Whoops! You missed the boat. Maybe it wasn’t cool to debate things rationally in school. Maybe you had too much pride to learn anything from arguments with your peers. Or maybe you simply spent your younger years engaged in activities-other-than-thinking.

Now your Facebook feed is cluttered with posts that you don’t understand. All your new friends are having interesting debates without you. It’s perfectly understandable that you’re feeling a little isolated! Anyone would!

Whether you’ve spent most of your life avoiding the derogatory moniker of “clever” or got good grades in primary school and have clung desperately to it with the thoughtless stubbornness of a dog with one end of something in its mouth, you no longer have to feel left out! You no longer have to feel stupid! There’s an easy solution, no actual thought required!

Pseudo-Intellectualism might be for you!

At it’s core, it means appearing to value and possess rationality and intelligence without exercising either. It’s talking in a profound fashion for half an hour without really saying anything at all.

“But hold on!” I hear you cry, “Why can’t I insult people for being nerds like we did in high school?” Oh sweetheart… oh pumpkin. You’re in the adult world now. Grown-ups generally look down upon an irrational hatred of thinking. If you want undeserved validation these days, you’ll need to exercise a little subtlety.

Don’t worry. Just because you’ll be appearing to use your brain, doesn’t mean you’ll actually have to. No pesky reasoning required here. I’ve broken this down into an easy step-by-step guide, which, while tailored to internet interaction is perfectly usable in verbal communication with a bit of practice. Let’s get started!

STEP 1: Make vague, contentious statements.

Preface them with “I don’t think”. Not just for the irony, this is actually part of a very effective pseudo-intellectual tool.

For example, “I don’t think that the <good part> of <a thing that is good> is as good as people say it is”. Do not, under any circumstances, explain why. There is no why. Be wary, however! If you ONLY make vague, contentious statements it will be very easy for people to see what a vapid, brainless husk you are. Make sure you…

STEP 2: Package them with disconnected, indisputable facts.

These facts only have to be tangentially related to the original statement. In fact the more tenuously connected they are, the better. They will inspire confusion in your audience, throwing their predatory intellects off the scent of your underdeveloped and fearful psyche.

Consider this: “I don’t think that the cinematography in the Social Network is as good as people say it is. Trent Reznor did the soundtrack, which is really good and I really like Nine Inch Nails, especially the song Starfuckers Inc. He’s a very talented individual, but that’s just my opinion!”

Which brings us to…

STEP 3: It’s just my opinion!

This powerful (and unnecessary; of course it’s your opinion) statement allows you to use humility as a tower shield. By adopting the manner of a puppy bearing it’s vulnerable belly in adorable supplication, you make it that much harder for people to kick you right in the logical inconsistencies without looking like dicks.

However, sometimes people will. The dicks. A true Pseudo-Intellectual must always make counter arguments. So be prepared with…

STEP 4: That’s just YOUR opinion!

Having devalued your own opinion with false humility already, you are now socially permitted to go on the offensive. Rather than trying to engage opponents on a rational level, use seemingly common-sense phrases to neuter reason itself. They’re going to try and find a solid ground to engage you on; they’ll try to steer your vagaries into logical waters. Don’t let them! Make the argument about nothing, and they won’t have a leg to stand on.

“Look that’s your opinion and I respect it, it’s a perfectly valid viewpoint and I understand where you’re coming from. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions and I think it’s great that we can discuss issues like this, even when we disagree.”

Now that you’ve established what a tolerant free thinker you are (and in the process completely ignored their rational argument) its time to be contentious and…

STEP 5: Hide boldly behind the skirts of popular ideologies.

This is a great alternative to having a carefully considered viewpoint. State something obvious that isn’t related to the core debate, but do so in such a way that makes you seem like an arbiter of reason, dispensing radical profundities to the unenlightened masses.

“You may not like her song, but women have every right to express themselves and feel sexy.”

“Really we can argue about Picasso all day but there are larger issues like the damage we are doing to our environment.”

“I understand that you disagree with my opinion of female comedians, and you are allowed to disagree, and I also believe that gay people should be allowed to marry. It’s unacceptable that they can’t!”

