15 ways of shade

MANILA, Philippines - This week, Kanye West threw serious shade at Beck for winning the Grammy for Being the Best at Music in 2014. As usual, Kanye, the Beyoncé stan, thought the award should have gone to the queen instead of the man whose albums are among the top 5 CDs you’d take on a deserted island selection of the intelligentsia. It’s still hotly debatable whether or not Beck truly deserved that Grammy but what is true and infallible fact is that Kanye can throw shade like a Scandinavian winter and it is now my job to find out how we, as normal people, can throw as big a shade.

Throwing shade is the national pastime of the land of the Passive-Aggressive — it is a subdued, nuanced and more creative form of being a bitch. It’s easy to be a bitch, but pulling a crafty shade is a lot trickier. By the end of this article I hope to help you pull out more shades than a Sunnies outlet for the purposes of science and learning.

1 If an annoying Tita figure, someone who is aged but still definitely able, cuts you in line for anything keep a novena card or a “you may go to hell one day”pamphlet handy to make sure she never does it again and you will have made the world a better place.

2 A subtweet isn’t necessarily a shade, so when trying to anonymously throw some on Twitter, make sure it’s specific enough for your target to read and, most importantly, to feel your eye-roll from across the screen. My favorite method is the “shm” as in “Shmepsi Shmucks.”

3 If you have an artist friend whose work has become dry and boring, throw some artful shade by looking at his old work sending him a photo and telling him “Hey, you’ve made it! Someone is making ugly copies of your work.” Then remain silent.

4 If you buy fast food and the lady at the counter refuses to give you more ketchup, pick up the packet, look back at said lady and raise both the packet and preferred eyebrow then walk away.

5 If you know someone who has straight up bit your online persona, i.e. copied all of your tweets and passed them off as their own, throw shade by letting them know your original thoughts sounded a lot better when they typed it.

6 If a person you know who is a musician posts all his gear on Facebook but his music never sounds any different, post a compliment on the comments section saying, “Wow, you’re so skilled you are able to make such a distinct sound despite all these gadgets!”

 7 Sometimes a smirk goes a long way. When you’re at a restaurant and someone is raving at length about iced tea, look towards your shadee, give out a little smirk, scrunch your face and raise your eyebrows at the same time while leaning to one side. All that work to expressive your disbelief. Shading is art.

8 If your boss rejects your idea and then brings it up as his own at a meeting, speak up in agreement on how that is such a great idea and you couldn’t have possibly ever heard that idea before in any way… ever.

9 If a friend has mentioned that her favorite book series is Fifty Shades of Grey, Google a photo of a random pocket book, send it to your friend and tell her this is the same exact story and tell her how happy you are that you have the same taste in literature.

10 If you have been the recipient of shade and would like to return with an even larger one, it is important to accept the shade as true and gun for something your shader has that is false, maybe a designer bag or hair extensions. You choose.

11 If your friend tells you to delete a photo where she looks totally fine but thinks she doesn’t, kindly agree to the request and re-upload said photo and hastily crop her out with questionable technique to show her that one, the important part was the fun being had in the photo, and two, that you still wanted her in it.

12 If you know someone who has recently taken to putting way too much makeup on for her own good, let her know that you didn’t know maximalism was in and that their face art was reminiscent of the Ecce Homo. (Google it. *shading you*)

13 If a skinny person says she looks fat, recommend your favorite deliverable meals and send her as much work-out links as possible while Instagramming your favorite fast food value meal.

14 If you have a friend that keeps peddling his questionable taste in music without respecting your taste or the fact that you really don’t want to hear that noise, tell him how the song has great market potential and how you can really hear it being enjoyed on your friend’s most hated station.

15 If you have an annoying and vain co-worker at an employer that requires you to constantly wear IDs, tell them their outfit looks great and the lanyard really completes the look.