But it got me thinking: maybe it’s not a bad idea, especially when we’re all running out of disk space. Maybe everyone is bad at remembering names, and rather than feeling shame about it, we need to get creative. There are all sorts of hacks to help you remember someone’s name, like computer shortcuts.
Loading
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, beloved podcaster in the “manosphere”, talks of our emotional connection to memories and suggests making up a story that spikes the adrenaline about a person you’ve just met, such as: “What terrible thing did this person do?” That bubbly mum with five kids who you just met at school drop-off? She killed a family of ducks, including the babies. That dude who works at a nearby office you keep bumping into at the coffee shop? He has dark secrets under his house.
Andrew Colman, also in The New York Times, less conventionally suggests calling everyone “Steve” or “Stevie”.
One mum I met at orientation said she wrote names on her phone, without shame, as soon as she met someone. So I did that – right in front of her. “E-R-I-N,” I typed into my phone. Erin! My name-remembering glitch resolved. Of course, we should be doing that.
Very few people possess the memory superpower of name recall. Until Meta’s terrifyingly futuristic sunnies can perform facial recognition, we need memory tricks to recall names and faces because most of our processing data is used for memes and Instagram reels. Or Bunnings could keep doing it for us.
Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.
