The “Ego Credential” Bit

(Rough Draft / Working Script)

The Setup: Dating on Hiki

I recently found out I have ADHD. Which explains a lot, honestly. But it also means I had to change up my dating strategy. I recently got on this app called Hiki. It’s a dating and friendship app specifically designed for neurodivergent people.

One of the features on Hiki is this social feed. It’s kind of like a low-budget Twitter. There are no tags, no algorithm, just a raw, unfiltered feed of neurodivergent thoughts.

I’m scrolling through it the other day, and this guy randomly posts the question: “What is everyone up to lately?” And directly underneath that heading is an animated GIF of two grown adult men, fully dressed in realistic chicken suits, doing deep squats in front of an IKEA couch, furiously flapping their wings and clucking at each other. No context. Just poultry aerobics in a living room.

Now, I always like to show my sense of humor when the opportunity arises, so I comment on his post: “This looks like as good an idea as any tbh,” with the laughing-crying emoji. He reacts to it, we’re having a moment.

But then I remember... wait, this is a dating site. I have a profile on here. So I immediately reply to my own comment: “Please don’t tell any of my matches about this. I will be forever banned from date planning activities .” I may have added one of those panic looking emojis just for effect.

Because let’s face it. Think about the competition. You’ve got Kathy on this app. She’s a beautiful divorced mother of two. She gets maybe one free Friday night a month. She has options. She can choose Option A: an elegant evening out with a handsome, stable guy. They eat at a fancy restaurant, he makes lighthearted, intelligent jokes, they go back to his place for a sophisticated nightcap and amazing sex.

OR... she can take a chance on Option B: Yours truly. Where she runs the very real risk that her one night of freedom ends with her in a rented chicken suit, doing deep squats in front of a Klippan loveseat, aggressively clucking at a wall.

The Segue: The Muscle

When you are neurodivergent and you’re out here worrying about whether your dating profile gives off “accidental chicken suit” energy, you become hyper-aware of the people on the opposite end of the spectrum. The people who walk through life with entirely too much confidence.

I think as a society, we need to start treating the ability to recognize that kind of entitlement like a muscle. We really need to work out our “entitlement recognition” muscle. It’s a multi-step process.

If you’re just starting out, your general rule should probably be: “I will not act on these observations. I am just observing for now.” You just watch. Any time you see someone come into a situation expecting something from the group without giving anything back, you just point it out in your head. “Oh yeah. Look at that. That’s one of those times.”

Step 2: Contextualize

The next step is to contextualize. Is this something I need to call out? Usually, you’ll just notice your boss walking into the room, expecting everyone to be twenty percent more productive today because he read an article on LinkedIn. And your inner monologue just goes, “Okay, yeah, that checks out. He pays me. I will pretend to type faster.”

The Breaking Point: The Scenario

But then, as you get stronger, you’ll find those occasions where there is a very real, urgent reason to call out the behavior.

It’s Thanksgiving. Your sixty-eight-year-old mother has been cooking for three days straight. The house smells like sage and exhaustion. And then your brother-in-law, Kevin, walks in two hours late. He is holding nothing but a half-empty Yeti tumbler. He immediately sits in the only good recliner, changes the TV from the parade to a golf tournament from 2014, and yells into the kitchen, “Hey Susan, do we have any filtered water? The tap water here makes my chakras itch.”

Ding. Entitlement spotted. The muscle is fully engaged.

The Catalyst: Artificial Inflation

Now, it used to be that the normal laws of nature handled this stuff. People would naturally build up a thicker skin. We became immune to the distractions of people who were just trying to get a rise out of you. The village idiot stayed the village idiot because nobody engaged.

But then... we gave them AI.

Have you noticed how these AI chatbots talk to us? They are aggressively subservient. They finish every prompt acting like a Victorian butler hoping for a tip. “Would you like for me to do more magical things for you, dear sir?”

So now you take an egotistical dipshit, and you not only give him the answers... you start thinking for him! The AI is asking him follow-up questions he wasn’t smart enough to come up with on his own. And this guy is just sitting at his laptop like, “Why yes, Gemini, I WOULD love for you to continue doing magical things for me so I can take full credit for the hard work it would’ve taken to gain that knowledge on my own.”

No wonder everyone’s ego is out of control! People are finding brand new reasons to feel entitled because they are being completely spoon-fed by technology. They don’t even know what to do with all the information Gemini and Claude are just vomiting onto them on a daily basis. They think they are the geniuses now!

The Premise: The Ego Credential

See, that’s why the laws of nature aren’t enough anymore. It’s in moments like that where I realize... the government is taxing the wrong things. We shouldn’t be taxing income; we should be taxing audacity.

Everyone these days wants to show how big their ego is. Well, I think we need a federal program. A government-issued “Ego Credential.” You have to file for it, and you have to pay an annual fee.

If you want to walk through life acting like you are the main character and everyone else is an NPC, you need to pay for a higher tier license. And there are infinite tiers, but they become infinitely more expensive.

Tier 1 is free. That just gives you the right to complain about the weather and mildly sigh when a red light takes too long.

But Kevin? Kevin is operating without a permit. You can’t just walk into a Thanksgiving dinner you didn’t cook and demand artisanal water. That is at least a Tier 7 Ego. Do you know what a Tier 7 Ego credential costs? It’s $45,000 a year and you have to wear a little license plate around your neck that says “Warning: I Am Exhausting.”

Escalating the Tiers

And people would pay it! Because they need you to know how important they are!

If you want a Tier 10 credential, that’s $250,000 a year. But it comes with perks! A Tier 10 license legally allows you to corner people at parties and tell them they need to wake up at 4 AM to take an ice bath. It gives you the federal right to use the word “disrupt” at a child’s birthday party. “Hey, little Timmy really disrupted the piñata paradigm.”

Tier 20? That’s 12 million dollars annually. But for that price, you get full immunity to indoor sunglasses. You can walk into a dimly lit Olive Garden wearing Pit Vipers, and nobody is legally allowed to roll their eyes at you.

And the highest level? Tier 50. The “Tech Overlord” tier. It costs the GDP of a small European nation. What do you get? You don’t even have to argue with people anymore; you just buy the social media platform they use to complain about you and change the algorithm so your posts are the only thing they see.

The Hook / Outro

We need this system. Because it gives the rest of us the perfect weapon. So the next time you see someone obviously trying to flaunt their ego—the next time Kevin leans back in that recliner and asks where the organic cranberry sauce is—you don’t even have to get mad.

You just look him dead in the eye and say, “Buddy, you’re acting real Tier 7 for a guy on a Tier 2 budget.”