You aren’t just using popular opinion to create a false air of dashing controversiality; you’re effectively laying a minefield. If your opponent isn’t very careful, people might mistake their attempts to address the emptiness of your initial point with them being a sexist, racist or fascist.

STEP 6: Educate your audience.

Teachers are respected—be a teacher. Don’t settle for arguing points people already believe; define things that people already know. This is a great way to make it seem like you are saying deep and interesting things, to the point you might even believe it yourself.

“Husbands who hit their wives are abusive.”
“Music is in itself enjoyable.”
“People who eat meat are not living a vegetarian lifestyle.”
“Patriarchy is fundamentally sexist.”

STEP 7: Restate everything.

If all else fails, ninety percent of your unformatted rebuttals can consist of you restating something that has already been said as though you are arguing against an opinion that hasn’t been stated.

This technique is so powerful, you can use it to appear contentious and rational without having to disagree with anyone or anything. If someone posts their thoughts or links an opinion piece, responding with a ten paragraph rewording of the material sprinkled liberally with “It’s just my opinion” and the vague, contentious statements you learned about in step one will have people gasping with admiration.

Above all, remember that this is just the beginning! There is a world of alternatives to rationality, and I truly believe that these seven little steps can assist you in your tireless quest for praise. But that’s just my opinion.

“Could I have a chicken parmigana please?” The man across the counter stares at me. “Parmi”, he sneers, as both correction and confirmation. I look around. The decor is modern and clean, albeit tasteless. This is the best cafe in Geelong. “A lemon lime and bitters too, thanks.”

The man is young and savage looking, with an angry red scar running down his cheek. His shirt is pale pink with a grunge print. His features are brutish; his eyes full of animal cunning. A distant memory surfaces, unbidden, like a bloated corpse on the Barwon River. I am fourteen years old, standing on an unknown street. A collarless Rottweiler blocks my path. Time and distance make the dog seem impossibly large. Before I can remember the rest, the man begins to speak. He hasn’t broken eye contact since I entered the cafe. Pitbull eyes see through me. His words are contemplative, but his tone drips with open mockery. “Do ya ever look back on ya life, at all the shit you’ve done, and think about where the fuck you’ve ended up? Do ya think, faaark, what have I done to deserve this?”

A slow grin spreads across his face. With the exception of this apparently psychic deadshit, my hometown is as I left it.

Geelong (or as it says on the billboards ‘The City of Greater Geelong’) is a city of roughly two-hundred-thousand people 75 kilometres out of Melbourne. I’ve always been a tad unnerved by the name “City of Greater Geelong”. It implies some sort of undercroft; some “City of Lesser Geelong”, where sentient rodents amass faeces and urine expelled from the bogans above and brew it into slabs of Woodstock.

I’ve been living in Melbourne for the past five years, but I do keep certain memories of Geelong with me as souvenirs. Memories like:

• The first gay couple I ever saw holding hands, and the beer can that was thrown at them from a speeding ute.
• The fifteen year old scallywag chroming on the steps of a church in the middle of the day whilst gregarious footballers ran a sausage sizzle.
• The grotesquely obese, thirty-year-old women in a Ford Falcon who demanded I get in their car for a “hard root” and, upon my refusal, threatened to call their mates to “stab the shit out of me”.

Now you’re probably sensing a little bit of bias here. Yeah, you got me. It’s pretty normal to have contempt for your hometown. We all have a bogan dystopia or two that we mock; they’re all the same, right? No. I can say with absolute certainty they are not.

Let’s explore what makes Geelong terrible in its own unique little way. Steel yourself. Gird your loins. Don’t let go of my hand. We’re mapping the DNA of a fiercely mediocre beast.

The main thing that separates Geelong from similar cesspools in Melbourne’s outer suburbs is not distance. It’s not its location either (the foreshore area of Geelong is actually quite beautiful). The cancer is cultural. A perfect example of this is the Geelong/Melbourne rivalry. If you were not raised in Geelong, you probably aren’t aware that there IS a Geelong/Melbourne rivalry. To the average Melbournian that’s like suggesting the existence of an Obama/Homeless-Guy-Who-Screams-At-Pidgeons rivalry.

