Editors’ Letters: “Start the new year with a #WAMM”

We’re all familiar with YOLO. It seems that we students have taken the motto particularly to heart and, let’s face it: it’s rare you go a day (or night) at university without hearing the word. YOLO is basically the modern equivalent to phrases such as Carpe Diem, for people who think that Drake is a better lyricist than the Roman poet Horace.

One slight problem though, YOLO is rubbish. It’s always used out of context, for one thing. Plus Zac Efron has a YOLO tattoo, an actual permanent mark on his body that is going to sag and stretch and forever remind him that he’s a colossal tit. As well as telling us that Zac Efron is an idiot, this also surely tells us that YOLO is dead. That’s why I’ve coined an alternative, fit for 2014: #WAMM (We All Make Mistakes).

YOLO is just too cheerful and optimistic. On the other hand WAMM perfectly encapsulates all of the earthy disappointment, frustration and shame you feel as a student.

It’s more relevant. It’s much more realistic. It’s much more reasonable. WAMM is both a realization and answer to stupid decisions that you make. An ill-advised YOLO fuelled moment of recklessness resulted in you asking out that fit girl in your seminar who now avoids eye contact with you? WAMM. You sunk that sixth shot at Kasbah and missed your 9am? WAMM. You’ve remembered you’re paying £9,000 to attend Warwick (and essentially to read this article, HA)? Double WAMM.

If YOLO was a person, it would undoubtedly be Stephen Mulhern

If YOLO was a person, it would undoubtedly be Stephen Mulhern. You know, that baby-faced little magician scamp on the telly who is doomed to perpetually linger on ITV2. Mulhern presents Britain’s Got Talent spin-off shows where he has to interview people who can’t sing or dance but weren’t quite funny enough to make the main show, all the while smiling a dead smile whilst deluding himself into thinking he’ll one day be offered a place on Strictly Come Dancing. They’re a perfect fit; both are idealistic, inane, and utterly bland.

If WAMM was a person, however, it would clearly be best personified by Don Draper from Mad Men, swilling an expensive whiskey with a cool air of self-aware cynicism and don’t-give-a-damn attitude. WAMM is the morning after the YOLO before.

Hopefully, then, this article will make you either reconsider the place of YOLO in our collective vernacular. You only live once- and the sole life of YOLO is up. At the very least, hopefully this irreverent moan momentarily distracted you from a deadline or something.

If it didn’t, then there is, of course, only one thing left for me to say.

#WAMM.