6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person
By David Wong December 17, 2012
2013, motherfuckers. Yeah! LET'S DO THIS.
"Do what?" you ask. I DON'T KNOW. LET'S FIGURE THAT OUT TOGETHER, MOTHERFUCKERS.
Feel free to stop reading this if your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life and you're happy with your relationships. Enjoy the rest of your day, friend, this article is not for you. You're doing a great job, we're all proud of you. So you don't feel like you wasted your click, here's a picture of Lenny Kravitz wearing a gigantic scarf.
For the rest of you, I want you to try something: Name five impressive things about yourself. Write them down or just shout them out loud to the room. But here's the catch -- you're not allowed to list anything you are (i.e., I'm a nice guy, I'm honest), but instead can only list things that you do (i.e., I just won a national chess tournament, I make the best chili in Massachusetts). If you found that difficult, well, this is for you, and you are going to fucking hate hearing it. My only defense is that this is what I wish somebody had said to me around 1995 or so.
#6. The World Only Cares About What It Can Get from You
Let's say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, "Step aside." He looks over your loved one's bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife -- he's going to operate right there in the street.
You ask, "Are you a doctor?"
The guy says, "No."
You say, "But you know what you're doing, right? You're an old Army medic, or ..."
At this point the guy becomes annoyed. He tells you that he is a nice guy, he is honest, he is always on time. He tells you that he is a great son to his mother and has a rich life full of fulfilling hobbies, and he boasts that he never uses foul language.
Confused, you say, "How does any of that fucking matter when my (wife/husband/best friend/parent) is lying here bleeding! I need somebody who knows how to operate on bullet wounds! Can you do that or not?!?"
Now the man becomes agitated -- why are you being shallow and selfish? Do you not care about any of his other good qualities? Didn't you just hear him say that he always remembers his girlfriend's birthday? In light of all of the good things he does, does it really matter if he knows how to perform surgery?
In that panicked moment, you will take your bloody hands and shake him by the shoulders, screaming, "Yes, I'm saying that none of that other shit matters, because in this specific situation, I just need somebody who can stop the bleeding, you crazy fucking asshole."
So here is my terrible truth about the adult world: You are in that very situation every single day. Only you are the confused guy with the pocket knife. All of society is the bleeding gunshot victim.
If you want to know why society seems to shun you, or why you seem to get no respect, it's because society is full of people who need things. They need houses built, they need food to eat, they need entertainment, they need fulfilling sexual relationships. You arrived at the scene of that emergency, holding your pocket knife, by virtue of your birth -- the moment you came into the world, you became part of a system designed purely to see to people's needs.
Either you will go about the task of seeing to those needs by learning a unique set of skills, or the world will reject you, no matter how kind, giving and polite you are. You will be poor, you will be alone, you will be left out in the cold.
Does that seem mean, or crass, or materialistic? What about love and kindness -- don't those things matter? Of course. As long as they result in you doing things for people that they can't get elsewhere. For you see ...
#5. The Hippies Were Wrong
Here is the greatest scene in the history of movies (WARNING: EXTREME NSFW LANGUAGE):
For those of you who can't watch videos, it's the famous speech Alec Baldwin gives in the cinematic masterpiece Glengarry Glenn Ross. Baldwin's character -- whom you assume is the villain -- addresses a room full of dudes and tears them a new asshole, telling them that they're all about to be fired unless they "close" the sales they've been assigned:
"Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. If you want to work here, close."
It's brutal, rude and borderline sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate expression of what the world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's better to simply let you keep failing.
That scene changed my life. I'd program my alarm clock to play it for me every morning if I knew how. Alec Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that movie and that's the only scene he's in. As smarter people have pointed out, the genius of that speech is that half of the people who watch it think that the point of the scene is "Wow, what must it be like to have such an asshole boss?" and the other half think, "Fuck yes, let's go out and sell some goddamned real estate!"
Or, as the Last Psychiatrist blog put it:
"If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach's cursing at you, 'this guy is awesome!'; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no right to talk to me like that, or -- the standard maneuver when narcissism is confronted with a greater power -- quietly seethe and fantasize about finding information that will out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying."
That excerpt is from an insightful critique of "hipsters" and why they seem to have so much trouble getting jobs (that doesn't begin to do it justice, go read the whole thing), and the point is that the difference in those two attitudes -- bitter vs. motivated -- largely determines whether or not you'll succeed in the world. For instance, some people want to respond to that speech with Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club: "You are not your job."
But, well, actually, you totally are. Granted, your "job" and your means of employment might not be the same thing, but in both cases you are nothing more than the sum total of your useful skills. For instance, being a good mother is a job that requires a skill. It's something a person can do that is useful to other members of society. But make no mistake: Your "job" -- the useful thing you do for other people -- is all you are.
There is a reason why surgeons get more respect than comedy writers. There is a reason mechanics get more respect than unemployed hipsters. There is a reason your job will become your label if your death makes the news ("NFL Linebacker Dies in Murder/Suicide"). Tyler said, "You are not your job," but he also founded and ran a successful soap company and became the head of an international social and political movement. He was totally his job.
Or think of it this way: Remember when Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage? And how despite the protests, the company continues to sell millions of sandwiches every day? It's not because the country agrees with them; it's because they do their job of making delicious sandwiches well. And that's all that matters.
You don't have to like it. I don't like it when it rains on my birthday. It rains anyway. Clouds form and precipitation happens. People have needs and thus assign value to the people who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe and they do not respond to our wishes.
If you protest that you're not a shallow capitalist materialist and that you disagree that money is everything, I can only say: Who said anything about money? You're missing the larger point.
#4. What You Produce Does Not Have to Make Money, But It Does Have to Benefit People
Let's try a non-money example so you don't get hung up on that. The demographic that Cracked writes for is heavy on 20-something males. So on our message boards and in my many inboxes I read several dozen stories a year from miserable, lonely guys who insist that women won't come near them despite the fact that they are just the nicest guys in the world. I can explain what is wrong with this mindset, but it would probably be better if I let Alec Baldwin explain it:
In this case, Baldwin is playing the part of the attractive women in your life. They won't put it as bluntly as he does -- society has trained us not to be this honest with people -- but the equation is the same. "Nice guy? Who gives a shit? If you want to work here, close."
So, what do you bring to the table? Because the Zooey Deschanel lookalike in the bookstore that you've been daydreaming about moisturizes her face for an hour every night and feels guilty when she eats anything other than salad for lunch. She's going to be a surgeon in 10 years. What do you do?
"What, so you're saying that I can't get girls like that unless I have a nice job and make lots of money?"
No, your brain jumps to that conclusion so you have an excuse to write off everyone who rejects you by thinking that they're just being shallow and selfish. I'm asking what do you offer? Are you smart? Funny? Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative? OK, now what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world? Don't say that you're a nice guy -- that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to them 36 times a day. The patient is bleeding in the street. Do you know how to operate or not?
"Well, I'm not sexist or racist or greedy or shallow or abusive! Not like those other douchebags!"
I'm sorry, I know that this is hard to hear, but if all you can do is list a bunch of faults you don't have, then back the fuck away from the patient. There's a witty, handsome guy with a promising career ready to step in and operate.
Does that break your heart? OK, so now what? Are you going to mope about it, or are you going to learn how to do surgery? It's up to you, but don't complain about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks because those jerks have other things they can offer. "But I'm a great listener!" Are you? Because you're willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty girl (and spend every second imagining how soft her skin must be)? Well guess what, there's another guy in her life who also knows how to do that, and he can play the guitar. Saying that you're a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn't make you sick. You're like a new movie whose title is This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is "The actors are clearly visible."
