

I could never quite get over that feeling of wanting to be hugged by larger arms than mine. It just didn't feel like they were very manly when I could crush them so easily.

I learned my lesson, and those days of settling are over with. Now I'm with someone who exactly the same height as me, and who has slightly bigger arms. Couldn't be happier.

Anyway, good comic, but I wish it had been more bitter and witty.
posted by marble at 6:00 PM on August 7

Things they should have told you:

1. You'll be expected to read Shakespeare in school and there's no way around it.
2. Everything requires practice.
3. It's either edible, fuckable or fucked.
4. The opposite of happiness is boredom.
5. There is nothing cooler than imaginary numbers.
posted by storybored at 7:42 PM on August 7

Is it wrong to compare how many favourites mine and gnfti's lists are getting? He's clearly beating me (currently 38 v 49). Does this mean there are more optimists than pessimists on metafilter, or just more people grasping at every possibility to make themselves happier?
posted by leibniz at 12:09 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]

Eventually one has to hire a Pants Bouncer.

Hire?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:24 PM

you can pay them however you like, your Pants Bouncer is still working.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:43 AM on August 8

Was this supposed to be depressing? Is it some great mind-killing revelation that some things aren't good?
posted by Solon and Thanks at 10:36 AM on August 8

Though I don't really agree with the sentiments, I found it amusing, I guess because I've worked in the children's dept. at a library for over five years, and I am used to seeing "things they do tell you" (so to speak). So the illustrations were kinda fun for that reason. I especially liked the first one, but

The comic itself started off amusing and then made me want to curl up in a ball and tell my kitty that it's ok, life isn't THAT bad!

yeah.
posted by manguero at 1:04 PM on August 8

leibniz: "Is it wrong to compare how many favourites mine and gnfti's lists are getting? He's clearly beating me (currently 38 v 49). Does this mean there are more optimists than pessimists on metafilter, or just more people grasping at every possibility to make themselves happier?"

It's not wrong, but you are missing out on all the fun.

Remember, the glass is always half fool!

XO
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:31 PM on August 8

Or maybe we're just deceiving ourselves, in which case don't tell us, I don't want to make another list right now, I'm busy flying kites.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:35 PM on August 8

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you’ve got to be kind."

Makes any other "advice for life"-type thing seem like the Code of Federal Regulations, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:24 PM on August 12