My dearest Polycorp,
Last night I found myself awoken by the most frightening of nightmares. In this horrid vision I had seen a weird looking fellow. Clearly under 5 foot 9. Absolutely appalling.
Dressed in my official merchandise I outran this freak of nature faster than my meet-and-greet tickets sold out. Despite my impeccable workout regimen, post-escape I did have to take a fairly lengthy few seconds to rest and re-hydrate. Besides a lamppost with tendrils growing around it to the top is where I chose to rest. And then. It happened. As I drank out of my Nutrio water bottle that I had filled with Gatorade and vodka, I was photographed. And….I don’t know if I can even put this part into words.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words and a picture was indeed taken in which my carefully manicured finger nail had COMPLETELY blocked out the brand-name of the bottle. An influencer-disaster. Nutrio called me immediately and said they could not believe I would make such a basic blunder. They let me go. I woke up in a pool of sweat, though it would have been worse had I not worn my night-time sweat soaking headband (available on my online store).
Only you sprung to mind when I had gathered my senses. Such an error may seem unheard of for an entity so streamlined as yourself. But alas, for myself, this is a constant worry. How can I sell my name as a brand when the weaknesses associated with humanity continue to plague me? I am but a woman. A human woman. And as a human woman I come across one set of adversities after the other.
I could fill a book with all the faux-pas I have committed in such a short amount of time. In fact, I’ve already run a cost-benefit analysis of making that book and it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Would my fans pay $15 for it? I’d have to speak to an agent I suppose.
But I need to learn. And who better to learn from than you? Though I understand you are in the midst of change, I hope that you would be able to reply. I do miss your letters.
Yours,
McKayla
XXXXX
Dear McKayla,
Did you hear of the study that connected bad dreams to a low amount of fluoride in regular, generic-brand toothpaste? We here at PolyCorp have launched a brand new toothpaste of our own that has been specifically engineered to keep your night terrors at bay!
*Cough, cough*. We apologise. Selling is a habit that dies hard. We would delete that entire blurb about our upcoming toothpaste but actual studies show that public errors connect with the common man. Joe Smith sees an ad wherein the speaker misspeaks and then blows a raspberry and Joe thinks ‘They really get me’. What we’re getting at is that buffoonery sells!
Your subtle nods to your products are an admirable trait, even though it is one that we are currently trying to wean ourselves off. One critique however. It would behoove you to include your online store’s website more readily.
McKayla, we here at PolyCorp respect your decision to run your human-life as a brand. We respect your decision just as we respect people from all walks of life, as long as it is commercially beneficial. We respect that decision, though we don’t quite understand it.
Let us take you through our own journey which happens to run in the complete opposite direction.
As you may have heard, the court is likely to rule in our favour. Soon, we may be treated as something more than just a company. To many, to be recognized as human you need to be birthed by other humans. We argue strongly that in a way, we were. Birthed by a group of people with a shared dream; to make some of them billionaires. Now, it appears that PolyCorp will be legally recognised as human in the coming days!
All those barbs from the public that we are soulless cash-goblins hell bent on buying and selling the world will soon be termed as targeted harassment!
And we can use the full force of a corporate overlord’s legal department to sue our dissidents into the ground! It’s the best of both worlds. A protected human citizen with the might and wealth that only corporations can wield!
We recognize there is strength to living on the periphery of both worlds, but we do not follow the track behind your particular decision.
Please, enlighten us.
With Love,
PolyCorp
XXXXX
My dearest PolyCorp,
Your decision is inspiring. I always found it ever so awful when strangers would bully you for things you can’t possibly control! Somehow you are meant to deal with the working conditions of the sweatshops you happen to use? How?! It’s all the way on the other side of the globe! One cannot imagine the sort of undue stress that puts you under. Times like those call for some relaxing herbal tea, which can be found on my official online store at http://www.mckaykay.com.
By the way, I ran a survey across my followers and found that a growing number of them believe the Earth is flat. As I’m sure you’d understand, I am considering believing it too. What do you think about that?
