12 Tips To Trick People Into Thinking Your Smart

Ive recently come across a few ways to trick people into thinking that I am super smart. This is especially useful on social media when you want to impress your friends. 

The following is a list of tips on how to appear intellectually superior, even though your not the brightest tool in the shed, or sharpest crayon in the drawer…

1. Use big words when small ones will do just fine.  Put another way; Employ a grandiloquent vernacular when banal rhetoric will suffice. A superlative verbiage is likely to impress those friends from high school whom scored higher than you on your verbal SAT.

2. Use a lot of semicolons.  It doesn’t even mater if you use them correctly; most people don’t know exactly how they work; so you can get away with it; quite easily. People are stupid; but you;ll super look smart.

4. Use ‘whom’ in replace with ‘who’ every single time.  Most people don’t understand when ‘whom’ should be used, so if you use it often; you’ll look like a genius. Whom is ever going to catch you when you’re wrong?  Figuring out when to use one over the other is incredibly difficult; it requires an IQ of 155 according to studies that I won’t cite here. Plus, if you use ‘who’ where you’re supposed to use ‘whom’, this will give someone else the chance to correct you, and you’ll feel really stupid.

3. Use transitional words like “hence”, “ergo”, and especially “furthermore” when explaining your points of view.  You may come off as supercilious when using said words, but that’s ok. Also, use “said” like I just did here.

4. Use tools like Google Trends to look up how popular words are.  The word “trope” took a precipitous spike in 2010; so most people are already accustomed to being impressed when other people employ it.  The real trick is to use fancy words nobody has ever heard of. If people require a dictionary for every other word you use; you’re doing it right.

5. Continuing from the theme in #4, use an online thesaurus to complicate and obfuscate adjectives.  Just substitute normal words like “careful” with “assiduous”.

Remember this thesaurus formula:  X is a normal word.  Y is the fancy word for it. However often X appears in the Text corpus(how often the word is used in texts globally), Y must be inversely proportioned.  Y divided by X equals Z.  If the value for Z is .2 or lower, you have a decent chance of impressing your friends on Google Plus.

6. When someone shares something with you, be sure to let them know you’ve already seen it. This will reinforce the fact that you are well ahead of the curve.  They’ll feel stupid and you’ll look like a genius for being one step ahead of them on current events.

7. When you post an article or perhaps talk about a book or author, always let them know that you don’t agree with their views entirely.  This shows them that you are capable of thinking for yourself, and you don’t just agree with everything Eli Musk writes about; even though he’s really smart.

8. Don’t ever allow someone to correct you.  If you happen to be wrong always remain intransigent. Use sophistry and logical fallacies to expel yourself from an otherwise rather incommodious situation.

9. If someone said the movie was good, tell them it sucked and the book was way better!  Also never thumbs up a Facebook comment right away. Always let at least 55 minutes pass…  You’ll look desperate…

10. Always try to mention how much you read.  If someone asks you if you watch TV, say something like “No, but I do like documentaries and enjoy reading”, even though you’ve seen every Game of Thrones®, and binge-watched every Stranger Things®  and Breaking Bad™ episode in one day.

11. Always point out people’s flaws in logic and reason, no matter how inconsequential.  If they say something like “Whenever I travel to Seattle, it’s always raining.” you’ll abruptly interject: “Actually correlation does not necessarily imply causation. One can always hear a logical fallacy if one listens closely enough.

When pointing out the fallacy, make sure to use the Latin name, like ‘tu quoque‘ instead of ‘appeal to hypocrisy’. People will think you know Latin.

12. When you ask someone where they’re from, aways say something like “Oh cool, which part? Even though you’ve never been to the Outer Hebrides and can’t even find it on a map.  Or say “Oh, I’ve heard it’s nice there!”, even though you’ve never heard of Moldova.  If they mention a place you have been, get really excited and spend the next 45 minutes talking about your sojourn to Sydney in 2007 and how much you loved the Iced VoVo biscuits.

So; there you have it. No matter whom it is, you’ll have the intellectual upper hand. Whether on Tumblr or with your buddies at Applebees™, these tips are sure to make you seem smarter than you really are. The next conversation you have with someone, you’re now guaranteed to leave with great panache.