Introductions: they are a part of life from beginning to end. “Hey this is my pal, Mikey.” “Kent, meet Susan, she’s new in the office.” “Tommy, this is my fiancé, Jayceon. What? Yeah, we started dating right after you and I broke up.” People are always introducing friends to other friends, co-workers to co-workers, pets to pet-sitters, and that’s great; people need to meet each other. Unfortunately, as we have come to expect at this point, there are also noobs out there being introduced to innocent bystanders and, similarly, noobs facilitating these introductions. This leads to disgusting instances of malpractice concerning basic “hello”s: weak handshakes, lack-of eye-contact, preemptive hugs — and those are the least foul of the noobisms!

Before we get into it, allow me make a brief aside in regard to the introduction-requirement, “Nice to meet you.” This stipulation is said at the beginning of ninety-nine percent of introductions (I presume). It’s said out of courtesy and in an attempt to be friendly, however, it is a little presumptuous. Sure, it may turn out that meeting the person with whom you are speaking is a nice occurrence, but it also might turn out that this person will be responsible for your eventual demise. Perhaps this person will end up sleeping with your wife, or stealing your dog, or burning down your house. All I’m saying is that we should think about maybe reserving “Nice to meet you,” for a later point in a relationship, a time when it is safer to say that the initial meeting was indeed nice.

Now, onto noobs. When first meeting a noob there are many flubs and fumbles made by these individuals. None, however, as atrocious as the New Acquaintance Assoiation. NAA, as it often abbreviated, is the reaction a noob has to meeting somebody who looks like somebody else they know. In traditional noob fashion, they are compelled to tell their new acquaintance about the similarities they exhibit with the other, not currently present person. Observe:

Ken: Hey Diane, this is my friend Ron.

Diane. Hi, Ron! Nice to meet you. Wow! You know what? You look just like my friend Petrey!

Now the outcome of this already feeble encounter depends on the noob status of Ron. If he is not a noob, his response to Diane’s ridiculously pointless remark should be something along the lines of, “Oh…cool.” However, if Ron is similarly a noob, he will likely be fascinated by the bizarre occurrence that Diane knows someone similar in appearance to him, responding with something abhorrently mindless like, “Wow! Really? What does Petrey look like?” Ron might also throw in a noobish joke after that last question like, “I bet he’s pretty good looking!” That is, if he is truly a noob.

This type of interaction is a tell-tale sign of a noob, and stems directly from their core. What prompts such a divulgence of information? This is what we must figure out. There is no reason Ron should know that he looks like Petrey. This information will in no way benefit him or be of any interest.

In a similar vein, noobs often straight up mistake people for other people. This isn’t so unforgivable, after all, mistakes happen. The true noobishness of the error comes out when the mistaken noob carries on with the mistake, insisting they are correct. This particular installment of our investigation into the noob mentality was in fact sparked by a recent encounter involving myself and a noob who would not believe that I was not someone else. The scene was as follows: I was standing in front of a real estate office looking at the pictures of properties they have in the window, because sometimes that can be fun, when a woman who quickly revealed herself to be a noob, exited the office. The encounter proceeded like so:

Noob: Um, excuse me? Hi. Are you…Yeah! Hey! I I know your mother!

Me: You do?

Noob: Yeah! She and your brother were just in here! Gosh, you and your brother look so much alike!

Me: What? No, sorry, I think you’re mistaken. I don’t have a brother.

Noob: No, you do! He was just in here with your mother!

Me: No, I don’t. And my mother doesn’t live here, so that’s not possible.

Noob: No! She does! She was just here! With your brother!

Me: You serious? She doesn’t. You think I’m wrong about this?

Noob: Yes! Your mother and your brother were both just here and I sold them a place upstate!

Me: No, none of that is true. What, you think I’m just not correct about the size and whereabouts of my family?

Noob: You know, you may look like your brother, but you are nothing like him! So rude! Don’t think your mother won’t hear about this!

Me: You don’t know my— You know, never mind. You go tell my mother that.

Noob: I will! Goodbye!

Now, there is simply no way this woman knew my mother. I could provide an abundance of evidence such as my mother does not often leave the house, and when she does it certainly is not to travel three-thousand miles to visit a real estate office, but I refuse to dignify that female noob’s claims. There is simply no way that woman was correct. But she insisted she was, therefore revealing herself to be a noob. A non-noob would quickly admit their mistake and continue about their day, but not a noob. She held onto that sinking ship much like a noob would do were they to find themselves on a sinking ship. I can only imagine how her next interaction with the woman she believed to be my mother went.

And so we delve deeper into the noob psyche. Aside from very specific situations where noobs noob it (bus rides, train rides), today’s study suggests that there is something fundamentally different in their brain patterns, and perhaps DNA, that is leading them to noob very simple social interactions as well. Now that we are really getting into the psychology of things, I suspect we will soon need to call in some scientists to aid our endeavors. But rest assured, Reader, I know plenty of scientists. We will get to the bottom of this; we will discover the defect in the noob biology.

- Elbows