New Rules for How to Behave in Polite Society

The ways we socialize and date, commute and work are nearly unrecognizable from what they were three years ago. We’ve enjoyed a global pandemic, open employer-employee warfare, a multifront culture war, and social upheavals both great and small. The old conventions are out (we don’t whisper the word cancer or let women off the elevator first anymore, for starters). The venues in which we can make fools of ourselves (group chats, Grindr messages, Slack rooms public and private) are multiplying, and each has its own rules of conduct. And everyone’s just kind of rusty. Our social graces have atrophied.

We wanted to help. So we started with the problems — not the obvious stuff, like whether it’s okay to wear a backpack on the subway or talk loudly on speakerphone in a restaurant (you know the answers there). We asked people instead what specific kinds of interactions or situations really made them anxious, afraid, uncertain, ashamed. From there, we created rigid, but not entirely inflexible, rules.

First, if you use EzriCare Artificial Tears, stop and read this immediately. Now, on to less serious matters. Chickens: so hot right now. In other animal news, Punxsutawney Phil better watch his back or he’ll be out of a job and replaced by an armadillo. “Cheese as main course” is a cause we can get behind. Hear what mushrooms sound like. And New Mexico may become the first state with an official aroma: roasted chiles. We shudder to think what New York’s would be.

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