As learned masters of the western literary canon, American females will often fill their social networking profiles with useful bits of life wisdom. While these deep perspectives usually feature noted philosophers and artists, isolated banalities will occasionally slip through. You shouldn’t be Facebook friends with prospects, but in case you are, this list will help you to identify landmines ahead of time.
1. “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” -Marilyn Monroe
Starting off with the big guns. This may be the most overused quote on the internet by crazy drama queens with delusions of grandeur. She compares her life to celebrities and cannot exercise any executive control over her insane emotions, expecting others to just “deal with it” and pick up the pieces. Conventional asshole game will get you far in the feature film of her life, but you will never be more than a supporting character. This girl can rationalize anything.
2. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.” – Teddy Roosevelt
This is often a favorite of quasi-motivated, if uncreative, men. Girls with this quote are likely to be desperate to prove that they can hang with males in personal and professional settings. They’re often hypercompetitive and more manly than average. What does her jaw look like? Is she an aspiring lawyer? Though she may want to dominate you in bed, credit must be given for quoting an American president and not a drug-addicted movie star.
3. “Live well, laugh often, love much.”
This girl is more likely to have a solid family background and reasonable head on her shoulders. The downside? Booooring. This is the one entry on this list that is a self-contained bromide in its own right, rather than due to being overused. There’s also a high probability that she’s fat and/or ugly. You may be better off dating this girl than the tattoo-clad bandchaser, but she is likely to be vanilla and vapid.
4. “But we keep trying. Because you have to figure, if the world’s fattest twins can find love, there’s hope for all of us. Somewhere out there, there’s another little freak that will love us, understand us, and kiss our three heads and make it all better.” – Sex and the City
More of a mid-2000s favorite, if the girl has this dating cliché on her profile she’s at least 28 and rapidly hurtling toward the wall. Her hours spent mimicking Sex and the City have forced her to internalize the commoditization of love and eroded her ability to bond emotionally, but ironically she is still romanticizing her epic search for “the one.” As soon as she finds her “little freak to love her” she will immediately resent that he limits the grandiose lifestyle that Carrie, Samantha, and the others have convinced her she deserves. She will make a dreadful wife and mother. Prepare for the Eat Pray Love midlife ejection. Spinsterhood awaits.
5. “Boys are not worth crying over, and the one who is wont make you cry.”
A favorite among the under-25 crowd. She has been burned many times and sees herself as jaded, but secretly loves the emotional rollercoaster that comes with dating alpha badboys. There’s a reason that she’s put herself in the same situation repeatedly. She purports to want a white knight in shining armor and complains about the lack of “good guys,” but a decent-looking guy with a white collar job is as repulsive as a leper to her. You have to make her cry once in a while, or she will find someone who will.
6. “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” – James Dean
There are two distinct groups who identify with this quote: the first actually lives by the quotation, which is horrifying because their low future time orientation prompts them to bang anything holding a guitar. You can identify this woman by her abundance of tattoos and her generally low-rent existence. For the second type, the life philosophy is completely aspirational: unless they would spend their last days watching reality television, browsing Facebook, and posting pictures on Instagram, their choice of quote belies an inner ennui from a life lived without purpose. Bring some actual excitement into her life and she’ll be yours.
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