I think this is why you can be a "nice guy" and still feel terrible about yourself. Specifically ...
#3. You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything
"So, what, you're saying that I should pick up a book on how to get girls?"
Only if step one in the book is "Start making yourself into the type of person girls want to be around."
Because that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?" and not "How can I become the type of person employers want?" It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?" See, because that second one could very well require giving up many of your favorite hobbies and paying more attention to your appearance, and God knows what else. You might even have to change your personality.
"But why can't I find someone who just likes me for me?" you ask. The answer is because humans need things. The victim is bleeding, and all you can do is look down and complain that there aren't more gunshot wounds that just fix themselves?
Everyone who watched that video instantly became a little happier, although not all for the same reasons. Can you do that for people? Why not? What's stopping you from strapping on your proverbial thong and cape and taking to your proverbial stage and flapping your proverbial penis at people? That guy knows the secret to winning at human life: that doing ... whatever you call that ... was better than not doing it.
"But I'm not good at anything!" Well, I have good news -- throw enough hours of repetition at it and you can get sort of good at anything. I was the world's shittiest writer when I was an infant. I was only slightly better at 25. But while I was failing miserably at my career, I wrote in my spare time for eight straight years, an article a week, before I ever made real money off it. It took 13 years for me to get good enough to make the New York Times best-seller list. It took me probably 20,000 hours of practice to sand the edges off my sucking.
Don't like the prospect of pouring all of that time into a skill? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the sheer act of practicing will help you come out of your shell -- I got through years of tedious office work because I knew that I was learning a unique skill on the side. People quit because it takes too long to see results, because they can't figure out that the process is the result.
The bad news is that you have no other choice. If you want to work here, close.
Because in my non-expert opinion, you don't hate yourself because you have low self-esteem, or because other people were mean to you. You hate yourself because you don't do anything. Not even you can just "love you for you" -- that's why you're miserable and sending me private messages asking me what I think you should do with your life.
Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own? Only one of those adds to your value as a human being.
And if you hate hearing this and are responding with something you heard as a kid that sounds like "It's what's on the inside that matters!" then I can only say ...
#2. What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do
Being in the business I'm in, I know dozens of aspiring writers. They think of themselves as writers, they introduce themselves as writers at parties, they know that deep inside, they have the heart of a writer. The only thing they're missing is that minor final step, where they actually fucking write things.
But really, does that matter? Is "writing things" all that important when deciding who is and who is not truly a "writer"?
For the love of God, yes.
See, there's a common defense to everything I've said so far, and to every critical voice in your life. It's the thing your ego is saying to you in order to prevent you from having to do the hard work of improving: "I know I'm a good person on the inside." It may also be phrased as "I know who I am" or "I just have to be me."
Don't get me wrong; who you are inside is everything -- the guy who built a house for his family from scratch did it because of who he was inside. Every bad thing you've ever done has started with a bad impulse, some thought ricocheting around inside your skull until you had to act on it. And every good thing you've done is the same -- "who you are inside" is the metaphorical dirt from which your fruit grows.
But here's what everyone needs to know, and what many of you can't accept:
"You" are nothing but the fruit.
Nobody cares about your dirt. "Who you are inside" is meaningless aside from what it produces for other people.
Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it? Do you hear about some terrible tragedy in your community and say, "Oh, those poor children. Let them know that they are in my thoughts"? Because fuck you if so -- find out what they need and help provide it. A hundred million people watched that Kony video, virtually all of whom kept those poor African children "in their thoughts." What did the collective power of those good thoughts provide? Jack fucking shit. Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work.
How many of you are walking around right now saying, "She/he would love me if she/he only knew what an interesting person I am!" Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do? If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month, would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can't read your mind -- they can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life?
Because all I'm asking you to do is apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to everyone else. Don't you have that annoying Christian friend whose only offer to help anyone ever is to "pray for them"? Doesn't it drive you nuts? I'm not even commenting on whether or not prayer works; it doesn't change the fact that they chose the one type of help that doesn't require them to get off the sofa. They abstain from every vice, they think clean thoughts, their internal dirt is as pure as can be, but what fruit grows from it? And they should know this better than anybody -- I stole the fruit metaphor from the Bible. Jesus said something to the effect of "a tree is judged by its fruit" over and over and over. Granted, Jesus never said, "If you want to work here, close." No, he said, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
The people didn't react well to being told that, just as the salesmen didn't react well to Alec Baldwin telling them that they needed to grow some balls or resign themselves to shining his shoes. Which brings us to the final point ...
#1. Everything Inside You Will Fight Improvement
The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they are -- ask any addict.
So even now, some of you reading this are feeling your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say that these seem to come in the form of ...
*Intentionally Interpreting Any Criticism as an Insult
"Who is he to call me lazy and worthless! A good person would never talk to me like this! He wrote this whole thing just to feel superior to me and to make me feel bad about my life! I'm going to think up my own insult to even the score!"
*Focusing on the Messenger to Avoid Hearing the Message
"Who is THIS guy to tell ME how to live? Oh, like he's so high and mighty! It's just some dumb writer on the Internet! I'm going to go dig up something on him that reassures me that he's stupid, and that everything he's saying is stupid! This guy is so pretentious, it makes me puke! I watched his old rap video on YouTube and thought his rhymes sucked!"
*Focusing on the Tone to Avoid Hearing the Content
"I'm going to dig through here until I find a joke that is offensive when taken out of context, and then talk and think only about that! I've heard that a single offensive word can render an entire book invisible!"
*Revising Your Own History
"Things aren't so bad! I know that I was threatening suicide last month, but I'm feeling better now! It's entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing, eventually things will work out! I'll get my big break, and if I keep doing favors for that pretty girl, eventually she'll come around!"
*Pretending That Any Self-Improvement Would Somehow Be Selling Out Your True Self
"Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my manga and instead go to the gym for six hours a day and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore douchebags? Because THAT IS THE ONLY OTHER OPTION."
And so on. Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.
Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created.
It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. See, I created something.
Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create -- be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career.
Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never produce anything, it will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made.
Read our article comments -- when they get nasty, it's always from the same angle: Cracked needs to fire this columnist. This asshole needs to stop writing. Don't make any more videos. It always boils down to "Stop creating. This is different from what I would have made, and the attention you're getting is making me feel bad about myself."
Don't be that person. If you are that person, don't be that person any more. This is what's making people hate you. This is what's making you hate yourself.
So how about this: one year. The end of 2013, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked.
But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people.
"I don't have the money to take a cooking class." Then fucking Google "how to cook." They've even filtered out the porn now, it's easier than ever. Damn it, you have to kill those excuses. Or they will kill you.
The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You In School By David Wong June 21, 2010