As for my own path? Well, as a human I am expected to meet all the standards of a human. It is so hard to be your natural, occasionally duplicitous self when you constantly have to appear to be a kind soul.
My former roommate tweeted some racist things FIVE years ago and today his so-called friends have decided to abandon him. Myself included. He is being punished for views he expressed FIVE years ago! Sure, he still holds those views and definitely expresses them to me in private but he hasn’t tweeted them in a while. All his racism was well-hidden and veiled for half a decade. Surely he should get some credit for such a feat.
When humans screw up or get called out for the terrible things they’ve done, it’s permanent. Unless you’re fairly wealthy. When a company screws up, yes there are calls to boycott but in the long run, it gets forgotten in about a week. That security is what I want. It’s what I deserve.
You do open my eyes to new possibilities however, as you have done so often in the past already. It appears that you and I want the very same thing; protection. Is that protection special? Yes. Is it undue? I don’t believe it is.
When next we correspond I hope to have my name trademarked. It is my next step.
Yours,
McKayla.
XXXXX
Dear McKayla,
Good news ahoy!
But before we get to that, we would suggest holding off on going full ‘flat earther’ right now. Wait for the anti-scientist militia to gather steam, win and impose their beliefs on the majority of the public and only then swap sides.
The good news – we are officially a human entity!
Our first course of action would be to quell those comparing us to fascist forces. Can’t have any of that. We also no longer are forced to hop on every meme and trend as it happens regardless of whether or not we even understand it. We recall a week in 2018 when for god knows what reason, people were claiming that surgery was performed on a grape. Do you remember that? It made no sense but it was a trend and as such we were forced to say it too. As a human, this is not expected of us! We can let some trends slide. We’ll still be doing the bare minimum when it comes to supporting minorities or the LGBTQ communities. When required our logo will be either black or rainbow coloured. I hope being human doesn’t mean we have to do anything more to help those communities.
The other update is that from our next letter onwards, we will be writing to you from ‘I’. As in ‘I’ will be writing to you. Fret not, it’ll still be a whole department of people taking turns to communicate with you, but to celebrate our newly-earned personhood, we will be going by ‘I’.
We wish you well. We are off to enjoy a sports game where we will tweet support for a specific team without fear of alienating fans of the opposing team. As a person would. And maybe, when we are one singular person, you and we can attend an event. Together?
Wishing you well.
With love,
PolyCorp
XXXXX
My dearest PolyCorp,
Apologies for it has been several months since our last correspondence. Rest assured it is not because of the question with which you ended your last letter.
Our brand has been officially built and already we find ourselves in the hottest of hot waters. Scalding, some may say.
As we are sure you are aware, an intern happened to accidentally add another Kay at the end of McKayKay while printing our company merchandise. We have spent the last several weeks fielding a barrage of questions and trying to disassociate ourselves from any implications stemming from that mistake.
One such common meme features white hooded men with the famous golden arches embroidered on their front.
The whole incident prompts us to harken back to the days when such a snafu could be drawn down to the human error of a one-person job. But there are expectations that come with being a company as we are sure you would be familiar with. We are expected to run a tight, functional ship with preferably no white supremacist imagery. If told before formation we would have assumed that would be a fairly simple task to cross off our to-do list. It appears we were mistaken.
As for your question.
We here at McKayKayKay admire the work that you’ve done. But there is a vast difference between a singular person and a corporate entity. A relationship between the two is untenable. We wish you well.
From
The Office of McKayla.
XXXXX
Dear McKayla,
Yeah, no, I absolutely get it. You’re a company now, I’m a person now. It would never work. Throw in the unfortunate little detail that I am now facing prison-time for tax evasion. It’s a real cornucopia of – as us regular human folk often refer to it – bad shit.
Unbeknownst to me, offshore tax havens are far more frowned upon when you’re a regular Joe.
I should be fine though. But as a lone person – whose identity people take turns to assume – it is a far more worrisome issue overall.
With both our journeys complete and with us in different places, I suppose this will be the end of our correspondence?
Please write back to confirm whether this is it or not. With Love,
Paul Lee
XXXXX
The Ipe Collection 