Today, our new comment policy goes live. You can read it in full here.

In light of this long-awaited update, we’ve taken a close look at the vastly different ways commenters have expressed themselves in the past, and can now provide this guide to everything else you need to know about commenting on Bwog.

If you’ve never used the internet before and/or are a member of the class of 2016, you might be wondering how to go about expressing your deepest and darkest feelings in the comments section of a Bwog post. Well, it’s pretty easy, as long as you follow these simple rules:

#1

Remember to proofread before posting a contrarian opinion—this is the most important rule on the Internet. You will get called out on your misuse of “their”/”there” and it will invalidate every word of the diatribe you just spent all of Frontiers crafting, 100 percent of the time. No exceptions have ever been documented.

#2

When eviscerating a commenter’s opinions on the basis of his or her typos, make sure to question whether that commenter even goes here. Inclusion of a fun throwaway like “amirite?” or “LOLOL” is optional, but encouraged—it will show the other commenters that you’re one of them, and should be rewarded as such with an endless stream of Thumbs-Up.

#3

Use the word “vitriol.” A lot. People will think you’re thoughtful.

#4

At some point or another, you will know rage after stumbling upon a comment that stands for everything you know and hate about this godforsaken school (Note: by this point, you will refer to Columbia as “this godforsaken school”), and you will want to post a reply.

Your fury will drive you to craft the most beautifully written antithesis the internets have ever seen. When you’re finally ready to share this gift with the plebs, make sure to post it as a reply.  It will otherwise materialize as a new comment just far enough down from the original to make it seem like an isolated, senile rant—and that’s just embarrassing.

#5

Want to know what kind of Lit-Hum allusion will show other commenters that you possess the ideal mix of intellectual prowess, dry wit, and humility, AND you still make time to do all your reading? None—get off of Bwog, and go do your reading.

#6

If you see any combination of the following phrases within a single comment, do not take the bait: “Barnard,” “art history major,” “white guilt,” any reference to race/ethnicity in conjunction with a clearly fabricated statistic about crime, “misogyny” and its derivatives, “social construct,” “bring back Ahmadinejad,” anything starting with “objectively speaking,” and “for the love of god, Bwog, where is Harmony?”

#7

You know how when you click “Track” above a specific comment, comments made by the same user are automatically highlighted? That works for everyone. Save yourself the 20 minutes it’d take you to come up with a clever pseudonym for your follow-up comment praising the intelligence and bravery of your first comment, and the self-deprecatory knowledge that all you could come up with in 20 minutes was “CC ’13″—use a proxy to hide your IP address like everyone else.

#8

Compliment our inevitably blurry cellphone pics and unabashed use of lame puns frequently. Thx<3u