By the time you're 30, you'll be hit with the crushing truth of just how much the grownups didn't teach you when you were in school. And, while liberals and conservatives haggle over whether public schools need more funding or more lessons on the Ten Commandments, we think all can agree there are some very basic, useful things that our children really, really should know.
Therefore when Cracked starts its line of private schools, know that your kids won't graduate without having passed...
#10. Sex Ed (for Girls): How to Spot a Douchebag

Young ladies, you're in your teens now and already you have no doubt run into some guys who are being suspiciously nice to you. Likely you have figured out that in many cases, this has nothing to do with them being nice guys and everything to do with them desperately wanting you to touch their boner.
What you may not realize is that over the next few years, a string of rejections will cause many of these men to start hating you. Some of them hate you already, because they grew up hating their mothers and it kind of carries over. Boys are like that.
Now, some of these men will then become members of the Pick Up Artist Community, also known as the Seduction Community. This is a loose club of guys who see females as a collection of walking masturbation aids. They have websites and seminars and chat rooms where they trade tips on how to manipulate you into having sex with them.
They believe the male/female relationship is adversarial in nature, and that sex is a way of conquering you. Thus many of their techniques work by playing on your insecurities, like "the Neg," where they first engage you in conversation, then drop subtle criticisms that will undermine your self-esteem and subconsciously make you want to gain their approval (by letting them touch your boobs). Believe it or not, it works--if you're not ready for it.
This is just one type of douchebag; this class will cover several varieties. And, while we're not telling you not to sleep with these men, the lesson you will learn from this course is that they will put the same effort into making you happy as they do the semen-encrusted sock under their bed.
Chapters Include:
I. Types of Douchebag;
II. How to Tell When He's Lying;
III. Why Your Male Friends Almost Certainly Want to Have Sex With You;
IV. Why There is Nothing to be Gained by Showing Your Boobs to a Camera.
#9. Sex Ed (for Boys): Why Porn is Not a Good Way to Learn About Sex

Young men, you're in your teens now and that means already you've seen several thousand hours of Internet porn. Many of you will soon engage in your first sexual encounter, having no practical instruction to guide you beyond those videos.
Unfortunately, what you see on PornTube represents only what certain men wish sex was like. We're not saying that you'll never meet a woman who enjoys, say, having semen squirted into her eyes, or having sex on camera with five strangers in the back of a decorated van. What we're saying is that just about everything you see in those videos--including the ones that claim to be hidden camera or "reality" porn--is there specifically because real women are not like that. These videos fill a gap between fantasy and reality.
So how do you figure out what to do when you're finally alone with a lady? Well, we can give you the basics, but the rest will be up to you.
Chapters Include:
I. It's a Vagina, Not a Slab of Meat You're Trying to Tenderize;
II. Your Penis Size is Probably Perfectly Fine;
III. Why Your First Time is Going to be a Humiliating Disaster, No Matter What You Do;
IV. Most Women Are Not Sexually Stimulated by Spanking;
V. Every Woman is Different and You Will Only Learn What She Likes Via Practice;
VI. That's OK, Because the Practice is Awesome.
#8. Phys. Ed: Practical Self-Defense

