Bad news, ladies. When your man gets the same bug you do but is inconceivably sicker and more of a little bitch than you were, he might *actually* be suffering more. But the good news is that it’s because his immune system is naturally weaker than ours. Sigh. What a burden it is to be the superior sex.

Dr. Kyle Sue, a Canadian researcher, was tired of the stereotype that men complain too much when they are sick, so he decided to funnel a ton of money into proving that wasn’t the case. I mean, we still haven’t found a cure to cancer, but sure, this seems like a worthy cause. Dr. Sue found that men have higher rates of flu-related deaths and their bodies are less responsive to the flu vaccine. High testosterone levels might be to blame for the latter.

Feels like high testosterone levels are to blame for every single one of men’s problems? Just an observation…

While it’s sort of reassuring our boyfriends aren’t faking sick the moment they get a sore throat, it does sort of mean we have to step up our caretaker game which feels like total bullshit? Dr. Sue joked that “Perhaps now is the time for male friendly spaces, equipped with enormous televisions and reclining chairs, to be set up where men can recover from the debilitating effects of man flu in safety and comfort.” We’re not laughing. The world needs no more male friendly spaces.

Call us crazy but it’d be great for women to have a slight break in between flu season and our current season of taking down sexual predators. Where is our friendly space of not having to be a caretaker equipped with reclining chairs? Oh the nail salon, right. Be right back. 

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Here’s some unsurprising news: researchers at the University of Kansas found that men are more likely to “marry up” (aka marry someone better/hotter/smarter/richer) than women are.

Excuse me while I pretend to be surprised:

So why is this even a study? I could just look at the dumpster fire that is all my besties’ boyfriends and tell you this shit, but apparently this hasn’t always been the case. It used to be that women were the ones who “married up,” snagging highly educated and professionally successful men because like, they weren’t really allowed to be highly educated or professional themselves.

Now, thanks to feminism, women are allowed to work, and after studying Census data between 1990 and 2011, University of Kansas researchers found that “women’s personal earnings have grown faster than men’s earnings during this time.” So basically, these researchers asked “Who run da world?” and the answer was:

As a result of this rapid growth, the number of female pros in the marriage market “exceeds the number of highly educated men (read: male pros) in the marriage market.” So basically, you and your friends are all dating down, and it’s because you’re just too damn educated. Which is more or less what I’ve been trying to tell my dad every time he asks why I still don’t have a boyfriend, even though he didn’t like my last boyfriend because he worked at a smoothie place and didn’t have a career. It’s not my fault, dad! In fact, it’s kind of your fault for paying for my college education. So there.

Who run this mutha?

If you’re not a total airhead, you probably experience a decent amount of anxiety on a daily basis. Maybe your boss is giving you a hard time about leaving at 3pm when you have a 6pm Bumble date (those pre-date shots aren’t going to take themselves), or maybe you’re just shaken by Dean’s ice-cold treatment of Kristina on Paradise. Either way, while I fully endorse your right to take a Xanax and a sick day in these situations, I’m here science is here to tell you that those anxious feelings are actually basically a superpower.

That’s right: a recent study published in Psychological Science shows that “being high in neuroticism” helps you live longer—or, to put it in their creepy science terms, gives you “a lower likelihood of premature death.”

And to give you even more good news, the way they tested for neuroticism in this study was by seeing how people responded to statements like “I get irritated easily,” “I worry about things,” and “I get stressed out easily.” So, you don’t exactly have to be Larry David to qualify here—and if none of these made you say “yes” out loud at your desk, go out and get a fucking personality. Enjoy your premature death, I guess.

In another hilarious turn of events, the researchers who first got these results were like “shit, we must have done something wrong,” since people have spent years telling you that things like “positive thinking” and “running outside” are the keys to long life, and that your healthy skepticism toward new people and the outdoors the “psychological distress” caused by neuroticism is somehow harmful. So, these researchers rolled up their sleeves (lab coats have sleeves right? I wouldn’t know *hair flip*) and decided “Okay, let’s see if all the neurotic people we tested are also narcs don’t drink or smoke and that’s why they live longer.”

