I wouldn’t dare fuck with Liz Lovero. I can read the writing on the wall. This is a girl who could advise a turtle to leave its shell or make a Coke drinker turn Pepsi.

Yesterday, in the Inappropriate Advice column, she gave a nuanced view of the many complex rifts that money and class can create between friends. Certainly, as Liz notes, there is a privilege in being able to maintain cool despite the financial and social stresses that accompany age. Conversely, it is absurd to come down too harshly on the capital-seekers when we will all one day need to heed the calls of financial reality.

I would like, though, to offer up a tangential notion that her column led me to consider: can’t we come up with certain codes that should be valued beyond the blanket tolerance that is so often granted to all situations and contexts? Or, more specifically, aren’t there situations that we can all just agree are lame? Moments that we can just do away with all together, regardless of their context? Shouldn’t there be some sense of behavior that we can expect from each other (especially our friends!) that signifies more than our ability to socially affect our own cultural capital? And can we do more than just to contextualize every situation until the action feels justified?

Here’s an example: a few weeks ago I was attending a rehearsal dinner for a wedding. The guests, especially at the table where I sat, were pretty cool. And I mean cool in the very sense that Liz prescribes it: those old enough to have potentially followed the path of corporate blasé but, instead, “privileged” enough to be maintaining various artistic and creative lifestyles — cool lifestyles — nonetheless.

We were cool and, believe me, we showed it. We talked about obscure vinyl discoveries, high-brow literary interests and the future of arts culture when the economy crumbles and the money disappears. I was drinking champagne and pretending that I was better versed in globalization and Duchamp than I am. It was all entertaining, at least, if occasionally absurd. But – suddenly! – a comparative conversation about cell phones and service providers popped up. “No one uses T-Mobile!” “Verizon has the best service!” “Do you have this new app?”

It’s true…we were talking about cell phones.

This all ceased when N., an Albert Grossman looking hero with thick glasses and a stomach full of whiskey, suddenly shouted, “Are we seriously talking about cell phones right now!? Come on! We can do better than that!”

And, you know what? We could. And we can. These were interesting, intellectually curious people. I mean, it’s not that we needed to veer into a conversation about housing values and the dawn of neo-Keynesian economics, we could have just as well talked about junk food indulgences or hairstyles. But we were talking about cell phones! We don’t need to take a relativist stance to justify this sort of verbal drool. The line must be drawn! We must resist! We have more to offer and, in that moment, we all knew it. This had to stop.

Certainly a nice sweater shouldn’t be an instant object of condemnation — unless it is, perhaps, made from chinchilla — but here we are (short on time, hurtling towards death!), so let’s just call them like we see them. Let’s make a list. Let’s ban the soulless, empty dialogue! Suggestions?