We're calling this course "Practical Self-Defense" but a more accurate title would be, "How To Get Away From Somebody Who is Trying to Mug or Rape You." Yes, "Get Away." Some of you guys who grew up on The Matrix still fantasize about beating the shit out of a street full of thugs in a fight that looks like a choreographed dance. This class will not teach you how to do that. No class will teach you how to do that.
Will not happen.
Oh, there are guys out there capable of kicking ass. They're called criminals. They're good at fighting because they have poor impulse control and anger management, and thus are constantly getting into fights. If you, on the other hand, are going to be civilized and successful parents and homeowners and taxpayers, the odds are overwhelming you will not ever be good at fighting. This fact is thus reflected in our curriculum.
Chapters Include:
I. Why Your Wallet is Not Worth Dying For;
II. Why Guns and Knives Are Not Awesome (Includes Visual Aids Depicting Wounds of Gnarled Strips of Exposed Fat, Tendons and Skin, Plus Graphic Descriptions of Life in a Wheelchair);
III. How to Break Off an Argument With a Hobo Before He Stabs You;
IV. Why You Can't Reason With a Screaming Drunk;
V. Why Believing Action Movies Are Real Will Get You Killed;
VI. How to Tell When That Guy Walking Toward You is Concealing a Weapon.
#7. Industrial Arts: Emergency Repairs

This does not require a great deal of elaboration. Quite simply, there are certain things a person who is about to be living on their own needs to know how to do.
Building a goddamned birdhouse is not one of them.
Chapters Include:
I. How to Patch and Paint a Wall So You Can Get Your Deposit Back From Your Landlord;
II. Identifying Which Wires in Your House Will Kill You if You Touch Them;
III. What to do When You Wake Up to Find Your Toilet/Refrigerator/Hot Water Heater/Air Conditioner/Sink is Puking Water Onto Your Floor;
IV. When to Call the Repair Guy;
V. How to Figure Out if the Repair Guy is Screwing You;
VI. Foreign Objects You're Going to Try to Put in the Microwave at Some Point so Let's Just Get it Out of Your System Now.
#6. Business: Success = Meeting the Right People

All of those successful people you see around town, with their convertibles and huge televisions? Approximately 100 percent of them got where they are because they had three things. All three are absolutely essential, but one of them is almost never mentioned. They are:
* Talent
* Hard Work
* Randomly Meeting the Right People and Not Pissing Them Off
The autobiographies of famous people will do everything they can to downplay that third part, because it has the element of sheer luck. People get offended when you mention it, because they think it somehow undermines the first two. But remember, we said you need all three.
For instance, let's take maybe the most successful movie actor of all time, Harrison Ford. He farted around Hollywood for nine years, taking bit parts without anything major ever coming his way. Clearly talented, very hard-working. Yet not once did anybody look at him and say, "This guy will sell several billion dollars' worth of tickets and action figures some day!" He was just another ambitious, pretty face, in a city full of them. He got so fed up, he quit acting and became a carpenter.
There's a parallel world without this man as Han Solo, and we don't want to live there.
Then one day he got hired to install cabinets in the home of a guy named George Lucas. They became friends. That got him the role of Han Solo a few years later. Click the link; that's a true story.
Decades earlier another Ford, Henry, was just one of many engineers screwing around with early car engine designs until he became friends with a wealthy businessman named Alexander Malcomson who forked over the money to get Ford Motor Company started. This also works for guys not named Ford; Justin Bieber was one of several hundred thousand teenagers singing on YouTube videos before a former record exec named Scooter Braun clicked on one of his videos by accident and got him a record deal.
But everyone already knew he was an accident.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have guys like Edgar Allan Poe, whose legendary poem "The Raven" earned him... nine dollars. He burned so many bridges he wound up basically begging the public for money before dying at 40.
At some point Poe probably met his George Lucas, but made such a horrible impression on him the guy wouldn't return his calls.
"Oh, shit, honey, he's at the door! Pretend we're not home! Did he see me?"
Chapters include:
I. First Impressions are Really Important;
II. Subsequent Impressions Are Also Important;
III. No, You're Not Terrell Owens (aka Why Acting Like a Douchebag is a Bad Investment).
#5. Health: How to Stop Throwing Your Money Away on Snake Oil

Go to the drug aisle in your grocery store. In between the pills and the vitamins will be a huge shelf full of herbal supplements that promise to do everything from helping you lose weight to easing joint pain to making your brain work better.
And it's all bullshit. All of it.
Worse, it's bullshit that we spend $34 billion a year on, almost a third as much as we spend on prescription drugs that actually do something.
Just to be clear: Scientists have spent billions in government money carefully testing the effectiveness of this stuff. Their results? No, echinacea can't cure your cold. Gingko doesn't do anything for your brain, glucosamine and chondroitin won't fix your arthritis. Hoodia gordonii won't help you lose weight.
If it were good for you, it probably wouldn't be covered in horrible spikes.
Don't get us wrong; we completely realize that lots of the drugs we have now were once naturally occurring in plants and that it is therefore possible that out there, somewhere, is a leaf yet undiscovered by science that will cure your diabetes. But if so, these jerkoffs in the grocery aisle aren't going to be the ones who find it.
They're scam artists.
They're so sure their supplements don't do anything they don't do any actual quality control to track how much of the supplement is in each pill. They just throw a little bit in there and shrug. Aren't they worried about people accidentally overdosing? No, they're not. They know you can't overdose on a placebo.
All they're doing is "curing" ailments that either naturally go away on their own (colds, joint pain) so you wind up falsely attributing the relief to the supplement, or they're claiming to cure conditions that are hard to quantify (see supplements for "alertness" or "stress relief"). Snake oil salesmen have been getting away with that technique for thousands of generations.
Students, we're counting on you to make sure that ours is the last.
Chapters Include:
I. Pharmaceutical Companies Are Dicks, But at Least They Use Scientists;
II. Why Hippies Have Never Discovered a Single Disease Cure;
III. "Homeopathic" is Another Word for Voodoo Bullshit;
IV. Just Go See a Doctor You Big Baby.
NOTE: Weight Loss supplements will be explored in-depth in...
#4. Health: Why Losing Weight Requires Some Amount of Suffering

First of all, know that some people are naturally thin. They often skip meals just because they forgot to eat, and/or enjoy hobbies that involve burning calories as a byproduct--basketball, cycling, whatever. They'll never be fat and they'll never have to think about it. They're excused from this class.
Take a walk.
This course is for the rest of you, who will spend your life fatter than what our society considers ideal, and who will forever be uncomfortable in your own skin as a result. You'll spend many dollars on bullshit exercise equipment that promises to make working out "easy." You'll jump on diet fads, eating a bunless hamburger with a knife and fork one week, eating nothing but cabbage soup the next.
Each and every one of these will fail (the success rate for dieters over the long term is close to 0 percent) because they're all based on the utterly false premise that you can lose weight without ever feeling sore or hungry or some other negative sensation. It is not possible.
Students, imagine that in front of you is a castle. That's where you want to be. But surrounding that castle is a moat, full of piranha. The only way to get into Sexy Abs Castle is to swim across the moat and let the little fish painfully chew off hunks of fat. The real situation is exactly like that, only the swim will take years.
Sexy Abs Castle is also heavily guarded.
Your body will get really mad at you when you try to lose weight, because it thinks you're starving to death. You have to go into any weight loss plan knowing that you will suffer, and just have to man up in preparation for it. Otherwise, just live with it. Being fat isn't the end of the goddamned world.
Chapters Include:
I. Hunger is Fat Leaving the Body;
II. Eating Three Square Meals a Day Will Absolutely Make You Fat if You Sit in a Chair All Day;
III. Have You Considered Walking Instead of Driving;
IV. How to Dress in Ways That De-Emphasize Your Fatness.
NOTE: The above class is a prerequisite for...
#3. Home Economics: How to Cook Cheap Food That Won't Kill You

Most of you will gain weight in college. You'll be poor, and cheap food makes you fat, as adding salt and fat is the easiest way to make poor quality food taste good. Ramen noodles, Taco Bell burritos, six-dollar pizzas from Papa John's... all of it is dirt cheap, and all contains way more calories than you're going to burn while sleeping through classes and playing Guitar Hero.
Fortunately, there are ways around this if you're willing to put in a little time. As it turns out, spices are also cheap, as are some meats, and dried pasta, and vegetables. You just have to combine them the right way. But no matter what you come up with, it would be extremely difficult to cook something as unhealthy as a Quarter-Pounder Value Meal.
Chapters Include:
I. Pay Attention to Serving Sizes on the Label, They're Laughably Small;
II. Fat Free Versions of Fat Foods Are Terrible, Don't Bother;
III. Seriously, Fat Free Cheese Doesn't Melt;
IV. It's Hard to Screw Up Spaghetti;
V. Why if You Eat Fruity Pebbles for Dinner, You'll be Hungry Again 30 Minutes Later;
VI. If You Make a Pot of Chili and Freeze Bowls of It You'll Totally Have Like Two Months' Worth of Meals There.
#2. Political Science: Why Talk Radio is a Terrible Source of Information

Politics are boring, and for the 20 percent or so of you who will spend a lot of time following politics, many of you will do so via entertaining political talk shows on radio or cable.
Now, we don't have time to go into the mind-boggling list of idiotic things Glenn Beck has said, and will not laboriously debunk the rantings of the hundreds of other political talk show hosts like him. What you need to understand is that with talk radio and TV, the format itself makes accuracy utterly impossible. It's fairly simple, really. If a political talk show is going to get ratings, it has to have two things in every episode:
A. A clear, simple thesis (ie, Liberals Are Destroying America, Corporations Are Destroying America) that continues through every single segment;
B. Up to the minute commentary on current events.
"Things are happening in the world. But more importantly, look at me."
You see the problem: These two things are going to sometimes conflict.
Even if the thesis of a show is Pie is Awesome, the host is still going to wake up one day and see headlines about a pie recall because some tainted filling killed 173 people. Guess what: he still has to do a show that day about why Pie is Awesome. He will manipulate B to make it fit A, even if he has to lie. He doesn't draw a paycheck otherwise.
Likewise, if the big headline tomorrow is that Barack Obama single-handedly fought and slew Lucifer, Glenn Beck still has to do a show about how Obama is an Anti-Christian Communist out to destroy America. That's what his show is about; that's what the listeners tune in for, that's what his advertisers paid for. If he doesn't follow through, his audience will simply turn the dial until they find someone who's willing to tell them what they want to hear.
So, because a talk show has to, by necessity, sometimes skew or outright lie about current events in order to maintain the entertainment value of their show, trying to learn about current events by listening to a talk show is like learning physics by watching cartoons.
Chapters Include:
I. If the Host Compares His Opponents to Communists or Nazis, He is Crazy;
II. Why Politics Cannot be Simplified;
III. If the Host Uses Derisive Nicknames for His Opponents, He Has Nothing to Teach You.
#1. Social Studies: Life is Hard and You Will Die, Get Over It