Unfortunately no-one has told the Geelong City Council that jealousy does not a rivalry make.

So WHY is there is a ‘rivalry’ in the first place? Is it because Melbourne has superior events? More opportunities? Better everything? In search of the truth, we must take a trip back to the 1850s.

The year is 1851. Ballarat has always been a dusty hole, but it has just become common knowledge that it’s a dusty hole with rich seams of gold in it. Geelong, being the nearest city with a bay, has enjoyed a boom in commerce and population. Some particularly ruthless Melbournians decide that this is unacceptable, and begin spreading false maps which show Melbourne as the closest city to the new gold rush. Coupled with some slander about Geelong’s ‘treacherous’ bay, Melbourne is able to siphon off most of the profit from the new, gold hungry immigrants.

Present day. Surely no-one still gives a fuck, right? Wrong. This was on the curriculum when I attended primary school in Geelong, and again in high school. It was a lesson taught with no small amount of bitterness.

Ever since this ancient slight, Geelong has had a chip on its shoulder. Businesses proclaim their love for Greater Geelong, and scramble over each other to prove how much better they think it is than Melbourne. Marketing in Geelong is an arms race of who can use the word ‘local’ with the greatest frequency.

Not to mention the city council. Banners such as the wonderfully pun-ny ‘Geelong, Must Sea’ inspire civic pride. Where else would one find the nation’s largest Wool Museum, after all? Read ‘em and weep, Melbourne. Even after so many years, the attitude remains: everything Geelong good, everything Melbourne bad. It’s downright patriotic.

Melbourne has a broad range of sub-cultures, so sub-cultures must be bad. Footballer-gods only, thanks. Every time Geelong wins a grand final, tens of thousands of dollars are made in tacky memorabilia sales.

Melbourne has lots of people of other ethnicities, so they must be bad. One recalls charming games of ‘Spot the Aussie’ that high-schoolers used to play on road trips to Melbourne.

There is nothing to do in Geelong except fight and fuck. This is probably why:

• 40% of Geelong teens aged 15-17 have had sex, almost double the state average.
• Geelong is currently in the grip of a chlamydia epidemic.
• Geelong has the worst nightlife this side of Silent Hill.

Hearing older folk make excuses for Geelong’s toxic nightlife is equal parts hilarious and frustrating. I remember talking to a man who was reading about whatever the most recent saturday night stabbing was in the Geelong Advertiser (a local newspaper/shitrag which deserves a whole separate article).

“You know what the problem is? These young fellas you see, they come down from Melbourne and they start trouble with our boys.”

I could have stated that the problem is bouncers at Geelong’s more popular clubs letting 15-year old girls enter in exchange for a blowjob, but instead chose to point out the article identified the stabber as being from Norlane, not Melbourne (If Geelong is hell, Norlane is the ninth circle. Gary Ablett is frozen to the waist in a lake of Macca’s soft serve, weeping tears of VB from his six bloodshot eyes.)

The man seemed to consider the facts. Facts that went against decades of pro-Geelong conditioning. Facts that stormed into the cathedral of his ignorance and vomited on the altar. Facts waved their arms and screeched their truth like insistent children. His deliberation complete, he began a patient explanation:

“Yeah, but the thing is, these blokes, they come down from Melbourne…”

Awareness precedes improvement, Geelong. It’s been 150 years; grow the fuck up.

Geelong Cement Factory, by Flickr user Krytie TV.

Smith Journal is a triumph of style over substance.

That’s not to say it’s insubstantial in a physical sense; judging by the thickness and quality of the paper used to print it, Australia will be completely de-forested by 2015. These aren’t the sticky plastic pages of your shithouse mate’s back-catalogue of Zoo Weeklies. That filth is far beneath your discerning tastes, after all. You’re better than him, and now you have the magazine to prove it.

Smith Journal is the new men’s magazine from the team that writes Frankie, aka the reason why every girl you talk to at Worker’s Club seems to possess an unsettlingly passionate interest in embroidery. The standard issue of Frankie is as pleasantly ephemeral as a summer breeze, bestowing a feeling of warmth and safety without making you think too hard.

