BEET Life (vol. 3): 3 Ways to Trick People Into Thinking You're Intelligent

Having a hard time landing a job? Have you come to grips that women will never find you attractive, and you’re too big of an asshole to ever get points for being nice? Well fret not, you can still be a desirable person to society with intelligence. What’s that? You’re a complete moron? That’s totally cool because we here at BRL have developed three clever ways for you to mask your total inability to cultivate any sort of brain activity.

1.)  Wear glasses

The first and most obvious way to trick people into thinking you’re smart is to wear glasses, nay, spectacles. I stumbled upon my spectacles about a year ago, and it’s truly amazing how much smarter I look now than I did without my lenses. This is a great way to go, especially if you’ve already realized your not winning anybody over with your looks. Glasses not only put the image of librarians into people’s minds, but they also cover up some of your face, which literally is masking your hideous facial features.

One of these guys is a mysterious, handsome and intelligent young man, the other one is a fucking idiot.

Now before you go out a purchase the first pair of glasses you see, cool your shit. You have to pick the right kind of glasses to convey the perfect image of intellect. If you do this wrong and choose the wrong pair of specs, you could wind up looking like a bigger idiot than you already are (see: essentially every NBA star in post-game press conferences). You’re going to want a modest frame; unless you’re Woody Allen or Rick Moranis, people are just going to assume you’re a hipster and therefore, an idiot. Just get a pair of glasses that people who can’t see would wear, it’s not that damn hard.

You're doing it wrong, man.

2.)  Pretend you read

Here is another big one – reading. Smart people read, or so I’ve heard. So what you have to do is to put on an illusion that you are a fan of the written word. It’s really not that hard to pretend you read because when people see you with a magazine or a book, they’re going to assume you will at some point read it. Now what you need to do is get a couple of subscriptions to magazines like Time or The New Yorker (you can get Hustler too, but I’d put that in a more discreet location). If you want to get really crazy, carry a newspaper around. When you have these things, place them  around your apartment, where people are going to see them (coffee tables, counters, etc.). Make sure you rough them up a little bit too; people have to think you’ve actually flipped through these goddamn brain puzzles.

Bonus points for leather-bound books, bitches love leather-bound books.

Now on to the hard part, books.  What you’re going to want to do is get on eBay and buy a couple dozen books; eBay is great because you can get beat up, used books for like $4. It is important to be selective about what type of books you’re adding to your faux library. Don’t buy any books you would be interested in reading (that is if you actually read, which you don’t), so that's a "no" to having a Harry Potter book or any other book that was turned into a popular movie. You’re going to want to load up with a combination of older literature (ie: Dickens, Hemingway) and a few contemporary non-fiction works (maybe a few biographies and a couple of political books). Also on Facebook you can list books that you’ve “read” to your about me page. People will be inclined to think you’ve read those books, because no one’s lame enough to lie about reading, right?

3.)  Selective word choice

Using big words is a great way to trick people into thinking you’re smart. (See all these big words I’ve been using in this article? Yeah, no idea what they mean.) But it can be tricky because it’s also a fairly easy thing to fuck up, especially if you’re trying to trick real smart people into thinking you’re smart. But choosing the right way doesn’t always mean choose a big word. For example, saying the word “film” instead of “movie” will instantly make you sound like Roger Ebert. I’ve subtly done this throughout this article (“spectacles” instead of glasses and “intelligent” instead of smart), and I have you eating out my hand because you think I’m super smart.