Seven Signs Your Roommate’s Parents Definitely Have a Wikipedia Page
- They tell you a different city every you ask for their hometown. The first time you asked where they lived, they said Jakarta. The second time, they gave you the name of a fancy London boarding school. The third, they told you they were a “suitcase kid”, except you’ve seen their suitcase and you’re pretty sure the combination lock was made of solid gold
- “There’s a skull from the Catacombs in my basement.” We’ve all heard it before. At first, you assume it’s some clumsy joke that they use with all their friends. You awkwardly play along, joking, “Okay yeah, I also have my own skull.” However, it gets weird, and by 2am you’re standing in the bike room of Max P signing an NDA. She enters a code into a safe — she has her own safe in the basement of Max P? Why did she freak out when you asked if you could split the cost of a mini-fridge if she has a GODDAMN SAFE in the basement of your dorm? Wearing gloves, you inspect a decaying skull. You may say things like “Oh, is this someone in your family?” and “Well, is it at least a close friend of the family?” You will never get an answer. This happens once during O-Week, and the two of you will never discuss it again.
- They dogmatically believe that they’re upper-middle class. Other euphemisms for wealth include “we’re comfortable,” “I had a privileged childhood,” and “I think most people can afford a yacht.” If your roommate extols the virtues of the new Tesla models and declares themselves a Marxist in the same breath, or if they look vaguely guilty during SOSC discussions about the ethics of landlording, you can assume their parents are loaded.
- They share a last name with a Nobel Laureate, a senior government official, and/or several campus buildings. Names like Mansueto and Pritzker aren’t common. You should be concerned. Especially if they expect you to know who their dad is (see “Don’t You Know Who My Dad Is?!” from our archives for further explanation).
- They use “network” as a verb. “I had a great time with you tonight. How about we reconvene and rendezvous for a little networking sesh at Nobu next week?” This is not a normal thing to say.
- They start drafting their own wikipedia page. You hear typing at 3am, and you open your eyes, only to see your roommate writing a non-academic essay. On closer inspection (discreetly, don’t fall off the bed!), you see that they’re writing an autobiography of some sort and adding hyperlinks to every other word — and then it hits you. They’re writing a Wikipedia page for themselves. Pretty suspicious.
- They literally won’t shut the fuck up about it. And they’re not going to. Common solutions include requesting a different roommate, blocking Wikipedia, getting tinnitus, or building a time machine and attempting to prevent their parents’ whirlwind romance.
Editor-in-Chief, 2022-23
Andrea Zhou — a self-proclaimed hot chocolate fanatic — is one of our beloved staff writers as well as a deputy copy editor. She has written and edited a number of articles for The Shady Dealer, and aspires to finish college with over a hundred articles under her name.
