Benjamin Franklin is remembered as a printer, scientist, inventor, diplomat, statesman, philosopher, and founding father. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence, negotiated the American alliance with France, experimented with electricity, improved the postal system, and is generally credited with developing bifocals.

He was also one of the most interesting people history has ever produced. Given a choice of dinner companions from any era, Franklin would probably make a great many short lists.

That makes it particularly delightful that this same man once sat down and carefully explained how to become a truly disagreeable companion—the sort of person everyone hopes will leave the party early.

Benjamin Franklin Explains How to Become Unbearable

On November 15, 1750, the Pennsylvania Gazette published a short piece titled Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion. It offered exactly what the title promised: practical instructions showing how a man blessed with wit and learning could make certain that nobody particularly enjoyed having him around.

The piece appeared without Franklin’s name attached. The editors of the Franklin Papers attribute it to him based on a later statement by his son William, who recalled that his father had written and published a piece on precisely this subject. The attribution also fits comfortably with Franklin’s other writings, in which he repeatedly demonstrated both an interest in conversation and an ability to turn ordinary human foolishness into something resembling an instruction manual.

This was hardly Franklin’s only venture into satire disguised as helpful advice. He later suggested that Parisians could save candles by simply getting out of bed earlier, an essay sometimes credited as the origin of daylight saving time. He also devoted a mock-scientific letter to the possibility of making human flatulence less offensive in the wonderfully titled Fart Proudly.

For Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion, Franklin needed neither complicated science nor international diplomacy. He merely needed to observe what happens when an intelligent person decides that conversation exists primarily to provide him with an audience.

Franklin Had Some Experience With Disagreeable Companions

There is an additional reason Franklin’s essay works so well: he knew the problem from the inside.

In his Autobiography, Franklin remembered that as a young man he loved arguing with a friend named John Collins. The two were extremely fond of disputing with one another and trying to prove each other wrong. Franklin eventually concluded that this “disputatious turn” was a particularly bad habit because constantly contradicting people made a person “extremely disagreeable in company.”

Franklin had, in other words, conducted extensive field research.

He later received an even more personal performance review. A Quaker friend informed Franklin that people considered him proud, that his pride frequently revealed itself in conversation, and that he was not merely satisfied with being correct but tended to become overbearing about it. Friends willing to tell you that everyone finds you insufferable are apparently another useful eighteenth-century invention.

Franklin took the criticism seriously. He wrote that he began avoiding direct contradictions and overly confident expressions such as “certainly” and “undoubtedly.” Instead, he deliberately used softer phrases such as “I conceive,” “I apprehend,” and “it appears to me.” He found that conversations became more pleasant and, perhaps more importantly to Franklin, people became easier to persuade.

That background gives Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion an extra layer. Franklin was not merely pointing at some tiresome fellow across the room. He had recognized some of these tendencies in himself and learned that being intelligent, knowledgeable, and correct does surprisingly little good if everyone starts looking for another room whenever you approach.

Benjamin Franklin’s Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion

The complete essay appears below. We have lightly modernized the spelling, capitalization, abbreviations, and punctuation for present-day readers while otherwise preserving Franklin’s wording. The original transcription can be read at Founders Online.

The Rules Still Work Remarkably Well

Nearly three centuries later, Franklin’s instructions have aged distressingly well. Monopolize every conversation. Talk endlessly about yourself. Interrupt other people. Correct minor errors. Make sure everyone knows that you have already read whatever clever thing somebody else has just discovered. And, once everyone else has given up trying to participate, congratulate yourself on having been the most interesting person in the room.

The technology has changed, of course. Franklin’s disagreeable companion had to perform these feats in person, which at least imposed practical limits involving geography, available dinner invitations, and the occasional need to stop talking long enough to breathe. Modern civilization has generously supplied social media, comment sections, group texts, and online forums so that the truly dedicated practitioner can now irritate people on several continents simultaneously.

What makes the essay more than a collection of good eighteenth-century insults, however, is that Franklin understood the temptation behind the behavior. Being knowledgeable is pleasant. Being recognized as knowledgeable is even more pleasant. From there, it is only a short and surprisingly well-traveled road to treating every conversation as an opportunity to demonstrate that you are the cleverest person present.

Franklin eventually learned that winning every argument and winning people over are not the same thing. His wonderfully backward advice in Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion makes the same point by showing us exactly what not to do. If your principal ambition is to shine, Franklin’s rules remain an excellent guide. Just remember the final benefit he promises: eventually, you may become so successful at it that people will be delighted whenever you are somewhere else.

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