12 Things You’ll Understand If You’re Funnier Online Than IRL

It might be the easiest thing of all time to crack out the one-liners on WhatsApp but trying to deliver the same joke in person is a whole different task. In honour of being genuinely useless, the below points will probably strike a chord with the people out there who are just 10x wittier behind the glare of a phone. 

1. It takes people about six months on average to work out that you actually have a sense of humour.

Turns out that a deadpan expression and cold, aloof personality aren't exactly qualities that draw people in like magnets. It's literally the shock of a lifetime when this pretty obvious fact hits home for the first time.

2. The #1 rule: Any traumatic human interaction can be transformed into a viral tweet.

Salvation can be found in the unlikeliest of places. Sprinkling a bit of fairy dust on that time you fell down an entire flight of stairs by turning it into a Tweet with 50+ likes? Priceless.    

3. You flourish in settings where only a minimal (ideally no) output of conversation is required.

Group situations are the prime moment to take a backseat and utter no more than five words per 30 minutes. The same goes for group-chats, where you pop up once in a blue moon to reassure pals you haven't died in your sleep/spontaneously combusted/randomly emigrated to Fiji. 

4. If you could forge relationships over text message alone, you'd never experience a dry-spell.

Over WhatsApp, you can be sharp, charming, direct. In person you can be... an idiot. Needless to say, face-to-face meetings have a pretty dismal success rate of around 0.01%. Fab.

5. It takes you a good 10 seconds to come up with a semi-witty - and let's face it, still quite shit - reply.

If someone can wait that long for the conversation to continue, they're a keeper. If they can't, well, they've probably dodged an entire lifetime of agonising silence in all honesty. 

6. You think in memes, GIFS, and (RIP) Vines, and you judge anyone who isn't versed in emoji lore. 

Those animals belong in their spiritual decade: the 20th century. Does it mean nothing to these people that ginger emojis are finally making their way into the public hemisphere? Have they no interest in the cultural impact of a crying poo emoji? 

7. Even if you overthink on social-media, it's a drop in the ocean compared to how much you overthink IRL.

Yes, it's true that each Instagram post goes through about 30 minutes of obsessive planning and sure, emergency measures sometimes have to be taken when a post inexplicably flops. But that is nothing, nothing compared to the complete guesswork of firing off the right responses IRL. 

8. Your Twitter profile is so carefully cultivated that you consider 'liking' something an official endorsement.

You live your life behind a moral code as ancient as it is wise. So, dumb as ever really. "If you want to know what a man’s really like, take a good look at his Likes, not his Tweets" - J.K. Rowling, probably. 

9. You're suspicious of anyone confident enough to crack a joke out loud. In person. With people to hear it.

Who are these monsters and how do they have the audacity to be so self-assured? Baffling. 

10. A fact of life: Your brain-cells will start misfiring in the most crucial of IRL social-settings. 

Interviews? Check. Networking events? Check. Dates? Double check. If guardian angels are real, yours has probably spent the last [insert age] years begging the Big Man for a reassignment. 

11. You've gone through several personality overhauls but still sadly end up being the same person.

Too bad, bish. The hilarious irony of your character being the product of 200,000 years of evolution is that your bloodline is pretty much guaranteed to end with you. Cool. 

12. You long for the day when CyberDyne takes over the world and you never have to communicate face-to-face again. 

Hate to tempt fate but a nuclear apocalypse would actually be sweet, sweet relief. No more phone calls. No more monologues. No more desperately trying to salvage dying conversations. Imagine. 

Anywho. Let's brighten the situation by checking out Connor Franta's social media do's and don'ts: