1) Minimize eye contact. As a general rule, the ratio of eye contact with your crush to how much you’re crushing on your crush should be inverse. If you must acknowledge your crush, a sideways glance or indirect stare is advised.
2) Frequently cancel plans at the last minute due to overwhelming expectations/ pervasive feelings that you’ll ‘choke.’ Excuses to your crush should be obvious and red-flaggy.
3) In a group situation, let your much more attractive friend do all the talking. To your crush. Be awash in feelings of inferiority when they begin going out.
4) Before getting drinks with your crush, at home, make sure to drink at least the total amount that you expect to drink while getting drinks. While getting drinks, offer the crush shots and elaborately prepared cocktails, regardless of the crush’s body language and non-verbal cues.
5) Verbally demarcate all silences between you and the crush as awkward or variations thereof, e.g. “Wow it looks like we don’t have anything to talk about heh,” “Do you think this silence is awkward?” etc.
6) Humblebrag extensively, unconsciously. Redirect every conversational turn back to the subject of You. One simple strategy is simply to interrupt your crush’s personal anecdote with “Oh, that happened to me, too,” and proceed uninterrupted and loudly with your account of a similar experience. If you’re successful, your crush will begin looking over your shoulder, checking his watch, and asking for the check. If your crush is suddenly gone and you realize that you’ve been talking to an empty chair for the past five minutes, you’re gold.
7) Use your social networks to broadcast that you are any or all of the following: in love, horny, depressed, lonely, clingy, desperate, ‘crushing,’ ‘missing someone,’ experiencing muffintop/ gas / your menstrual cycle.
8) Text the object of your affections immediately after spending time with them. Have trouble limiting your thoughts to one succinct message and feel an overwhelming desire to correct every typo, resulting in a number of rapid-fire texts before your crush has been given the chance to respond to the original message.
9) Invite your crush to do something with you and, when they reject the invitation, follow up immediately with alternate plans that are better suited to their schedule/ avoid the conflict they had with your initial plans. For example, if you invite your crush to see a movie she claims to have seen already, tell her you’re game to see something else, if that’s preferable.
10) Pressure your crush to talk about the last person he was in love with in an attempt to bond over heartache/ prove that you are a better option because you “understand where you’re coming from” and would “never do that, your ex sounds like a jerk.”
11) Quickly attempt to form a psychologist/ patient dynamic with your crush by almost demanding she reveal intimate details about her past. Proceed to interpret each of these details and dole out unsolicited advice and general life lessons. Transition from this conversation to a drawn-out diatribe about your own experience with personal growth (parts of which you’ve already spoken of, at medium-length), life obstacles, and love lost in which, at the end, you paint yourself as the sage-like victor who has most — if not all — of ‘it’ figured out.
12) When your crush asks if you’ve ever heard of a book/ album/ TV show, always say yes — even if you have no idea what he’s talking about. If he asks follow-up questions, say, “Wait, what? What are we talking about again? I couldn’t hear you.”
13) Shortly after your first date, write a see-through, faux-cryptic, humblebrag status update alluding to the fact that you just went on a date with an intriguing artist who’s mysterious, intelligent, and good-looking. Allude to a feeling of being ‘swept off your feet,’ despite the fact that your crush seemed at most vaguely interested in seeing you again. Friend request your crush immediately thereafter, ensuring that the first thing your crush will see on your profile is the aforementioned status update. To ensure success, tack on a small message to the request, something vaguely overbearing and too-intimate like “hey, you 14) Be really weird about ‘letting’ your crush meet your friends. Your ‘weird’ behavior should originate from feelings of inferiority and worries that your crush will choose one of your friends over you. Have, in fact, a specific friend in mind, and shield your crush from said friend at all costs.
15) Form artificial relationships with your crush’s close friends to create the illusion that you are already accepted/ deemed desirable by people your crush respects. Give off the impression that you’re ‘up for grabs’ and do not favor any one friend over the other in a weak attempt to spark your crush’s interest. Hang out with your crush’s friends, especially when you have prior knowledge that she will not be present.
16) Seek your crush’s approval to an extreme, highly detailed extent. Instead of expressing what you want to do, always say that you aren’t sure, then ask what your crush wants to do. Follow each of your crush’s statements with high-pitched laughter and something like “I know, right?” Obsessively overqualify statements met with even the suggestion of silence until laughter is elicited. Rescind statements made accidentally simultaneously in contradiction with your crush’s, applying generous “Oh no you’re totally right,”s and “Yeah I didn’t think about that at all, no you’re probably right, you’re right”s.
17) Randomly engage in a lengthy speech about your ex. Appear uninhibitedly bitter and resentful, name-call, and when implored, close the topic out with “I don’t want to think about it anymore.” Say you need a cigarette and leave your baffled crush open-mouthed at the table. Apologize dismissively when you get back inside.
18) After your first date, change your relationship status on Facebook to “It’s Complicated with [Your crush].”
19) Send your crush links to videos, pictures, and articles coupled with the phrase, “saw this and thought of you,” despite having zero reason to associate the content in question with him (other than the fact that you are thinking about him on a frequent basis).
20) If you, by chance, end up back at your crush’s place late at night, and it becomes apparent that she wants to go to bed, and that you must leave, make an excuse about why you can’t go home and ask to stay on her couch. In the morning while she’s eating her cereal, walk around her apartment stretching and making loud morning sounds. Invite yourself to a bowl of her cereal and ask what’s next after you both finish. 
