Tab Guide: How to be ~~ Edgy ~~

Line up there lads, for serious knowledge is about to fall from the lips of an edge goddess – this is the one, the only, the list of a lifetime. . . how to be edgy in five easy steps:

Edgy punctuation

This is key. Key like the keyboard you’re so wantonly abusing. Whether it be making a Facebook event, or messaging a friend, the edgy Cantab must go mad on the punctuation. But carefully. Overuse of capitals screams too keen, and ‘correct’ punctuation quite literally betrays your grammar school roots – the true edge-meister will drag the forward bracket out of its closet of disuse and give all letters the breathing room they need (or coke-snorting room, amirite?).

Thus might one invite one’s (edgy) supervision partners to / / / d r i n k s / / before proceeding to “get fucked” (a technical term amongst the edgier) on the chaplain’s port in formal hall. #2easy2edgy

wine / edge / jumpers

Edgy friends

Beware now lads – there’s a nasty line to be walking here. An edge, we may say. Do you surround yourself by #madlads, thus appearing #equallymad? OR do you huddle amongst the utterly unedgy, and so gain a reputation for being  ~ wild ~ ? It’s a tricky, tricky one, which your true edge-king will heroically overcome, by simply. . . having no friends. This, your enthusiastic edge-corresponent has come to think, is actually the answer to many of Cambridge’s problems. No time to do your essays? Just never speak to anyone! Worried your college children will tempt you into perdition? Never interact with them in any way! Most importantly – unsure how to gather the right crew around you? Don’t.

Just. Say. No. No to friendliness, no to having any kind of a laugh, no to any class of connection with your peers in the face of  your ever worsening estrangement from your family. Warm your cold heart in your Dad’s fairisle jumper and relish your ~elusive~ ~~exclusive~~ / / edge / /

on the edge w/ #nopals

Edgy accommodation

Now, my room is proper edgy, insofar as it is a fucking mess but that level of squalor might, without hyperbole, actually be described as TOO edgy. Tone it back a tad, and lets just consider wall decorations. The true edge here, I feel, lies in the absence of them. A blank magnolia wall speaked volumes for the edge-man’s personality. Let others plaster their plaster with “pics” of “friends”. You need no friends – you have no pics.

If utterly necessary one might prop a single, type-written poem on one’s windowsill. A hand-drawn map to that really great Youth Hostel in the Hindu Kush may fall carelessly into a corner. If you really REALLY need to use a camera a single, polaroid picture may be acceptable. It must, however, be so poorly taken as to essentially represent nothing. This is you. You are nothing. You are no thing. you. are. EDGE

pile some books. curl some tree bark. be edge.

Edgy piercings

Piercings represent a dilemma insofar as the edgier ones are hoops and yet hoops are traditionally edge free – what does your budding edge-man do? The answer, as always, is to ignore the mathmos. Stab that tender nostril, using Mummy’s embroidery needle for extra edge points. As well as showing faculty your ability to withstand very mild pain in the name of needless probably-appropriative-of-something fashion, your nose ring will act as a little edge-encourager on those dull mornings when you may find your selvedge fraying.

“I really don’t know if I can get through another morning of Tacitus with edge intact,” I weep into my mirror, “what if my enthusiasm for his “poetry in prose” destroys my bad boy image?!”

“Fear not,” winks my nose ring “For I am here”.

all dem piercings, all dat edge -> I hope the nice man I met in Whelan’s is okay with being Tab famous – hello nice man! (edge man???)

Edgy club night decisions

I mean, this is a one word step really, isn’t it? Turf. Turfy turf turf turf, if we want four. In the interest of paragraph balance so, let me tell you a secret – I have had no edgy turf nights. I wore a scarf as a bra there once (quite edgy, if I say so myself), but all I did was take a not very flattering picture in the loos.

I’ve kissed edgy boys, but kissing edgy means no dancing edgy. Both are, admittedly, inherently edgy, but anyone who’s seen my flailing elbows will tell you who wins the edge wars there.
/ / m e / /

when edgy turns into “quite fleshy baby”

In its defence, it probably is the edgiest of the Cambridge nights, but is choosing the obviously edgy in fact deeply un-edgy? Will the edge-masters of Week 4 be choosing Cindies instead?

Only you, zeitgeist-surfing edge masters that you are, can truly know