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#SeinfeldTaughtMe: What We Learned From The Show About Nothing

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Nick Douglas

The hashtag #SeinfeldTaughtMe, trending this morning on Twitter, shows that the seminal NBC sitcom Seinfeld is a surprisingly good source of life hacks, or at least life advice and stupid human tricks. Here are some of the most useful lessons.

Image: Seinfeld

As a “show about nothing”, Seinfeld was really about all the things that make up daily life.

Its characters dared to violate the norms. They played out heightened versions of the little tricks we all try.

These tricks were social, mental and physical.

Sometimes this aberrant behaviour worked, but sometimes the cons outweighed the pros.

In punishing characters for their wrongs, the world of Seinfeld was more just and fair than the real one.

But sometimes bad things happened to good people.

Really bad things.

The show even commented on that difference between the usual glamorised world of fiction, vs. the mundanity of Seinfeld‘s “reality”.

Sometimes the characters pulled insane gambits that no one would ever try in real life – no one except Seinfeld co-creator Larry David.

Most importantly, Seinfeld reminded us that what makes us interesting isn’t our strengths but our weaknesses. It even presented a model of friendship based on celebrating those weaknesses, counter to the aspirational “BFFs who would die for each other” relationships of other shows.

I lied, the most important lesson is that anything can be a napkin if you don’t give a damn.

#SeinfeldTaughtMe [Twitter]

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