How to: Lose All the Friends You Just Made in College

If you’re a freshman like me who came to campus for a few short weeks, you’re probably now at home, far away from the friends that you just made. With mingled anxiety and uncertainty about blocking groups and plans for next semester, you’re probably wondering how you can stay in touch with your now long-distance friends. I might not be able to tell you exactly how to do that, but I can definitely tell you one thing that you should absolutely not do. Whatever you do, do NOT download the Psych! app, schedule a time to Zoom or FaceTime with your friends, and play “The Truth Comes Out.” Please. If you want to keep your friends, just don’t do it.

How the Hellish Game Works

When you join the game with your friends (which I hope you don’t do), you have to put in your names, and can add a little profile picture if you so choose. Once the names are entered into the game, questions are made that use the names in them. For example, it might say something like, “If Grace was walking out on stage, what song would she want playing in the background?”

When the question pops up, you have a text box that you can type your answer to the question in, even if it is a question about yourself (which always gives an immense opportunity for self-deprecation). After everyone enters their answer, the answers pop up on your screen anonymously in an annoyingly cheerful manner, and you get to choose which answer you like the best.

It might be the answer that you think is the most creative, the most accurate, or the most funny, but, especially with frequently angsty Harvard students, most likely everyone will choose the answer that is the most ~tastefully~ insulting. After everyone chooses the answer they liked the best, the results pop up with who wrote which answer. If the question was about you, you’re in for a real treat in learning what each of your friends really thinks of you.

The Inevitable Rage Quit

Some of the questions seem pretty innocent, like: “What would Abby and Olivia’s band be called?” That seems pretty wholesome, right? But, as the questions progress towards things like “What’s the last thing Will googled?,” it gets into increasingly slippery territory. I mean, that question is practically begging you to say something controversial.

There’s always a little tinge of anxiety when you see your name pop up in a question, especially if it’s a provocative one, because you can probably already guess what people might say about you. Sometimes, though, people will surprise you, and go even further than you could have imagined, pushing the line between what’s funny and what’s just plain insulting. Insults can be funny for sure, but sometimes a particularly edgy insult might elicit removing yourself messily from the game in what is the pinnacle of Psych-induced agony: a rage quit.

Zooming While Playing: Adding Insult to Injury

Due to the emotional stress that playing Psych with your friends causes, I would not recommend operating heavy machinery while playing, Zoom included. At the start of quarantine, my friends from high school and I would schedule times when we would all Zoom and play Psych simultaneously. Let me tell you, this is the worst possible situation you could get yourself into.

When you get a particularly nasty answer about yourself, you’re bound to be looking around your screen to see who’s laughing while taking fervent mental notes. Then comes the inevitable “wow” when you figure out who it was and silently vow to get them back. Plus, rage quits are FAR more dramatic on Zoom. So, if you somehow do decide to play the game, and you decide to Zoom as well, make sure that you’re prepared to deal with the incredibly awkward silence that passes if someone can no longer take the heat, and must leave the kitchen.

Even to this day, I still reflect on some of the answers that I’ve endured during numerous Psych games in high school, and the ruthlessness that I’ve seen raging in the eyes of many Harvard students does not seem to bode well for more casual Psych games in the future. No matter how sensitive or stone cold you are, Psych will undoubtedly hit you with some hard truths that will make you question your general presence/vibes/past/general life choices. Nothing is off limits in Psych, so unless you are really in the mood to be absolutely butt hurt, I would suggest having a casual book club Zoom, chill group FaceTime, or some other non-confrontational activity to *healthily* keep in touch with your long-distance friends.