The internet's top tips for ensuring your New Year's Eve isn't a total disaster

A reveller writes '2014' with sparklers ahead of New Year's Eve, in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

We're getting closer by the second to that most important minute of 2013, the last one. It's a time you want to be in peak social and/or romantic condition - and thankfully, the internet is offering plenty of advice for how to make sure you're not mumbling the countdown alone in a toilet as the clock strikes midnight. Here's our top 5:

1. Kiss

It's easy enough if you have a partner with whom you have already come to an agreement on open borders. If you don't, here's some advice from the Telegraph:

'Don’t preload before the party. As tempting as this is, you’ll be too hammered when you arrive to tell who’s acceptable shagging fodder and who isn’t.'

And, if you don't hit the 12pm deadline, 'Don’t go home with anyone who only started talking to you at some point after 2.18am.'

Another option is to simply shift up to Scotland, where it's customary to kiss everyone in the room at midnight. Can't fail!

(Getty Images)

2. Or don't kiss

News Shopper somewhat rains on the love parade.

"While your chances of a fling probably are marginally better than normal, if she/he didn’t want to get off with you before New Year’s Eve she/he probably still doesn’t want to on New Year’s Eve"

If you're hugging thin air come 11:59 Glamour has compiled 10 things you can do to feel better about it, including:

'1. Gather all your single friends for a group hug.'

'Or, 6. At about 11:45, buy a glass of the the most expensive champagne or top-shelf Scotch you can afford. At midnight, toast yourself, sip, and savor.'

Remember, alcohol will never turn you down! (P.S. it probably will)

(Getty Images)

3. Make friends

Don't talk about yourself! Ask other people to talk about themselves!

Diana Tamir, a Harvard neuroscientist, found that self-disclosure gives the human brain the same pleasure signals as eating food, or receiving money. So people are almost guaranteed to like you if you offer them up a chance to do some mild bragging.

via Fast Company

4. Book a cab

Unless you are prepared to shell out a week's wages to get home, or be mocked by carousing strangers on a nightbus or seven.

(Keep a hold of a phone at all costs. And load it with taxi app Hailo)

(GETTY IMAGES)

5. Stay home

It's not such a massive deal. By bunkering down, you'll start 2014 in pretty ticker shape, with no soul-wringing faux pas to remind you that deep, deep down you belong in a cave somewhere that new year's cannot reach.