How to Be a Better Samaritan

The anonymity of the Internet makes it possible to mislead date-seekers on Christian Mingle or drop the n-word in YouTube's comments section with impunity. With thrice daily trips to Brazzers, your Safari history log is already an incriminating evidence room for how pathetic your life has become. That Mac Book Pro might enable your delusional aspirations as a house DJ, but it doesn't have to harm others, too.

Nobody's thrilled about having to take public transportation. It's a filthy, unreliable, and slow way to get from your hellish apartment to your thankless job. This humiliating hinge point of the rat race is made all the more painful by droves of parolees, lunatics, and peaking-on-bath-salts types who treat the subway like a mobile bed and breakfast. Treat the train or bus like a library, where the only acceptable behaviors are silent ones. Do use headphones. Do not try to stab anyone with a pen. You get the idea.

Listen, if you can't get into the club, you have no one to blame but yourself. Before you hit the bouncer with a "Do you know who I am?!" consider wearing a pair of shoes without glow in the dark soles. What are you, 12-years-old? Thanks to Russell Westbrook and Mac Miller, the wraparound line at Lavo looks like general boarding for a Southwest Airlines flight. Nobody cares that you're wearing Maison Martin Margiela, they're still sweatpants. Grow up. Buy a blazer or something.

We get wanting to maintain an aristocratic air for the gorgeous cokeheads, but even the door guy at Tonic East (New York) or Moe's Cantina (Chicago) has to be a bit miffed by their "collar policy." Some places genuinely warrant an underlying class divide, but, for the most part, nightclubs are just breeding grounds for hepatitis, with bathroom attendants and bachelorette parties. If you're an hourly employee with an ear piece and a neck roll, pull the velvet rope for a polite kid wearing Jordans once in a while.

There's really only one person on the planet who knows it's your birthday without a day-of prompting by Facebook. When's the last time you kicked it with the family matriarch? Exactly. Call your grandma now and do a lot apologizing.

In these trying economic times, the best way to positively impact lives is to be a strong leader. If you're, say, a slimy egomaniac who runs a chain of disgusting pizza joints, pony up for employee health insurance. Remember that you make pizza and that you're not important. Oh, and stop putting your face on the to-go box. Nobody wants to see the repelling mug of a sweaty dope when they're about to dig in on some cheese-topped cardboard.

Has there ever been a bigger waste in technology than the iPhone? In theory, it's a device than can streamline and organize means of communication, but, in practice, it's a nerve center for cryptic tweets and Instagram'd meal pictures. There's nothing more irritating than sharing a room with someone who bangs away texts with the keyboard volume activated and a ninja-like focus on their "news feed." Make your off-putting lack of a personality and pathetic need to validate via RTs less noticeable and put your damn phone down. There are buildings and things to look at.

With the exception of butt chugging, nothing reflects more poorly (so to speak) on your character than skimping hospitality personnel. Bartenders, servers, and pizza delivery people can greatly improve your quality of life, so make friends. Be decent. If you want to look more attractive to whoever you're out to dinner with, get better service at whatever bar you're blacking out at, and make the world a better place, simply round up.

Not sure what it is about airport and stadium restrooms that drags us back to our primitive roots, but these places are vile. If you need a reminder for just how little progress mankind has made since Ardipithecus ramidus, visit the toughs at Wrigley Field, or hit the head at the Port Authority. Revolting restrooms are something we all needlessly deal with, but would be easily improved by, you know, not pissing all over the floor. And flushing.