We're not foolish enough to think one semester of this course can deprogram years of Hollywood bullshit. That's why we make this a daily class, that continues from K through 12.
Many of you will get very depressed in your 20s, and some of you will stay that way the rest of your lives. Over the years your garage band will break up, you career dream will fall through, a girl will break your heart, you'll be unhappy with your body, you'll lose your parents, your favorite pet will die, you will endure at least one very terrible injury that requires hospitalization and breaks new boundaries for what kind of pain you thought was possible.
And your childhood memories will be exploited to buy vast amounts of cocaine. Deal with it.
The reason why this will lead to depression, where it may not have done so for an equivalent person 200 years ago, is because you were raised on illogical stories where things always work out for the main character for utterly arbitrary reasons. Han Solo can shoot straight, but none of the bad guys can--even though they train more. John McClane beats the terrorists because he has toughness and perseverance--something the bad guys lack, even though they should be equally desperate. If a guy and a girl are right for each other, they always wind up together, careers and geography and personal hang-ups be damned.
Here's the problem: these fantasies were created by adults, as a means of escape from the real world. You, however, have been watching them since you were five--for most of us these were our first impressions of how the adult world works, even if on a subconscious level. You had no context to realize they were bullshit. It sounds frivolous, but that doesn't change the fact that some of you reading this will not survive the long process of learning how different the real world is.
If it helps, try to remember that you're still one of the one percent of humanity that was born in a time and place where there is such a thing as anesthesia.
Chapters Include:
I. You Can Die at Any Moment, Get Over It;
II. Required Reading: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy;
III. Roleplay Exercise: Various Scenes from The Road, by Cormac McCarthy;
IV. Yes, It Takes 10,000 Hours to Get Really Good at Something, But At Least You're Not Scavenging Through a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland.
5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)By Jane Jones, David Wong February 17, 2009
If 80s movies taught us anything, it's that at some point you're going to run into a mysterious relic that lets you switch bodies with other people.
Would you use it? Would you choose to switch lives with, say, Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Dale DeBone? Most people would.
But let's say the artifact doesn't let you choose, but will instead switch you randomly with one of the other six billion people on the planet. Virtually nobody will take that deal, for fear they'd switch with some poor villager in Nigeria.
So what does that say about us? Well, according to experts, it says almost everything we think about what would make us happy is dead wrong. Let's look at the five things we're most wrong about, with some pictures of adorable animals for good measure.
#5. Fame

Go to the little girls' aisle at the department store, if you're not there already. On the shelves you'll see the dominant little girl fantasy isn't Cinderella or even Dora the Explorer. It's Hannah Montana. Playsets come complete with a camera, makeup and a mirror for Hannah to admire herself in.
The girls play with that when they're eight, and by 16 they're on MySpace, pouting at the camera in their underwear and watching the friend requests pour in. In a recent survey of high school kids, 51 percent said their ultimate goal was to become famous.
This is brand new to humanity; for thousands of years, material goods and security dominated. Now, fame is at the top. Obviously part of the reason is the perception that anybody can get famous these days--reality TV and YouTube have proven that you can become a celebrity for doing not a goddamned thing. But there's another, less obvious factor. And it explains why so many famous people are miserable.
So What's the Problem?
Experts say where you find kids who desperately want to be famous, you find a history of neglect at home. Parents were either absent completely or, at best, emotionally distant dicks. It turns out the whole surge in aspirations for fame came right along with the explosion of single parents and "broken" homes. Only half of today's children live with their original two parents.
You can see how this sad mechanism works in the attention-starved mind. The kid is programmed by biology to love a parent, but the parent doesn't return the love. Fame lets them turn the tables on that arrangement. When you're famous, millions love you, but you don't even know their names. It's purely one-sided. They wait for hours in the cold for your autograph, you barely glance at them on the way to your limo. You get to take their love and wipe your ass with it, the same as your parents did to you.

"I love you!" "Your deaths would mean nothing to me."
But it turns out that kind of massive, paper-thin adoration is a poor substitute. Famous people are four times as likely to commit suicide as the rest of us (Hell, you'd think it'd be higher--everybody reading this has seen more than one of their favorite performers self-destruct).
Wait, it Gets Worse...
If you're saying that your parents were awesome and that fame still looks pretty freaking cool, well, we're not done. Studies show nothing is more stressful for a human than when their goals are tied to the approval of others. Particularly when those "others" are an enormous crowd of fickle strangers holding you up to a laughably unrealistic ideal built by publicists, thick makeup and heavily Photoshopped magazine covers.
You could seek comfort from your circle of friends, only now your friends have been replaced Invasion of the Body Snatcher's-style with hangers-on, vultures, unscrupulous characters and plain dumbasses who only want a piece of the spotlight. . . even if it means selling you out later.
For example, have you ever lit up a bong at a party? Were you worried that one of your friends would snap a photo of you, sell it to a tabloid for thousands of dollars and ruin your career?
Well become famous, and then try it.
#4. Wealth

Let's not bullshit each other. You see those ads on the side of the screen? And at the top? And at the bottom? Go look at one of them. We just made $800, baby. Seriously, they're set up to detect the position of your eyeballs. If you actually click on one, we make enough to fill our SnoCone machine with Cristal.
Most of us get out of bed everyday purely because it edges us one step closer to some kind of financial future we want. If we won the lottery, most of us would show up to the office the next day wearing an ankle-length fur coat and enough bling to make Mr. T look Amish, and only stay just long enough to take a dump in our boss's inbox.
So What's the Problem?
Hey, remember when we said earlier that most people wouldn't do the body-switching thing for fear they'd wake up in Nigeria? Well according to surveys, Nigerians are happier with their lives than the people of any other country.
The USA came in 16th.
Hey, did we mention that the average Nigerian makes $300 a year? That's less than a hundredth of what the average American makes. America being the country that hands out 120 million prescriptions for anti-depressants every year.
China is turning into a great object lesson in this, as their economy explodes and incomes skyrocket, but levels of happiness and personal satisfaction are dropping at the same rapid rate.
There's a couple of reasons for it. First, your brain adjusts feelings of happiness downward after you've reached some goal or other. It regulates the good feelings, presumably so that you have motivation to reach the next goal instead of just lounging by the pool for the rest of your days.
The second one is that as social creatures, we compare ourselves to our neighbors. This is why executives can cry about the $500,000 salary cap that comes with taking government bailout money. Their friends are making $3 million a year and live in igloo made out of cocaine. We can laugh at their complaints, but of course then you're giving the Nigerian permission to laugh at yours. That guy made 100 times more than you, you make 100 times more than the Nigerian.
Once you start hanging around the other high earners, you'll want all the stuff they have. No, that's not right--you'll want the stuff that's so much better than their stuff that they'll vomit with envy. As one magazine for Wall Street bigshots put it, you want the stuff that will be "a huge middle finger to everyone who enters your home."

