How to behave online, in 84 rules

You — yes you, the person reading this email — are a jerk on the internet. That’s not an insult, because we all are, myself included. At various times in our digital lives, we all have been careless, inconsiderate, narcissistic and just plain stupid. That’s what happens when we have the world shoved into a rectangle in our pockets.

Instead of giving up on the internet and accepting the fact that it’s an AI-fueled cesspool run by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, we decided to do something about it: We created a new guide for how to behave online, featuring 84 new and definitive rules.

We labored over this etiquette update: speaking to experts in fields from political science to social media privacy, jettisoning bad staff opinions with abandon and arguing over hyper-specific pieces of advice (and, when we couldn’t come to an agreement, offering both sides for you to decide for yourself). I hope you learn something — I certainly did. Or even better, I hope you recognize the people in your life who flout these rules and send this guide to them. 

To give you a taste, we’ve included some of the rules in the email below. Don’t take it personally. — Alex Lauer, features editor

12. The boring sign-off is hereby canceled. No more “Best” or “Regards.” Come up with something original. Anything! Anything at all. Options include: “Hasta la pasta” and “On the edge.”

24. Don’t like X? Then just leave it already. It’s not going back to old Twitter, and the man-child running it isn’t going to get better. There are plenty of alternatives, and the more we embrace those other social media channels, the less power X will have.

47. If they haven’t responded to your DMs…maybe stop DMing them. If you’re having a conversation with yourself, just throw in the towel.

79. Stop listening to music, movies, social media or anything else out loud in public. Just because you can stream music and TV anywhere on earth doesn’t mean everyone else wants to hear it.

Last week, we asked you if you think men work out for themselves or for women. About 70% of you said for themselves, and 30% of you said for women.