Dave Schilling

In a perfect world, either writers would all stop writing clickbait, or readers would all stop reading it. This perfect world is a delightful fantasy, because the system is too complicated for our puny human brains to comprehend.

He wants to hang! He wants to chill! Remember when your dad was the cool dad that snuck you a sip of beer on Fourth of July? He’s still that cool dude.

No one will ever love you if you don’t respect them and their wishes. If they don’t want you, they don’t want you. Rejection is actually the best thing that can happen to you, if you can believe that.

So you’ve decided to commit to a single person, and are trying to survive the never-ending temptation of “the other.” A wise choice, young reader, but one fraught with danger. If this is your first time in an adult relationship, then you have no idea how complicated it can get.

“Who are you texting?” “Why can’t I check your Facebook messages?” “Who’s Lindsay and why is she always tweeting at you?” We’re sharing more and more of ourselves, yet we all still expect to be able to squirrel away our secrets.

Without a stranger telling you that you suck occasionally, there’s no check on the narcissism that is inherent in the act of expression. We actually need the trolls.

Pretend apartment hunting is akin to going on OKCupid or Tinder. There are just some things you won’t abide.

30 is it. I’ve pulled out some of the hair I have left stressing about how best to mark this special birthday. Do I have a huge party? Do I stay home and contemplate the meaning of existence? Do I get really, really drunk?

I shouldn’t let television (especially television where dragons exist and women give birth to smoke monsters) sneak into my real-life concerns, but it does tend to give you cause to reflect when people older than you paint such a dire picture of an institution like marriage.

As you get older, it should become easier to compartmentalize when someone is rude.

If there was a Yelp account for “Human Existence,” I’m pretty sure the top-rated comment would be something like this:

At least he knows he’s stupid, unlike Alec Baldwin, who persists in trying to force people to imagine him as a thoughtful, reasoned intellectual.