1 Attempting to convey your feelings through a serious of expressions and gestures is not anywhere near as cute as sending a stream of emojis. This is basically attempting to communicate solely through charades, which is horrible enough as a game, and even worse as a legitimate attempt at delivering a message. To be fair, so is emoji-only texting, but for some reason, society as a whole has deemed that acceptable.
2 Laughing aloud for a full minute isn’t as socially acceptable as answering a text with ‘lol’. In real life, laughing until it peters out and is replaced by silence is super-awkward. Using it as a response in text is still annoying but at least it doesn’t make you look like a crazy person who doesn’t speak English.
3 Contacting someone at 4am in any form that isn’t a message. This is fine because you probably won’t wake them up (and frankly, if they didn’t mute their phone, that’s on them). But calling them or showing up at their house is creepy.
Related: 8 Hilarious Responses to Ex Texts
4 Telling everyone you can about your crush’s accomplishments. It’s great to retweet it when they’ve got some kind of event going on but this wouldn’t work quite as well if you were to just run around on the street, pointing at them and yelling ‘DID YOU KNOW HIS BAND IS PLAYING AT A LOCAL BAR NEXT WEEK?’
5 Asking someone if they want to be your friend is way weirder than friend-requesting someone. Especially if, after they agree to be your friend, you just start hitting on them super-hard.
6 Making them look at pictures of you is stranger than just sending them a selfie. It’s cute to send them a picture of you and whatever you’re up to. It’s weird to sit down with them and physically show them a bunch of pictures that, for some reason, you keep on your person.
Related: 5 Ways Texting Can Ruin Dating
7 Stalking. Just stalking. A little bit of Facebook stalking is cute before a first date. Spending a week hiding in their bushes before a first date isn’t just bad, it’s illegal.
8 Abruptly getting naked is more off-putting than sending a sext. Sending them a nude pic is naughty and fun. Showing up at their workplace naked will result in you getting arrested. If they work from home, that’s a little better – but it’s very forward.
9 Going back and liking a bunch of their pictures is cute, but if they came downstairs to find you screaming ‘Oh, I like THIS!’ with all their family pictures albums spread out around you, they’d be freaked out. I don’t even have to explain why that’s bad. But digging through their old profile pics and liking a couple is perfectly reasonable.
Related: 5 Things You Do on Facebook That Turn Him off
10 Writing a cute message on their Facebook wall is way better than writing it on their actual wall. Your crush might appreciate a friendly ‘Can’t stop thinking about you lol’ – but not when it’s written in giant letters across the walls of their home.
11 Sending them a package that self-destructs isn’t as good as a Snapchat. Seriously. If you want to send them a pic and don’t want it falling into the wrong hands, just send them a Snapchat. Do not rig up some Mission: Impossible-style self-destruction device.
12 Poking them in real life isn’t the same as poking them on Facebook. Actually, you know what? It might as well be. No-one pokes any more.
This article was originally published on Cosmopolitan.com
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