Find Your Name in the City Dictionary
Another hell of a week is coming to an end. Let’s go get ready for next hell of a week. Let’s relaxwith a shower, an Adderall and a glass of whiskey, and look up our names in the Urban Dictionary .
On UD, the top definition for most names is a long compliment, an ode to all Melissas and Felicias and Kevins and Jorges that never fails. For many names, there is a long list of definitions, full of praise. And reading them is like taking a warm bath.
Not everyone will get a compliment at the top. Sorry, Brad . But even if a few of the top definitions are unpleasant, the first long is likely to be gold. (Skip to definition 5, Brad.) Maybe not all compliments are about you – for example, they can be a little heteronormative – but it’s nice to think of all the people who bear your name and all of their friends who wanted to tell the website. how cool they are.
And I really believe my friends wrote it – they don’t look like someone who calls themselves cool. They sound like yearbook signatures or wedding toasts. They are expressions of love, and reading them (on your own behalf or on behalf of others) allows you to appreciate that love.
If you listen to Reply All in its entirety, you will recognize these things from the announcers’ slogans at the end of the episode. During the credits, they always resort to an additional metaphor about Matt Lieber, co-founder of Gimlet Media, publisher of Reply All . “Matt Lieber is a rope swing over a pond.” “Matt Lieber is the new puppy who finally sleeps all night.” “Matt Lieber napping in the park.” There is a whole site that collects these slogans .
You don’t have your own podcast hosts to compliment you, but you have the City Dictionary. Immerse yourself in all this love and appreciate how it has surfaced on a site that mainly exists to explain drugs, abuse, and mythical sexual acts. A site that currently has the definition of “November without nuts” on its front page. Your name, whatever it may be, has melted even the cold heart of Urban Dictionary.