Don't attach your car's Lyft mustache to your face and offer "rides."
Dan Winters
It's OK to Tinder While Drunk
You're at the bar waiting for your friend to come back from the bathroom, and you've got a decent buzz going. Twitter's boring and Vine is annoying, so you launch Tinder. Then common sense kicks in. “No good can come from this,” you think, and tuck your phone away. Not so fast: According to social psychologist Claude Steele, Tinder and intoxication are meant for each other.
That's because they both tap into the same kind of behavior. “When intoxicated, you're making decisions based on a fragment of understanding,” says Steele, who published a seminal study on alcohol and social behavior. Most of the time—like smarting off to the giant dude you just spilled a drink on—that approach would be a detriment. But with Tinder, it's a plus: A mere four photos and a tagline, Steele says, forces people to make decisions based on a cursory grasp of the situation.
A sober person might balk at those limitations. Let those worrywarts obsess over their OkCupid profiles! You, on the other hand, should drink up and let your reptile brain do the swiping. —MONICA KIM
Screw LinkedIn Endorsements
So you've got an impressive résumé and you've duped some power players into connecting with you. You still need to master the finer points of LinkedIn if you want to collect any job offers. We asked Steve Ganz, head recruiter for USPublishingjobs.com, how to avoid common mistakes and land the gig of our dreams. Prune your network. Fewer than 20 is a red flag, but more than 500 can be just as bad from a recruiter's perspective. “I figure they're already connected to anyone they'd want to work with,” Ganz says. Endorsements mean little. They're too easy to give, which drastically reduces their value. After all, people can endorse you without knowing anything about you. Get a few recommendations. Testimonials carry some weight, but don't hit up your network unless you want your boss to know you're looking. Don't rush to report a layoff. Lose your job? Hey, you've got more pressing things to do than update your profile. But after two months, Ganz says, it's time to put an end date on your last gig. “After that, you look dishonest." —SARAH FALLON
Respect Thy Neighbor's HBO Go
We get it: You don't want to spring for cable (or Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime), so you use a friend's account. Totally fine—if the CEO of HBO isn't bothered by HBO Go password-sharing, neither are we. But before you log in to your sister's account for that Real Sex binge, remember: Streaming is a privilege, not a right. So heed the rules, mooch.
Thou shalt return to the main menu before logging out. No one wants to fire up HBO Go in the middle of a True Blood orgy.
Thou shalt hold the password secret. Netflix family plans allow for four simultaneous logins, but the account holder gets to decide who gets 'em. (And Hulu Plus allows for just one at a time, so stay the hell off that thing unless your buddy's in jail.)
Thou shalt keep the recommendation algorithm holy. Always log in to Netflix as a sub-user, lest the account owner log in to find their home screen dominated by “more shows like Saved by the Bell.”
Thou shalt not log in during season premieres or finales. Servers have enough trouble coping with demand from legitimate subscribers; don't make it worse. (Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant? Go nuts—Betas isn't crashing anyone's server.) —MARK YARM
Drop That Online Course
If you've enrolled in a massive open online course, you've likely been a model student—for about a week. You're not alone. Up to 95 percent of enrollees don't finish.
But that doesn't mean your slackitude is screwing over the other students. Even if just 5 percent stick with the average Coursera offering, with an enrollment of 40,000 that still leaves 2,000 classmates to interact with.
Timothy Pychyl, author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, proposes a rule of thumb: Finish two assignments before dropping. You won't waste much time, and “you're more likely to give it a fair shot.” After that, you're free to join the millions of dropouts who've come before you. —LEXI PANDELL
Use Emoji
They're cloying, sure, but don't forsake the tiny eggplant or the exasperated bead-of-sweat face for the sake of linguistic integrity. Rather than cheapening language, emoji make it better. According to Tyler Schnoebelen, a Stanford-trained linguist whose dissertation analyzed emoticons, those little symbols can add crucial context, standing in for the smirks and shrugs that help us convey meaning in face-to-face conversation. But emoji let us express ourselves in new ways too—including, perhaps, ones that the previous generation of emoticons could not. A message to a potential paramour followed by a ; ) is about as suave as asking if it hurt when she fell from heaven. The same come-on with a 
to acknowledge your brashness is less obvious. Granted, emoji lack the codification and grammar generally associated with language. That slipperiness, though, is part of what makes it worthwhile. Linguist Ben Zimmer refers to this as emoji's Wild West era; with every new message, we have the chance to play with meaning and experiment with expression. 
—KYLE VANHEMERT
Beg for Money on Kickstarter
Your 3-D-printed, Internet-of-Things-connected, self-driving go-cart idea needs money to move ahead. Behold the formula for a successful crowdfunding campaign. —JAMES MCGIRK
Lettering by Matthew Tapia
Correct Friends Who Are Wrong on the Internet
Alongside the Buzzfeed quizzes, baby pictures, and thinly veiled ads in your News Feed lurks an even greater evil: misinformation. In the past, conspiracy theorists could espouse their kooky ideas to friends—and that'd be the end of it. Now that their insanity can be broadcast to the world (and picked up by less-discerning news purveyors), it's worth calling them on their bullshit. But how do you fight for the truth without turning into a full-time fact-checker?
“Internet discussions suck because we aren't good at having arguments,” says David McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart. “People are having to relearn the tools of argumentation, logic, and civics.” We'll assume you have the logic stuff down. But research into decisionmaking says viral content is all about emotions. So as much as you want to lay down some cold, hard facts, you have to address the feelings that led someone to post the bogus information.
McRaney says a social persuasion technique called Feel, Felt, Found—commonly used by salespeople to “manage rapport”—can help:
“Wow, I totally see why you FEEL that chupacabras are a real threat. I FELT concerned for my goats too! But then I FOUND this video about how it's a hoax …” Then back off—for the sake of your time and your argument. Pushing it just makes people dig in and more tenaciously defend their beloved chupacabras. —GWEN PEARSON
Don't Chat A Question If You Can't Wait For the Answer
Quick Honey | PROP STYLING BY ANDREA HUELSE/ART DEPARTMENT; STYLING BY MINDY SAAD/CELES- TINE AGENCY; GROOMING BY REBECCA RESTREPO/THE WALL GROUP; PHOTOGRAPHED AT PIER59 STUDIOS, CHELSEA PIERS, NYC. COVER: JOHN VARVADOS JACKET; BLOOMING- DALES T-SHIRT. HOODIE: OLD NAVY. MUSTACHE: HUGO BOSS/BLOOMINGDALES JACKET; JAMES PEARSE T-SHIRT. VAPOR: BLOOMINGDALES SHIRT; JAMES PEARSE T-SHIRT.