So how do you make Frankie for men? You replace embroidery with taxidermy.

Smith Journal begins with an introduction which tells us what it’s all about (well actually it begins with an Urban Outfitters advertisement, but lets not split hairs). It asserts a fondness for imperfections and explains that whilst mastery and study are OK if you’re into that kind of thing, the guy who tries his hand at everything is the one they really admire. And then this (you’ll have to imagine the tasteful typography):

“& SO THIS MAGAZINE IS FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN THE WORLD.
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN OUT THERE LIVING LIFE & NOT JUST STUDYING IT FROM AFAR.
FOR ANYONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THAT YOU BUILD THINGS WITH YOUR HANDS, BUT ALSO YOUR MIND TOO”

Leaving aside the fact that ‘also’ and ‘too’ should never be used in the same sentence, let’s review who this magazine is for.

1. People who are interested in the world.
2. People who live life.
3. People who understand that you make things with your hands and your mind.

Based on their own criteria, if you are over the age of five and haven’t had a frontal lobe lobotomy you finally have something to pretend to read at cafes. It even has typewriters on the cover so people who see you holding it subconsciously tag you as a talented writer. Only talented writers use typewriters.

The main feature article of Smith Journal’s flagship issue is, as the cover promises, about typewriters. Not about how to choose a typewriter, or the history of typewriters, or some piece of philosophical exposition which uses typewriters as a metaphor. This feature article is about the specific typewriters that a random selection of famous authors used.

A ten page article about typewriters and famous authors in which we learn almost nothing about typewriters or famous authors. Contained within the feature is just enough contextless trivia to elicit a single bored “oh yeah?” from most conversational partners. That’s OK though; the trivia is not there for you to memorise and repeat. It serves a more insipid purpose: to fool an indier-than-thou readership into thinking that they’ve become better people by looking at pictures of typewriters for a few minutes.

Another feature provides short biographies of four different pairs of brothers and their relationships. Each pair is notable for… hang on, what the fuck are these people notable for? Nothing? Why am I reading an article about people who have done nothing of note? More to the point, why would anyone WRITE an article about a bunch of people who have done nothing of note?

A foul notion flits into my mind, but vanishes before I can fully grasp it. I feel a vague sense of unease. All of a sudden the summer breeze that is Smith Journal carries with it the sickly-sweet stench of something rotten.

I read more. I read the following:

• A small piece on the history of the banjo.
• The origins of nautical slang.
• Assorted facts about the history of the Rubik’s Cube.
• A man who photographed some houses that had boats for roofs.
• A company that sells expensive designer wood axes.
• Musician Tex Perkins talking about some of his clothes.
• An article praising a furniture-maker who “actively avoided” studying carpentry or cabinet-making.

I’m starting to see a pattern, but it doesn’t really sink in until I read a ‘random essay’ in which a man writes about how he used to have a good metabolism but now he doesn’t have such a good metabolism and how he was going to write a cautionary tale about metabolisms but now he can’t because he misses his metabolism and he doesn’t like exercise.

Wait a minute.

Wait a fucking minute.

I see what you’re doing here.

Let’s talk about mastery. Mastery demands sacrifice, commitment and passion. Blood, sweat and tears. A torturous climb up an unforgiving interest curve. Everybody knows this. This why we heap praise upon people who are very good at what they do. We appreciate the colossal effort it took for them to learn their craft, and we aspire to do the same. They inspire us, we admire them. Makes sense, right?

Problem is doing shit is, like… hard. If you want to get good at shit, you’ve got to think? And be humble and open to new knowledge, you know? And like, work heaps and shit? I dunno man. It’ll probably take like… at least five years before you’re good enough at shit for it to get you laid. I kinda just wanna not do shit. But the problem is, there’s all these people who ARE doing shit? Really interesting people. And they’re like, getting respect all the time, you know? It makes me feel kinda fucked because I wanna be an interesting guy who gets respect and feel like I’m really smart and shit, but it takes so fucking looooooooooong.

Enter Smith Journal.