Guess what? The people who possessed this predisposition for immortality (you know what I mean) also were “less likely to eat enough fruits and vegetables or exercise, and more likely to smoke and drink alcohol either every day or nearly every day.” In other words, if you’re not heavily identifying with this trait yet, then I’m glad you won’t be living as long I’m really not sure what you’re doing on this website. And next time your peppy co-worker tries to sign you up for a half-marathon, you can feel free to tell her to fuck right off—you’re basically just adding five years to your life.

To sum up, put down your sad little salad, pour yourself a drink, and write your psychiatrist a refill request thank-you note for diagnosing your anxiety. If you need me, I’ll be designing my “Not Neurotic, Just Immortal” Betches tank.

Everyone knows a true betch’s summer go-to beverage is a nice tall glass (or bottle, whatever) of rosé. It’s cold, it’s pretty, it has alcohol in it, it’s delicious. Did I mention it has alcohol? But sometimes wine drunk doesn’t cut it. Like, maybe I wanna get my drink on but not fall asleep after an hour only to wake up to the world’s worst headache. Fucking sue me. Or maybe I just had a very stressful day of doing the bare minimum and need to black out for a while and recalibrate my emotions. I mean, not that you can’t black out on rosé. I’ve done countless experiments here and I assure you, it can be done, but it just takes a little more time and a lot more calories than a few well-timed shots of clear liquor would. Well now, thanks to Wolffer’s vineyard in the Hamptons, you can get liquor drunk with rosé vibes. How you might ask? Gin made from rosé. Did you hear that thud? It was me dropping the mic.

If you’re wondering how this is possible, you’ve come to the wrong place because I’m not a gin distiller sry, but apparently gin just has to be a clear alcoholic drink made of neutral spirits and juniper berries, so the term “gin” is a loose one. I even Merriam-Webster’d that shit.

Now that’s what I call research. Am I a legit journalist? Only time will tell. My Googling research also taught me that, in order to turn wine into gin, Wolffer uses copper stills to create pure alcohol from rosé, then adds juniper berries and other shit to make it gin-y. A touch of red grape skin extract enhances the pink color to really take it to a faker the next level.

If you know anything about anything, you know that rosé is for basics and gin is for hipsters, fucking duh. You might also remember that there is scientific evidence that proves only psychopaths drink gin. So now you don’t have to fit in a bubble. Don’t let society tell you you have to choose. You can be both basic and a psycho. That’s what makes this country so great. (Though maybe try not being a hipster. Society as a whole is like, done with that.) You wanna wear Uggs on your feet and a beanie on your head while contemplating murder? Fucking do it. Just make sure you have a glass of rosé gin in your hand. And jk about the murder part.

Here’s something we all know: Instagram is an emotional roller coaster. One minute you’re looking at all your old selfies thinking about how pretty you are sharing memories with friends, the next you’re sent into a rage spiral because your-man-who’s-not-really-your-man commented the heart eye emoji on some thot’s belfie and it reminded you that you haven’t gone to the gym in three years weeks. So yeah, while the highs of a 100+ like beach pic are pretty high, the lows of a vulnerable selfie that never even hits the double digits are pretty fucking low. All of this is to say, Instagram can be depressing as fuck, and now we have the science to back that up. A new study from Harvard University (what, like it’s hard?) found that your Instagram posts hold clues to your mental health, and I’m not just talking about how we all know you’re fucking depressed when you post a picture of you looking longingly out a random window and caption it with some emo song lyrics from the early 2000s. But that too.

The actual study found that people who are depressed (aka you all winter), “tended to post photos that, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, were bluer, darker and grayer on average than healthy people.” So basically, your grainy-ass black-and-white food pics aren’t just fucking up the flow of my feed, they’re actually revealing to the entire world (assuming your account is public) that you’re depressed.

Researches came to this very obvious stunning conclusion by identifying participants as “depressed” or “healthy” based on whether they reported having been diagnosed with depression in the past.

Side note: Who are these healthy, non-depressed people? Where do they live? What is their secret?

Researchers then “used machine-learning tools to find a pattern in the photos and to create a model predicting depression by the posts,” which is basically fancy science speak for “We taught a computer how to scroll through Instagram.”

