The Noisey Guide to Tolerating Your Family on Thanksgiving

If you’re reading this, chances are, you are using your phone to avoid any kind of personal interaction with your family. You’re not a terrible person. You love them! It’s just that there was a reason you moved out and you’re starting to remember exactly why.

There is only so much time you can kill checking Twitter on the toilet until your legs go numb. We at Noisey feel you. That’s why we’ve put together a cornucopia of time-killing longreads to burn these next few hours before you call your old high school buddies to see what they’re up to tonight.

At some point, your family’s dinner conversation will shift towards movies. When someone brings up Lincoln, you can say, “I didn’t really see a point to wasting my afternoon on a four hour snoozefest when I already know he’s gonna get shot. But Daniel Day-Lewis' son is a college rapper and I know all the words to his song.”

When your sister’s uberliberal lame dickwad of a boyfriend tries to corner you into a conversation about how he heard about an emo revival on NPR, you can say, “Actually no, Todd. The emo revival movement is total bullshit.”

At some point, someone who is too old to be discussing twerking will want to discuss twerking. (Oh god, your drunk Aunt Carol might actually try it.) Of course Miley Cyrus will come up and you can emphatically state at the dinner table, “Actually, Nana, I think Miley Cyrus is punk as fuck.”

Plus, no one even thinks Miley is controversial anymore. Everyone is trying to wrap their brains around Lily Allen and her anti-black feminism. Nothing gets the dinner convo moving right along like race issues!

But even worse than twerking, someone is going to bring up the internet’s stalest viral sensation, Gangnam Style. Tell your family about K-Pop and the white dude who conquered it.

Someone may say, “Did you hear ‘That Prince Guy’ is playing a few concerts soon?” And then someone will inevitably reply, “I thought he was ‘The Artist Formerly Known As Prince'? Ha ha, pass the stuffing.” “No no, I think he is just Prince again.” As this goes on for another 20 minutes, you can think about how Prince’s style game has been killing it for four freakin’ decades.

When your tween cousin Jackie Instagrams herself making a duckface next to the turkey, you should subtly mention that people are using the same app to sell lean and put out hits on people. Anyway, how's 8th grade going, Jackie?

If you’re looking for something to be thankful for, give your mom a big hug and be grateful she didn’t get swept away in a giant typhoon, as almost happened to the guys from Cold Cave and Head Automatica.

Also be thankful no one in your family (presumably) crashed their car listening to 808s and Heartbreak.

If you’re watching the Packers/Lions game, don’t forget to remind people about Cheeseheads With Attitude, the Green Bay Packers parody band that sold 50,000 copies. Speaking of Green Bay, if you’re in the area, check out a Turquoise Jeep concert and lose your damn mind.

If you catch your weird goth cousin Wendy sulking in the corner, try turning her on to SZA’s jam, “Ice Moon.” She’ll pretend like she hates it but secretly, it speaks to her.

After your uncle Frank has had a few and starts talking about our socialist Muslim president, change the conversation by asking how his career is going. Danny Brown’s family doesn’t even keep up with what he’s doing because there “ain’t no internet in the hood.”

When watching that godawful parade, think about what a damn crime it is that Snoopy and Pikachu get their own balloons but Action Bronson doesn't. Well, here are all of his references to wrestling, at least.

And if you end up at your town’s local dive bar, you’re bound to run into some frat bros home from college. But instead of telling them stop quoting Workaholics so loudly, bond with them over their favorite frat jams you learned about on Reddit.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Noisey editors!