"Yeah, same model as yours. Only covered in solid fucking gold."
But what about sudden wealth, like if you won the lottery, or sold your novel for $10 million? That'd be cool, right, because you'd still remember your former life and appreciate your new riches! Well, just ask William "Bud" Post, who wound up broken and bankrupt after he won $16 million in the lottery. It turns out that while he knew how to handle the stress of being poor thanks to a lifetime of experience, he had no concept of how to handle the new and alien stresses of wealth.
Wait, it Gets Worse...
Remember the whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers phenomenon we talked about with famous people, where suddenly all of your friends turn into leeches? Same here, only worse. With your newfound riches, suddenly "friends" pop up from all over. Cousins who you've never met,
forgotten classmates from school, women who'd never even look your way before, all suddenly in your orbit, complimenting you, doing you favors. Then they casually slip it into conversation that they're going to have to default on their mortgage unless somebody helps out.
Your very own entourage!
Suddenly every relationship is in doubt. Do they actually care about you? Or do they just want a seat on the Bling Train? Would they sell you out to get to your cash?
That lottery winner we mentioned above . . . somebody hired a hitman to take him out, to get to his money. That somebody was his own fucking brother.
#3. Beauty

We know all about this one first-hand. That old stereotype about how comedy writers and heavy Internet users tend to have bodies chiseled out of solid sex? It's true. One visitor remarked that the Cracked office "Looked like a Manowar album cover came to life."

Yes, being physically attractive has concrete advantages. Attractive people earn more, get better grades, have better jobs and find more successful partners than average or ugly people. Strangers are more likely to help them in a crisis. They have wider social circles.
So What's the Problem?
Remember, we're talking about happiness here, not success. For one, attractive people have the same self-esteem problems the ugly people do. Like money, attractiveness is relative and if you're hotter than your friends, at that stage you start comparing yourself to people in the media. You know, like the magazine covers we mentioned before, the ones that that have had the living shit Photoshopped out of them.
In other words, they've adjusted to the experience of being attractive the same as our high income earners have adjusted to having money; they just pick other flaws to worry about. Sure, if you used the magical artifact up there to become Angelina Jolie tomorrow, you'd notice the difference over how you're treated now. But if you were born Angelina Jolie, you'd have no way of grasping it, the same as right now you don't realize what it's like to live life with some kind of horrible deformity (if you do have a horrible deformity, then you don't know what it's like to live with a worse one. Work with us here).
Wait, it Gets Worse...
You know how when the hot girl at the bar tells an unfunny joke, all the guys laugh anyway? Or when the office stud makes a mistake, the female boss laughs it off?
Attractive people live in a world where most feedback they get is bullshit. The compliments mean nothing--they've learned that's just the sound people make when they walk by. That's why studies show they tend to dismiss the genuine compliments they get in other areas (their work, personality, sense of humor, creativity) because it gets lumped in with the same counterfeit flattery they've been getting their whole lives.
#2. Genius

