Friends who always cancel don't like you

FRIENDS who always cancel plans to go out do not like you and are not your friends, research has found.

The rise of ‘flaking’ or cancelling your attendance at a social occasion at the last minute has been blamed on career burnout, communications overload, and social fragmentation, but not its actual cause: your unpopularity.

Sociologist Dr Eleanor Shaw said: “Got those friends who always cancel? Wondering if the fetishisation of introversion in our digital society is the cause? Bet you are, loser.

“In situations like this we experts look at every possible reason, from the prioritisation of mental health to the demands of emotional labour, but at heart the problem is very simple. Nobody likes you. You’re annoying.

“That single explanation covers why your mate Cameron flaked on clubbing at the last minute last week, why your sister blew you out for New Year’s Eve, and why your best friend Alison didn’t even turn up for a quick coffee in Starbucks.

“Essentially they look at their phones, see you, they’re overwhelmed with a powerful need to avoid gazing at your slack face or hearing your whiny voice, and they cancel. Good news is, soon we’ll develop AI that will do it for them.”

Joe Turner of Oadby said: “Right. I suppose I knew that really.”

The age verification form you'll have to fill in for porn: A preview

FROM July you’ll have to verify your age to view internet porn. Here is a leaked draft of the questions you’ll be asked to prove you’re a responsible masturbator over the age of 18.

Do teachers routinely perform sex acts on students in an eager fashion?

If you answer ‘yes’, you will have identified yourself as a naive teenager who does not realise how laughably unrealistic porn is. Porn which you will now be unable to access. If you’re older, and may even have shagged a teacher at some point, you’ll know they just aren’t that slutty, unfortunately. 

Which careers are most likely to lead to sex at work?

Lack of life experience will again give away a youngster’s age if they pick jobs which have spawned their own porn genres, such as store detective, fake agent or taxi driver. As an adult who sometimes uses taxis, you know only too well that the average cabbie wouldn’t notice a stunning woman in the back offering him a blowjob because he’d be too busy moaning about the traffic at Manchester Airport.

Name three hard copy sources of wanking material not classified as porn.

A teenager will wonder what this question even means. The correct answer, as anyone who grew up in the 80s will know, is: the Littlewoods catalogue; the shower/tanning section of the Argos catalogue; and terrible fantasy novels with airbrushed ladies in skimpy armour on the cover with titles like Dragon Riders of Mogradoria

Be honest: are they ‘MILFs’, or just ‘women your age’?

Is a porn star still a ‘MILF’ if she is actually your age – or several years younger? While it is deeply depressing to have to address this, answering honestly will enable you to pass age verification, so you can have a wank to cheer yourself up.

Are you intending to look at porn categorised as ‘Teen’? 

The correct answer is ‘no’, because a young person will fail to see any problem with being attracted to hotter versions of their peers and answer ‘yes’. An older person will (hopefully) feel uncomfortable about looking at porn with a massive age gap and lie about it. This will verify your age and allow you to ogle young women you should really be advising on their choice of university.

Do you wish you had a stepmom?

Youngsters nowadays are exposed to a tsunami of unrealistic stepmom porn. So while earlier generations will never have particularly thought about having a stepmother, thousands of teenagers probably think it involves having a smokin’ hot step-parent who’s also a compulsive sexual risk-taker. If they do your laundry and give you money as well, frankly you’d have to be pretty dense not to want a stepmom. At which point, ironically, your stepmom porn will be cut off. 

What device will you be viewing porn on?

Don’t say phone. Teenagers do everything on their phones and would have sex with them if a built-in Fleshlight didn’t make them unfashionably chunky. The correct answer, of course, is: ‘A work laptop I am now f**king terrified of giving back because no one will believe I only clicked on that horrid BDSM video totally out of curiosity and I didn’t find it sexy and now I’ll lose my job and my wife will leave me and I’ll die alone in a bedsit oh God oh God oh God.’