Strangers' Club

How to join

1. Find a large group of people that you don't know. This step never has to take any effort because we often find that we are in the middle of such a crowd. Examples include being at the mall, at the grocery store, and at the gas station. It is permissible to be with people you know, but it can make the rest of the procedure difficult. If you are unable to locate a group of people you don't know, empty a bottle of ketchup on your head and go lay down on the nearest sidewalk and wait. A crowd will eventually form.



2. Select a person from the crowd at random. If you are attracted to members of a particular sex like most people, or to people with a certain hair color, or to people with a certain minimum rating on the scale of superficial beauty, you must try to avoid letting this attraction influence your selection. An effective strategy is to stand (or lie) still with your eyes closed, giving the people around you time to be replaced by other people, and then choose the first person you see when you open your eyes. If you use the ketchup method, you can actually just take a nap and people will eventually wake you up. If you know the person who woke you up, explain what you're doing and ask them to leave. Otherwise, you've got your random person. In fact, as long as you feel that your attraction has not influenced your choice, your in the clear.



3. Introduce the stranger to the Strangers' Club.There are a number of approaches that you can try, and only you can determine which works the best. The fundamental problem in this step is that your stranger is a real person having real thoughts in a real life that you are interrupting. You may want to mitigate any damage you've already done to your relationship with the stranger by interrupting his or her life. You may want to make small talk before you start proselytizing. However, ignoring these desires is the best policy. Be direct and honest, or you may appear to be trying to sell something. "Hey, you know what a meme is?" or "Have you ever heard of the Strangers' Club?" are some examples. If the stranger ignores you, try again with something like "Can you please acknowledge me because I'm afraid I'm turning inaudible and invisible, and possibly immaterial?" If that doesn't work, go back to the previous step.

Now what?

Strangers' Club Member Benefits

• Increased self-confidence
• Bizarre dreams about people you don't know if you've ever met
• More friends

Strangers' Club Member Consequences

• Loss of your easily-spooked friends
• Stories about people's lives that are long and boring
• Becoming an embarrassment to "polite society"
• Damaged hair from repeated applications of ketchup