We're using the broader definition of the word "genius" here, meaning anyone with an extraordinary talent or skill. So for instance Dennis Rodman was a genius when it came to rebounding basketballs, but was probably not a genius in the way that Einstein was.
But as Dennis demonstrates, genius--whether it involves writing ground-breaking computer code, picking stocks or writing the dopest rhymes--means one thing above all else: You are forever granted an exception to society's rules.
The fictional archetype for this these days is TV's Dr. House, whose being a genius means he gets a free pass to do drugs on the job, break hospital policy, insult his superiors and treat patients like shit. But don't blame the writers, the real world examples are just as extreme, from Hemingway to Kanye West. Being a genius means you get to do great things, sure, but it's also a blank check for douchebaggery.
Who could turn that down?
So What's the Problem?
Want to know what it's like to live life as a genius? All you have to do is go hang around with the stupidest, most incompetent people you know. Cringe at their stupid jokes, feel the frustration as they fumble even the easiest tasks and fail to grasp the simplest concepts. Being a genius must be like that, only everyday. Everyone is an idiot compared to them. They're living Idiocracy.
We can't imagine what it's like to make friends in that world. Genuine connections will be rare indeed when every honest expressions of thought or feelings on your end is met with a look of dull Keanu Reeves-esque befuddlement.
If you're not the Einstein kind of genius, it doesn't matter, any situation where you're 10 levels above your coworkers is going to be daily frustration. If you're a genius at spreading concrete, that feeling only occurs to you in the form of everyone else being sloppy and helpless. No wonder they wind up treating people like dirt.
Not that you'd have time for friends anyway. Genius takes practice. Lots of it. Shows like House don't tell you that to become as good at your job as Dr. House, you've got to devote an enormous amount of time to working, studying and practicing your craft (at least 10 thousand hours, according to that Malcolm Gladwell book everyone is quoting these days). Behind the genius is hundreds of weekends spent pouring over texts while everyone else was at the party, playing bikini Twister.
All of this is a great recipe for the stereotypical depressed, moody genius who dies alone and bitter.
Wait, it Gets Worse...
If your genius lies in some kind of creative field, then there's a good chance you have actual mental illness to deal with. While only one percent of the population suffers from bipolar disorder, it is claimed that 50 percent of poets, 38 percent of musicians and 20 percent of painters have it. It's just part of the package.
Compare the number of great musical innovators who have died of suicide or drug overdose versus, say, the number of plumbers who have died the same way. It might be better to just stand in the poop all day.
#1. Power
You never hear little kids say they want to be "powerful" when they grow up. Parents don't encourage that sort of thing, since it's kind of terrifying coming from a toddler.
Yet, power is what everything else on this list is about. Fame is about having power in the relationship with the fans. Beauty is about gaining power through others' sexual desire and jealousy. Genius means society needs your skills more than you need its approval. Money . . . well, money and power are conjoined twins.
So it's pretty safe to say that while not many of you reading this specifically aspire to go into any kind of political office, a great many of you do aspire to some kind of power. Maybe you're eying the kind of job where you'll be the boss, or maybe you want to go into law enforcement. Or maybe you're just driven by that bitter, unspoken urge almost all of us feel at least once in our youth: "I'll show them! I'll show them all."
So What's the Problem?
Saying "power corrupts" is stating something so obvious we feel stupid even typing it. It's like saying elevators elevate. If you found out tomorrow your congressman was caught firing orphans out of a cannon, you'd barely raise an eyebrow.
It has nothing to do with the "culture of corruption in Washington DC" the Libertarians are always talking about. You find it everywhere, from the asshole supervisor to the bitter gym coach. Small people driven to mindless, unethical behavior, drunk on just a few drops of bullshit power. They often can't make friends, their marriages end badly, they self destruct. The world is full of these miniature, sad Tony Montanas, destined for a proverbial bloody downfall.
Usually instead of a mansion it's a cubicle, and instead of bullets it's a series of pissy emails
Wait, it gets worse...
The thing is, it's the desire itself that's poisonous. You find that need for power most in the type of person who hates having to obey all of society's social contracts, particularly the ones that require them to not act like cocks all day. These are the people who are only nice guys because of fear of retribution if they do otherwise, so their main goal is to become strong enough that no retribution is possible (this is why sociopaths tend to seek positions of power, by the way).
So it's not just that power will destroy you. It's that the urge itself is bad news. That desire for power is a vicious, ravenous animal and feeding it only makes it strong enough to tear its way out of your belly and go on a bloody rampage.

"So what will make me happy, Cracked.com writers? What's left?"
For the next 10 seconds, stare at this picture of a guy hugging a tiger.
Notice how you weren't worrying about your job during those 10 seconds?
Experts have figured out that the brain has no ability to actually predict your emotional reaction to life changes that haven't happened yet. In other words, you physically do not know what you want. The act of sitting around pondering it is apparently what fucks you up.
This might be because for most of human history, we didn't have time to do that. We were too busy gathering berries and running from wild animals. Now that we've got things so under control that the animals hug us. . . well, we're like the guy up there who didn't know what to do with his lotto winnings.
This may be why studies show friendships, altruism and religious practices bring happiness. It may be that taking the focus off your own happiness is what makes happiness possible.

If that sounds like a mind-boggling, ridiculous paradox, clearly arranged by the gods to torment us. well, we agree.
6 Brainwashing Techniques They're Using On You Right Now By David Wong September 23, 2008 
Brainwashing doesn't take any sci-fi gadgetry or Manchurian Candidate hypnotism bullshit. There are all sorts of tried-and-true techniques that anyone can use to bypass the thinking part of your brain and flip a switch deep inside that says "OBEY."
Now I know what you're thinking. "Sure, just make an ad with some big ol' titties on there! That'll convince people!"
While that's certainly true ...
... they've got a whole arsenal of manipulation techniques that go way beyond even the most effective of titties. Techniques like ...
#6. Chanting Slogans

Every cult leader, drill sergeant, self-help guru and politician knows that if you want to quiet all of those pesky doubting thoughts in a crowd, get them to chant a repetitive phrase or slogan. Those are referred to as thought-stopping techniques, because for better or worse, they do exactly that.
Sounds like:
"Say it with me now, folks!"
"FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!"
"One, two, three, four, I, Love, The Marine, Corps. One, two..."
Why It Works:
The "Analytical" part of your brain and the "Repetitive Task" part tend to operate in separate rooms. But you didn't need an expert to tell you that. You know you can't solve a complex logic puzzle if I force you to scream the chorus to that Chumbawamba song over and over again while you're doing it. Try it.
Meditation works the same way, with chants or mantras meant to "calm the mind." Shutting down those nagging voices in the head is helpful for stressed-out individuals, but even more helpful to a guy who wants to shut down an audience full of nagging internal voices suggesting that what he's saying might be retarded.
Recently Seen:
At the political conventions, notice how they trained the audiences to fill the gaps between applause lines with chants ("U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!") rather than, say, pensive silence to carefully consider what the speaker has just said.
Also, those of you who've worked at Wal-Mart are familiar with the "Wal-Mart Cheer" that begins every shift:
They used to sacrifice a goat at the end, but PETA put a stop to it.
#5. Slipping Bullshit Into Your Subconscious

The rise of the internet news portal has given birth to a whole new, sly technique of bullshit insertion. What They (and from here on, "They" with a capital T means anyone who draws a paycheck by manipulating your opinion) have figured out is that most of you don't read the stories, you just browse the headlines. And there's a way to exploit that, based on how the brain stores memories.
The Drudge Report lives off this. A single anonymous source will report to some news blog that, say, Senator Smith runs a secret gay bordello in New Orleans. Drudge will run the headline:
NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT SMITH'S SECRET GAY BORDELLO
Or perhaps there'll just be a question mark on the end:
SMITH: SECRET GA