There is a girl I used to work with who once closed her eyes and said, “I’m manifesting my inner Karny.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, file a trademark, or check my pockets. She meant it as a compliment. I know she did.
People have been trying to download versions of me for years. Careers I mentioned once over coffee. Aesthetic choices I made by accident. Pen names I invented in my bedroom at 2 a.m. because my birth name felt too heavy that week.
My university professor, a man who somehow turned a course about business emails into a minor religion, once said,
Your biggest competitive advantage in life is your authenticity, because nobody can copy that.”
He explained it clinically:
Fifty percent nature. Fifty percent nurture. DNA and damage. The recipe cannot be repeated.
Because people can copy your haircut, but not the reason you cut it. They can copy your confidence, but not the decade it took to grow it. They can copy the name “Karny,” but not the nervous system that invented her.
They want the arrival without the hallway. That hallway is ugly. Mine was.
I was not the child adults predicted great things for. I was “not the brightest from the bunch,” a phrase said with the tenderness of a closing door.
My grandfather still tells the story of how I missed a bus by one-two steps and therefore, statistically, should not even be here annoying you in essay form.
Yet I became the first university graduate in rooms that didn’t expect it. Not because of a gift. But because of a very Kobe-Bryant, spite-driven relationship with effort.
Talent is a rumor.
So when someone says they want to “manifest their inner Karny,” I want to hand them a syllabus instead of a candle.
Becoming me is not a mood board. It is mostly admin. It is Google Search Console at 5 p.m. It is arguing with plugins like they are in-laws. It is writing when nobody is clapping.
Originality is not an aesthetic. It is a long marriage to your own mind.
If you want to be like me, the only correct method is disappointing..
Be more like you.
Your exact DNA plus your exact humiliations cannot be reproduced. That is the algorithm nobody can scrape.
And to the Punjabi rapper who borrowed my name, congratulations. You stole the license plate but not the car. I’m still driving.
— Karny™
Hi, I’m Karny. Pronounce it correctly or perish. I write letters to the prime minister and roast capitalism.
Editor’s Note: This is not a manifesto against imitation. It’s a love letter to the part of you that cannot be outsourced, downloaded, or rebranded by someone with better lighting.