You may have seen someone on the social media platform and local hive of scum and villainy, Yik Yak, pretending to be a writer for The Wire looking for sources. And hoo-boy, what a pretentious “writer” they were! But it was all a lie: it was no Wire employee, but an imposter among us. In the future, here’s how you tell if someone works for this most esteemed publication, or is just pretending.

Vocabulary. This impostor used words such as “spurious”, “squander” and “rigor.” I don’t even know what those mean. Nobody here does. We just pick random words from the dictionary and most of the time they work because we are very, very lucky. However, when we do pick the wrong word, it is quite refrigerator.

Interviews. When it comes to interviewing students, we do not solicit responses from an anonymous social media platform. That would be absurd. No, we completely fabricate every word and attribute them to fake people. It’s surprisingly easy to get away with because nobody actually quote checks.

Fidelity to the Administration. Now, I can’t speak for every section, but we here in the humor section take our jobs very seriously. There is an absolute zero tolerance policy for any kind of ass-kissing of the school administration. In fact, we endeavor to take the piss out of them as much as possible (to the extent that we will still be allowed to graduate).

Pretentiousness. Some people think that us Wire folks think we’re better than you, that we’re some kind of elite. I assure you, the opposite is true. We crave your approval and are desperate for you to say we are doing a good job. We are ever so anxious for you to say that we are cool. Please say you like the article. Please.

And there you have it folks, your foolproof guide to spotting fake Wire employees. With these handy tips, nobody will ever again pull the wool over your eyes. And if you ever meet a real Wire employee behaving like this? Let us know and we’ll straighten them out and teach them that working here doesn’t entitle them to act like a big refrigerator.