When you’re sternum-deep in the Internet all day, the shifting currents and riptides of the collective are tough to ignore. You’re minding your own business, processing email from inbox to outbox, extracting information for conversion to knowledge, when suddenly your social networks start disgorging flotsam: Galleries of grumpy animals. Videos of children in pageant dresses singing at 40 bpm. Shit Girls Say. GIFs.

You’d have to be a dark-hearted spoilsport not to click, right? This stuff isn’t spam. These are memes, the raw feed of popular culture. If you don’t look/listen/watch, you’re on the outside of an inside joke.

And some of it is funny! Or heartbreaking. Or important. But the people who are best at the Internet know when to opt out. They know which memes to skip. So be a dark-hearted spoilsport — but do it well. I’m here to help you be an ace meme-skipper.

Rule 1

Avoid Knock-Offs

Shit My Dad Says on Twitter? Funny. Shit Girls Say on YouTube? Hilarious. But the Shit _____ Say meme metastasized faster than the Real Housewives franchise. Shit Single Girls Say. Shit Black Girls Say II. Shit Yogis Say. Everybody with a face made one of these things. “It’s variations on a theme. Five percent are good, and the rest are crap,” says Jason Kottke, the programmer and shrewd link collector who runs kottke.org. “Cocaine Bear is great. There’s this grizzly bear in the snow, and the caption says, “I love coke!” and he’s, like, on a binge. It’s funny. I don’t need 11 more with penguins or cats or Ryan Gosling.”

Rule 2

Know Your Friends

Curate the so-called curators. That woman you’ve known since high school and can’t bring yourself to unfriend? Is she funny? If the answer is no, then don’t click on a link she posted with the comment “This is hilarious!” Incorrect. Avoid. (If she is a genius comedian, do the opposite.)

Rule 3

Know Yourself

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on Purritos (kittens wrapped up like burritos — you’re welcome), but if cuteness doesn’t do it for you, don’t click. Not into music? Don’t engage with Lana Del Rey. (Bonus: You never have to spell chanteuse.) Be as much about what you ignore as what you adore. “It’s identity signaling,” says Jonah Berger, a Wharton professor who studies social contagions. “A way to show distinction is to be an early disadopter.”

Rule 4

Have No Fear

Vanquish your desire to participate. What the kids call FOMO — fear of missing out — is where memes get their power; it’s the mitochondria of meme. But extreme participation can ruin you. “Memes are all about social coordination,” says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University. “You either do it or you don’t do it.” In other words, once you’re in, you’re in. And that guy who has seen every dubstep version of cartoon theme songs is a sad, sad man. Consider being the other dude, the one who knows WTF dubstep is and can sing the ThunderCats theme but feels zero compunction to marry the two.

Look, if slide shows of the ever-weird Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom are your thing, fine. Just own what you love and ignore what you hate — even anti-meme vitriol counts as engagement. Meme-skipping is about pulling the ejection lever and avoiding the canopy. It’s about not being cool. Is it “cool” that a guy whose avatar is a nine-layer cheeseburger with a bun made of doughnut just uploaded a series of videos of Mila Kunis dressed as a sorcerer, rapping in Russian?

Ha. Never mind. Worst example ever. Totally click through. He’s a freaking genius.

Email: mhkchoi@gmail.com