Daily Inspirational #32.25: Identity Theft is a Not a Choice, It's a Dance Craze, and You're the Feet

What's the latest news? What's the hot craze? It's not ringtones or transplants or a new band or even fun. No: Everyone is trying to steal your identity. Everyone. It's amazing. It's unfuckingbelievable. And anyone who says otherwise? They're just trying to steal your identity. They'll butter you up until you'll entrust your identity to them for safekeeping and protection from the people trying to steal your identity. God you're an idiot. Can't you see what's happening here? From coast to coast, old and young alike, from Main Street to Wall Street, everyone wants to ambush, kidnap and ransom your personal information. "I can pick most identities with a credit card," says one criminal. "I know when your identity is home, and when it's not," says another. But it's not all criminals, mind you. Fact: Paris Hilton recently wore a cheap facsimile of your identity on the red carpet. Myth: It dazzled in the sun like a thousand miniature camera flashes. Fact: it was a thousand miniature camera flashes, each one desperately trying to get an accidental glimpse of your social security number. Fact: this has been going on for years, centuries even, not just with the Hiltons and facts and myths, but everyone and everything, since long before you were born, starting initially as a kind of wild and faithful anticipation in the form of religious beliefs. Christianity? Judaism? It's all just one long queue, not to get into heaven, but into your identity. And now that you're finally here and actually exist, after all those centuries of not even knowing what the hell was going on, people are lining up to get your identity as if Jesus moved into the Apple Store and joined the Beatles starring Shia Labeouf's lost potential. This shit (your identity) is so hot and so hip that it entirely erases the new black, and in fact removes all old and new black alike from existence, leaving just a pristine white light shining down on your identity, highlighting everything any one needs to know to become you in paper form, which is the best and most badass form you've ever taken. Paper-you is like the you you've always wanted to be, all inky and pulpy with clear margins and brackets and immortality, but in the end it's not what you'll be at all, but instead what everyone else will finally become when you inevitably trip up and let them take your identity like you definitely will because you're a self destructive and self loathing idiot that wants to lose.

Unless you take our advice, of course.

What's our advice? We're glad you asked. It's passwords. You need the perfect password and maybe even a few, but start with one. Immediately get rid of your old passwords. Bring them to the nearest recycling plant and hide them in old bottles, thus rendering your old passwords nonexistent because recycling is a myth like the war in Afghanistan. Okay, now that you're free and clear, make a new password. It should be at least eight characters long and include a childhood memory that you've always wanted to forget but can't, like that time you had a new memory and tried to forget it but couldn't. Remember that? Of course you do. Also: Try to spell everything incorrectly and use numbers that look like letters and letters that look like numbers, or at least pretend that you're doing as much. Really pretend, hard, or at least pretend that you are, hard. Why? Because security measures are 10% encryption and 90% attitude. Now put your birthday at the end of it all and that should do it. Except for one thing:

you.

That's right, you knew it was coming. You're trying to steal your identity too. What, did you think you were exempt because you're better than everyone else? Get off your high horse and shoot it because that's lame, son. Did you really think that you, of all people, don't need to steal your identity? Ha! Rather, isn't it you more than anyone else that actually needs your identity? The rest of us are just out here having fun, trying out a new craze, but for you this is serious. If you don't steal your identity every morning, who will? You don't want to find out, but you have to. Why? Because it will probably be you, and if not, then whoever it is will be you soon enough because they just stole your identity. So, the one person who shouldn't know your password, more so than anyone else, is you, because really you're the only one trying to steal it, at least hypothetically. Everyone else in the world is a matchstick with a potential energy level of you.

You're going to need a password that even you don't know.

But that's not all. Here is the big leap we need you to take today. You need to create a password that not only can you never know, but one that only everyone else will ever know, everyone but you, forever. Why? Because letting other people have things is the only way to truly own things? No, shut up. Listen: you need to think of this inevitable theft not as a terrible crime, but a grand opportunity to find out what you really look like, to find out what you really want to buy on all those credit cards, where you want to go, who you want to talk to. You can be you vicariously, a million times over, forever. It's probably going to be a lot better than having to do it all yourself. Think of it like outsourcing to India, but instead of a call center, it's your dreams and your money and defining characteristics. You'll probably sound kind of funny, like when you hear yourself on voice mail, but keep listening and pass it on.

And that's it!. You aren't you at all, but something being passed from one thief to the next. A dollar isn't the paper it's written on, it's the things it's spent on and stolen from. Likewise, you aren't you or a social security number or anything else, but the path that they take. Think of it as a long game of telephone in which the only way you can play is to be the misheard phrase itself, passed from one ear to the next, until you finally emerge totally transformed and misunderstood in a call center in India.

It's going to be great and in fact already is.