[AKN #105] You Will Be Consumed By The Darkness If You Choose To Face It Alone
LAUGH: If Twitter Existed During The Age of Hieroglyphics, LOVE: How New Technology Is Received
Sup homies?
Today, I overheard the following conversation:
GUY 1: “What’s your name?”
GUY 2: “Odin.”
GUY 1: “That’s a sick name.”
You know, no one EVER says that when I tell them my name is Kevin.
Except for other Kevins. That conversation always plays out the same. I say my name is Kevin, he says his name is Kevin and we go “ahhh GREAT name hahaha.”
Non-Kevins, on the other hand, could care less about my name.
I get it. Unlike Odin, I wasn’t named after a Norse God.
In fact, my name isn’t special AT ALL.
Kevin isn’t even a family name, it’s simply a name approved by the White People Commission for First Names (WPCFN). Dan and Brian were already taken so I got Kevin.
That’s the funny thing about names. They don’t really mean anything. They generally don’t have a deeper significance than “this was an acceptable and popular name when I was born.”
Like consider the popularity of baby names over the last 120+ years for the names Michael, Kevin, and Liam.
Oh don’t worry. I visualized it for you.
As you can see, when I was born, Michael was the Alabama football of male names. A powerhouse on an unprecedented run of dominance with a recruitment pipeline most names could only dream of.
Kevin was more like a Boise State. A young upstart who cracked the top 20 a decade ago and while it couldn’t consistently compete with the Michaels, it was still a respectable name by popularity heading into 1990.
Since then, the popularity of the name Kevin has fallen off. People dislike Kevin more and more each year. The cultural tides have changed. Kevin is a dying breed. That’s just the data.
That’s not saying this is “correct” or “better.” Culture doesn’t always move in the direction of “better.” Like for fuck sake, a child born in 2022 has a higher likelihood of being named Liam than Kevin. Fucked up world we live in where people are not comfortable assigning a gender to their child at birth, but are comfortable branding their child Liam for the rest of their life.
But that’s the thing. This is the culture right now. Names are simply a product of the cultural moment you were born in. Culture changes. Therefore, names change.
And not just first names, but also the name of our loved products. Like did you know Q-Tips used to be called Baby Gays? Seriously, that’s a real life fact.
To quote Wikipedia:
The first mass-produced cotton swab was developed in 1923 by Polish-American Leo Gerstenzang after he watched his wife attach wads of cotton to toothpicks to clean their infant's ears. His product was originally named "Baby Gays" in recognition of them being intended for infants.
The name was changed after an incident in 1927. You see, a customer was giving instructions to the nanny about cleaning their baby’s ear1 when he found himself saying “yea so now you just take that Baby Gay and shove it deep in there…dear God.”
He got on the phone with the White People Committee for Acceptable Language (WPCAL) immediately:
“Mortimer2, we have to change the name of the thing you put in your ear…it sounds…sinful.”
And that is how we ended up with Q-Tip.3
Which it will remain until some Liam complains about how it’s not sex positive enough to only encourage people to use just the tip.
Culture creates names and culture erases names. It’s the way it goes.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: You Will Be Consumed By The Darkness If You Choose To Face It Alone
A hand crafted, artisanal post by me
Have you ever talked to someone who is depressed?
I have. Like a lot.
Having dealt with darkness in my own life and told people about it, people feel comfortable coming to me when they are in their darkest hour.
They are depressed.
Some of them use substances to mask the pain.
Some of them are even suicidal.
It’s a heavy moment when they let me in on their sadness, but I’m always grateful they did.
Because you know what’s worse than them feeling suicidal?
Them feeling suicidal and telling no one.
History is riddled with people who felt a profound darkness and kept it to themselves.
In the best case, we get access to their diary where we see how tortured they felt on a daily basis.
In the worst case, we read about their life in an obituary and hear from their family members about how out of character it was for them to take their own life.
But thankfully, these people who opened up to me chose to tell someone.
Many people don’t.
Maybe because they are afraid of the reaction from their loved ones.
Maybe because in those moments it feels like the only thing that could make this worse is sharing it with someone.
But not these people.
They faced that moment with courage and told me their deepest darkest secret.
And with that, now the healing can actually begin.
Now, telling someone about it is not a panacea for depression.
There are many other steps involved.
But sharing it with someone is the first step in the correct direction.
It’s realizing you can’t solve this problem alone.
It’s acknowledging you cannot solve this problem by thinking.
After all, going at this alone is what got you into trouble in the first place.
So when we find ourselves in the darkness, we must let other people know.
Otherwise, I promise you that if you choose to face the darkness alone, you will be consumed by it.
Listen. I get it.
Sharing it is scary.
I know you have this deep dark secret where you feel like if you share it with anyone it will end you.
You feel that if you share it with the world, you will be cast out to the abyss. Left to fend for yourself like Tom Hanks in Castaway. Just yelling at a volleyball alone.
But in reality — by not sharing — you are already Tom Hanks in Castaway. You just might not feel that way because you are yelling into social media so it feels real. It’s not. It’s still you talking to yourself.
Help yourself by telling a trusted loved one today.
Do not try and shoulder the burden by yourself.
Because only light can kill the darkness.
LAUGH: If Twitter Existed During The Age of Hieroglyphics
A curated joke I found wading through the cesspool of the Internet
LOVE: How New Technology Is Received
Something I have been loving
I’m not a big Bitcoin guy, but this Bitcoin account sourced an incredible, old video of newscasters struggling to grasp email and the Internet.
How crazy is that? I love the part where the guy off the screen tackles describing the Internet.
Wonder what technology we are struggling to grasp today which is about to change our lives.
CLOSING TIME
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Call me any time,
K.Rapp
This baby’s name was likely Eugene — the 20th most popular male baby name in 1927
Assuming this man is gainfully employed at the White People Committee for Acceptable Language in the year 1927 and given the lax child labor laws back then, I’m guessing he was born in 1912 which makes Mortimer the 542nd most popular name for when he was born
This is at least the story I am going to tell people