Don't Use Your Turn Signals

Communication is an important aspect of modern life, whether you are compromising with your girlfriend, ordering a salad with dressing on the side, or mentally willing  your dog to call 911 as you are being forced into a van.

Quick girl, get help! Also, call work and tell them I can't come in today. And see if you can find someone to sub for me at volleyball tonight!

One place that many people expect you to communicate is when you are operating a vehicle. Well, like I often tell waiters as I don’t tip them, I defy expectations! The clearest path to non-communication on the road is to not use your turn signals. What is a car, but a 3000 pound bomb made of steel and glass that we race around in? Some people argue that signalling helps avoid car crashes and even saves lives, but what they don’t want you to know is that turn signals have their faults, too.

Useless buttons and levers can be tempting...it's best to just remove mechanisms like this altogether.

The average driver uses their signal about 24 times on an average trip. While this may not sound too bad, keep in mind that flipping that switch takes 2 full seconds...each time! The result is that people can waste upwards of one minute of their drive on signalling. That is time that could have been spent adjusting the temperature, replying to a text, or doing a third thing that probably could have waited for later. You can’t afford to burn that kind of time. Signalling is pointless. You know what way you are turning, right? That kind of information is no one else’s business. The people behind you can be responsible for their own safety, just like you. You won’t ever get into an accident, unless some idiot cuts in front of you with no warning.

Be a Ball Hog

Recreational sports allow adults to exercise together while proving how much they know about obscure rules. I met a cute girl the other week while screaming about how long you can hold a dodgeball before throwing it (10 seconds, of course).  Friendships are forged and foregone in these matches,  pitting human beings against each other in savage competitions.

Most of my beer league softball games end like this.

An easy way to be annoying in these situations is to be a ball hog. Sure,  you are playing a team sport for fun,  but do you really want to rely on other people to not mess up? That’s how George W.  Bush was elected (well, that and electoral fraud).  Look at these people… no one here could ever go pro.  Well,  maybe you could have. You’re naturally athletic,  right?  These games will give you a chance to prove to everyone that you don’t have to make the high school basketball team in order to be a baller.  

In 2000, this guy hogged all the votes in Florida.

You could pass the ball,  but is Clark really going to score from over there?  He probably won’t even catch the ball. You’re better off going for another 3 pointer.  One of them is bound to go in soon.  If you ever don’t have the ball,  a great way to get it back is to play someone else’s position as well as your own.  The ball was headed straight for Jenny and she called it,  but by pretending to not hear her,  you can be the hero of the game! After the match,  be sure to condescend everyone and tell them how great their teamwork was. Go Sports!

Force People to Dance at Parties

Parties can often be a minefield of awkwardness. Guests are in an unfamiliar setting, surrounded by people they don’t know, and are eating all kinds of gas-inducing junk food. I think we can all agree: everyone hates parties. That’s why I work so hard to not get invited to any.

A party with my ideal guest list.

On the rare occasion that I do have to go to one, I always make a point to force people to dance.  Party-goers are all about blending in and looking cool in front of strangers, so making them bust a move in a room full of people is the perfect way to induce anxiety. Besides, what are you going to do instead, sit comfortably and enjoy an intimate conversation with a new friend?

Look at these miserable people. Don't they know that they could be dancing right now?

I have found that the best way to make someone dance is to drag them into the middle of the room and clap aggressively at them. Who cares if she doesn’t know the song or has a crippling fear of movement? Make sure that lots of people are watching, and disregard any objections that your target makes. Now he is stuck. At this point, refusing to dance would brand him as a wet blanket for the rest of the night. His dignity belongs to you! The last step is to simply enjoy yourself as your new enemy does a half-hearted robot.

Yeah...exactly.

Take Two Seats on a Crowded Bus

Public transportation: For many, it is an essential service where people sacrifice the comfort and convenience of a car in order to reduce traffic, help the environment, and save money. For us, it is a daily opportunity to annoy our fellow man.

A great way to drive people crazy. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

When people board a bus or subway, they enter a social contract. Most of the rules are not written down anywhere, but we all are aware of them. For example, no one has ever told you not to stare at the person across from you on the bus, but you know to not do it (unless they are really good looking, of course (or really bad looking (like you know those people whose eyes are crazy close together? And you wonder “Can they even see me? I wonder what their vision is like. It can’t be 20/20. right?”))). The most sacred unwritten law of public transit has to be “Thou shall not take up more than one seat”. Luckily for us, if you break an unwritten law, you only go to unwritten jail, which is not a real place.

Sometimes staring on a bus leads to romance. Not with this guy, though.

There are so many ways to take two seats on a crowded bus. The easiest method is to simply be overweight (due to a medical condition, like diabetes or pregnancy). Sitting in this fashion is a great way to take up space without even trying! If you really hate cupcakes that much, you could instead put a bag on the seat next to you. This works especially well if there are people standing nearby. It’s a way of telling everyone “Hey, my gym stuff is more important than you” without saying a word. Finally, manspreading has been proven to be very effective at taking up more space than you deserve. Simply find a seat, plop down, and open your legs like you have some kind of inflamed testicular problem.