• An article on typewriters that makes you feel smarter without demanding anything in return. Look at the pretty pictures and smile at how cultured you are.
• An article on brothers who have done nothing of note, much like you, implies that you too are worthy of note just for existing. Congratulations, you were born.
• An article discussing the merits of buying a designer wood ax because it ‘represents simplicity, honesty and integrity’. Fulfil your desperate desire for undeserved authenticity.
• Diet pills. We don’t want to be fat. Diet pills are a quick fix. They promise an easy alternative to exercise, proper diet and a healthy lifestyle. We know that diet pills are bullshit. Most of us don’t trust diet pills, because we understand that circumventing the honesty of hard work has dire consequences.

We don’t want to be boring. Smith Journal is a quick fix. It promises an easy alternative to learning, discipline and an interesting life. Smith Journal is to boring people as diet pills are to fat people. We don’t trust diet pills; why the fuck should we trust Smith Journal? Do you think interesting, passionate, hard-working people sit around reading Smith Journal? No. They’re out having interesting, passionate, hardworking lives. That’s why they are interesting, passionate, hardworking people.

We are as we do.

The typical hipster believes an ‘indie game’ is any game whose name evokes stirrings of nostalgia when spoken aloud (“Duck Hunt is indie, right?”). Most conversations about games that occur in Melbourne’s trendier dives tend to boil down to: “Remember Mario Kart 64? Wanna fuck?” Reminiscing about childhood pursuits leads to mediocre oral sex in approximately forty percent of modern courtships.

But this article isn’t about the hackneyed mating rituals of pretentious twenty-somethings. It’s not even an explanation of what an indie game actually is. This article is a review of an indie game called Super Crate Box.

If you’re the particular breed mentioned in the first paragraph, you probably have questions. Namely:

1. Is it free?
2. Will it run on my Macbook Air?
3. If anyone sees me playing it, can I pretend it’s from 1992?

Answers: yes, yes and yes. It’s also a brilliantly designed little game, if that’s the sort of thing you care about.

Super Crate Box is a retro-throwback survival score-attack game from indie studio Vlambeer. You can download it for the princely sum of absolutely nothing from their website.

At first glance Super Crate Box appears to be merely another indie studio cashing in on the fact that pixel-art is fashionable again. However, the boys at Vlambeer were not content to merely slap some early nineties graphics on a sub-par platformer and call it day. Under the retro veneer, the mechanics are a thing of beauty.

An endless torrent of creatures (which appear to be the result of some sort of skull-rhino-lizard cross breeding program gone horribly wrong) run across a series of platforms. As is the norm in the arcade games which inspired SCB, any contact between them and your tiny avatar results in instantaneous death. You can avoid them by jumping, or just shoot them with an underpowered pistol.

The aim of the game is to rack up as many points as you can before dying.

The twist is that you don’t get points for killing enemies, only from collecting weapon crates which appear in random places around the stage. Every time you pick up a crate, your weapon will randomly change to another. This is fine if you score a katana or bazooka. However, when you’re facing a stampede of murderous green things and you get a downgrade from your glorious flamethrower to the pitiful dual pistols, the sadistic genius of SCB’s design becomes apparent.

It is possible to ignore the enemies and jump around collecting crates like a kleptomaniac spider monkey… for about twenty seconds. Enemies which are allowed to fall off the bottom of the screen will promptly re-appear at the top with a red paint-job and murder in their hearts. Something about not being butchered irks these red foes. They now move approximately three billion times as fast, greatly aiding their quest to collide violently with you.

The end result: every round of Super Crate Box is a demented balancing act of collecting crates and annihilating everything that moves with a mini-gun. Neglecting to kill your opponents will leave you quickly overwhelmed, forgetting to pick up crates will leave you with a miserable score.

The airtight design is accentuated by flawless execution. It’s the little things that make a difference. Screen shake on projectile firing. High energy 8-bit soundtrack. The way you start a new round accidentally by hitting fire after you die… “Shit, fine, one more try.”

If you find yourself sitting in a cafe with a wi-fi connection and time to burn, consider Super Crate Box as a viable alternative to funny cat videos and Facebook stalking your ex. This game is your new cocaine. Your mocha will be cold before you know it.

With illustration by Max Denton.