Labels

Looking back, it’s hard to read those forum posts and web comments from the late 1990’s to early 2000’s, and understand what life must have been like. “Don’t label me,” people would say. “Labels hurt.”

“We label products to let people know about them,” a senator would say not many years later. “Nutrition labels. Warning labels. Explicit Content labels. Labels help us know if something is good for us, if something is right for us. Why then, shouldn’t we label one another?”

He then, unironically, launched into a history of labels on people. The mark of Cain. Branded and tattooed criminals. The scarlet letter. Meghan’s Law. Titles, he said, were just labels we agreed as a society to have. Officer. Judge. Doctor. Reverend. Mr. Mrs. Ms. What was so bad about labels?

And so after much debate, the Human Universal Label’s Act passed, requiring that at least once per year, everyone undergo an aptitude/attitude battery to determine which label(s) they should be required to wear. A person could take it more often if they chose, but then they risked being labeled “over-eager” or “obsessed.”

There was resistance, sure, but it didn’t take long for people to come around to the idea. All it took was to show up to a blind date or a party or office team building exercise and immediately spot the douchebag to truly see the system, imperfect though it was, had its merits.

- Originally mailed to D.H. in Mississippi