Royal-we Memes

The royal "we" of mathematics! That awkward moment when you're reviewing a paper and realize the lone author keeps saying "we prove" and "we demonstrate" like they've got an invisible research army hiding in their office. Meanwhile, it's just one sleep-deprived mathematician with seventeen empty coffee cups and a cat that occasionally walks across their keyboard. The academic equivalent of talking about yourself in third person—except somehow even more pretentious! Next time I read "we conclude," I'm asking for the names of all these mysterious co-authors!

The royal "we" of mathematical proofs! Nothing says confidence like a lone mathematician dramatically gesturing to an imaginary audience while writing "Let us now consider..." in their notebook at 3 AM. Their only collaborators? A concerning amount of caffeine and the ghost of Euler judging their notation. The plural pronoun creates the illusion that mathematical discovery is a collaborative effort and not just someone having an existential crisis in front of a chalkboard.

Nothing says "I don't want to do this calculation myself" quite like a mathematician using the royal "we" to assign you a problem they've never actually solved. That smug pipe-smoking expression is the universal sign of someone who just delegated 4 hours of integration by parts to students while sipping tea in their office. The academic equivalent of "I know the answer, I just want to see if you know it."