It began with one man’s dream.

A dream of the perfectly realized American company.

A company that would create dissatisfied customers in the process of exploiting demoralized employees—while selling overpriced and ineffective products intended to remediate the problems caused by that very process.

A company that would become the bold embodiment of every shortcoming rife within corporate America. A business dictatorship with draconian tendencies. A company grossly obsessed with margins. A peddler of absurdly embellished corporate publicity.

The incorporation of despair itself.

A company that would abandon conventionally desirable demographics to embrace pessimists, underachievers and the chronically unsuccessful—selling them shiny encapsulations of their own shortcomings.

On March 23, 1998, the dream became a reality:

Despair, Incorporated.

Around the world, individuals trapped inside other incorporations of despair began to hear of the dream. In a random email from an old friend. In small, hushed gatherings in a break room. On the dorm-room wall of a disaffected college student.

Overcome with surprise, they had to see for themselves whether the company was real, whether the products were real, whether the spin was real. And upon discovering that Despair was every bit as real as any other company—and its products and spin equally so—they submitted to becoming customers themselves.

As time wore on, something unexpected happened.

They began to realize that they themselves were virtually employed by Despair, Inc., though it hid behind a million other names. Trapped inside high-tech startups, financial institutions, college dormitories and government agencies, they were all virtually employed by Despair, Inc.

And as they communicated their grief to peers both within and beyond their companies, they secretly acknowledged their ultimate employer—incorporating its very logo, :-(, into their unhappy communications.

It began with one man’s dream.