So what exactly in your posts reveals that you are depressed? Well, they found that depressed IG users tend to use “fewer filters,” which supports my strongly held belief that people who post
#nofilter selfies are seriously disturbed. When they do use a filter, they tend to use Inkwell aka the fancy Instagram way of saying black-and-white, whereas healthy people use Valencia because…IDK. I guess the greenish hue brings people joy? Unclear.

Depressed participants were also more likely to post photos of just their face, which means that someone needs to drive to Brentwood and check on Kylie Jenner ASAP. I’m seriously concerned.

One thing these researchers found that I def could have told them myself is that depressed users tend to post more frequently. I mean, fucking duh. Anyone on Earth can tell whether or not I’m going through a breakup based off my daily post rate. Two or more selfies a day and you are fully justified in sending me a “U OK?” text. (I’m most definitely not okay.)

They also found that depressed people also tend to get more comments and less likes, which is really unfortunate because, as I previously stated, there’s nothing better to get you out of a funk than a fire candid with 100+ likes. If they could find a way to turn that feeling into a pill, depression would be a thing of the past.

All in all, this study is, for lack of a better word, depressing. Mainly because all the things they said are signs of depression describe the social media use of literally every human person in my feed, including myself. That being said, I think the moral of this story is clear: Inkwell is just not an acceptable filter anymore and using Valencia is the same for your health as like, a really good cardio workout. 

Every once in awhile while stalking your ex on social perusing the internet you’ll stumble upon a scientific study that makes you think “Did science really need to allocate valuable time and resources to this? Shouldn’t we be like, studying climate change or some shit?” Well, one such study just came out from LendEDU, and you’ll be literally shocked by their conclusion. Are you ready? Are you seated? You’re not gonna believe this but, Instagram is the most narcissistic social media platform.

Wow. Groundbreaking. I think I know who should get the Nobel Prize this year.

What could have possibly brought LendEDU to this earth shattering conclusion? Well, a poll of 3,701 current college students showed that 64% of students surveyed named Insta as the “most narcissistic” social media platform, with Snapchat coming in second at a pathetic 15%. Wow. An app that literally only exists to share photos of your own face and gather likes on said photos is narcissistic? I can’t believe it. The study, which, TBH, I’m not convinced counts as a “study,” then goes on to come to another stunning conclusion: people use Instagram because they want likes on their photos.

Please excuse me while I catch my breath as I have been thoroughly shook by this revelation.

Another survey of 3,869 current college students found that when asked “Do you make an intentional effort to like people’s Instagram posts who like yours?” that 67% of respondents said “Yes, it’s unspoken Instagram code,” in comparison to 33% of participants who are fucking liars.

All of this begs the question—who conducted this fucking survey? What questions did this survey, which presumably took many hours, even weeks to complete, answer that just simply logging into Instagram and looking at your feed—or just like, possessing a general understanding of how Instagram works—couldn’t have answered for you?

All this study needed was for one of these old-ass scientists to borrow his daughter’s phone for five minutes. Do you see 100+ selfies with a thousand likes and comments that just say “GORG!!!”? Then I think it’s safe to assume that Instagram is narcissistic. End of study.

Finally, the surveyors asked a group of 9,477 current college students if they “know someone who deletes Facebook or Instagram posts if they don’t get enough likes?” to which 78% of the participants said “yes,” and were probably talking about someone that they knew very well, like themselves. 22% of respondents answered no to this question, meaning that 22% of the people surveyed are either totally clueless or, again, fucking liars.

Again, a whole team of scientists were paid to come to these conclusions.

The final paragraph of this study says, ”The overwhelming majority of social media users do not post pictures to genuinely share their experience with others. Rather, the only reason behind posting is to take up sufficient likes. Millennials would rather hide their lives from the public than live with the agony of having an unpopular post on their profile.”

Wow. Way harsh Tai. I mean, again, this isn’t anything we didn’t already know, but it seems pretty fucking sad when you see it all laid out like that. Not that anyone ever for one second thought you posted that pic of yourself on the beach in Cabo to “genuinely share your experience.” We all know that shit is just to get likes and validation on your summer body, but nobody is going to say that. That’s the real “unspoken rule” of Instagram. We all know it’s just for likes, we just pretend it’s not.

Sooooo…like….can I get a scientific grant for my contributions to this study now or….?