Omar, a Youtuber who talks about life, thoughts, and relationships on his channel “KOREAN LIFE OF OMAR”, has woven some of his best life advice and content from his most-viewed videos into a book. Let’s Not Get Along with Everybody is a book for people like me — people who don’t know how to act whenever it’s the least bit awkward, can’t seem to figure out how dating even works, and simply have too many random thoughts about why certain things in life happen in certain ways. Relatable? This is exactly what Omar, the 21st century Youtube guru, will help you through.

I have always been rather deterred from reading essays that deal with life and relationships, as they oftentimes sound too pompous. The writers, instead of giving advice, start to lecture the readers, wanting merely to show off their philosophical insight and knowledge — without realizing that that’s exactly what makes them appear less insightful. Let’s Not Get Along with Everybody, on the other hand, almost feels too casual to be a real book. Sure enough, some of the lines were almost word for word transcripts of what Omar has said in his past videos. But the down-to-earth tone of his writing is what makes his words relevant. He uses some moderate curse words that are often heard in conversations with close friends, but does not come across as rude. He’s that one friend  who is in charge of being the “someone” in the “someone’s gotta tell him” moment. His straightforward way of speaking may offend you one second, but you would then find yourself nodding the next. He describes his book as “not what you want to hear, but what you’d want to live by”

The book is divided into three parts. I found the first and third parts fairly relatable. He talks about “people who don’t pay money back in time”, or“people who can’t distinguish between being rude and being straightforward”, for instance. And the third chapter is more about specific situations or actions he feels uncomfortable with. He not only points out why he is deterred from certain things, but also tries to analyze why people became the way they are, giving his best solutions on how to interact with them. While being relatable, it also gives you pause to look back on whether you could be one of those obnoxious people he is describing.

The dating part he talked about was more interesting, but less relatable in my part due to lack of experience (tears). I say “dating” specifically instead of “love” because rather than talking about the emotion itself, Omar handles it as just another category of human relationship. He reminds us about the basic rules and boundaries that should be kept even between two lovers, which should not be clouded by love in making judgments. But what was more interesting for me, apart from reminders and advice, were his analyses about people’s behavior when they fall in love. He shares his insights about “why guys treat you worse in later stages of a relationship”, for instance. These random thoughts he spurts out are very often topics we talk about with close friends, which makes it feel like I’m reading his Instagram feed rather than tedious pages of a book.

However, there are some parts I really cannot agree with. For example, he writes that we should not expect too much from friendship or “best friends”. But who is he to judge the depth of every existing friendship and generalize its meaning? It’s just that he should not say anything too definitively about any human relationship — he simply has not seen everything yet. Although he does mention in the introduction that he does not mean to say that he’s always correct, I cannot help but feel like he is using this introduction as a shield to prevent any backlash towards the content of his book.

Surely Omar can’t be right about everything he says. But if you want to contemplate human life in general and hear some decent opinions, I’d say why not hear from Omar?