Poor guy...I wonder what he has?

Start a Conversation with a Coworker as they are Leaving

It’s been a crazy day at work. Four new orders came in this morning, Margerie called in sick, and the sweater vending machine is out of order (Is that a thing? I don’t have a job). It has been one of those days that was so bad that people are looking forward to sitting in traffic later on. You will likely have opportunities to be annoying all day, but the optimal time is just as people are leaving.

4:55 PM- Former President Clinton asks Obama what he thinks of his drawing.

Starting a conversation with a coworker as they are leaving can be incredibly frustrating for them, and equally as satisfying for you! You have so many dumb jokes, boring anecdotes, and half-baked opinions that telling them all within an 8 hour work day is impossible. Stopping someone as they are out the door is a smart way to get in an extra 20-30 minutes of bragging about your intermediate dodgeball team.

Pictured above: The number of people who care about your rec league sports team.

Of course, your victim is not interested in anything that you are saying. You are going to have to fight to keep this interaction going. Your mark may look at her watch or glance and the door. The best defence against these social cues is to disregard them completely. Pretend to be caught up in describing that article you skimmed about why vaccinations are bad. Finally, the most important advice I can give you comes from celebrities who think they know about health: Always Be Talking. If you let your coworker get a word in, I guarantee that they will use the opportunity to say something like “anyways...I should get going”. Remember, if you are talking more than the other person, you are winning the conversation!

Fun fact: The film "Iron Man" was supposed to be released a year earlier than it was, but Gwyneth Paltrow would stop crew members on their way out every night and tell them about the benefits of 'cleansing'.

Read Billboards Aloud in a Car Full of People

Road trips are great because of the little rituals they allow for. You get to eat junk food, sing along to 90s pop,  and make fun of other people’s cars. Simple pleasures such as these bring friends closer together in a confined, intimate setting, which is why road trips are a perfect situation to practice being annoying.

A perfect situation: your friends will have nowhere to run or hide from you!

Reading billboards aloud in a car full of people is such an effective way to bother your friends because of its subtlety. At the beginning, other passengers may not even realize that you are doing it. Everyone sees that sign for the Adult Video Superstore and is saying it to themselves in their heads, but you are going to announce it aloud. You’ll create a sort of mental echo, like when you think really hard in a cave. A few signs later, people will start to catch on. You will receive frustrated glances from the person next to you, and you will catch your friends rolling their eyes to each other. Pay these signals no mind. Remember, ignorance is 90% of being annoying. Besides, they are probably just jealous that they didn't think to be annoying first.

Reading this as "Buffalo Exing" is a nice way to boost your annoyingness

Eventually, someone is going to say something. It is imperative that you arm yourself with a quick comeback Luckily for you, I've heard it all. For example, if someone says “C’mon dude”, you could say “Dude? Would you call me a "dude" if I was a woman!?”. Simple yet elegant. If someone asks “Why are you saying everything you see?”, you could flip the question on them by retorting "Why are you seeing everything you say?". If a person in your car says “This is why I said we shouldn’t have brought Kay on this trip!”, you could respond with “Do you realize how often you say that, Mom?”. Ah, good times.

Never Admit that You Are Wrong

Mistakes: like adding numbers, eventually you are going to make sum. Never before has there been so much to know. We are suffocated by information these days. How far is London, England from London, Ontario? Who won silver in the 2012 Olympic women’s Judo event in the middleweight division? 5 931 kms and Kerstin Thiele of Germany, of course, but what about data that is not common knowledge? No one can know everything, so it is inevitable that at some point, you will make a blunder.

If Kerstin Thiele hadn't admitted to making a mistake, she may have taken the gold.

When you are wrong, it is imperative that you never admit to your error. Not to your boss, not to your friends, not even to your spell chek software. Doing so would expose you as being a normal person, capable of occasionally making a mistake. Others may begin to see you as a relatable human being who is responsible and mature enough to handle being wrong. Imagine what people would say if you were to own up to a mistake: you would lose all credibility in any future arguments. You’ll come home one day and say “Honey, I think it’s time for us to have a baby”, and your wife will say, “Oh yeah, well you also thought that our Chrysler 300 had a 25 gallon fuel tank capacity*! You know what, I’m sick of this, I’m moving back in with my parents in London!” Admitting to mistakes leaves you with a lot of hard questions to answer. If I’m not right all the time, who am I? What is truth, really? Why is my wife so into cars? Do her parents live in London, England, or London, Ontario? Is flying to Canada considered an international flight? What are the liquid allowances on airplanes nowadays? And so on.

*300s only hold 19.1 gallons of fuel.