Bangaly Kaba
Your Own Amit Kumar Problem
Inspired by Bangaly Kaba episode
Bangaly Kaba's 'Amit Kumar problem' at Facebook is basically every toddler playgroup: too many similar options, impossible to choose.
Bangaly Kaba discovered Facebook's friend-finder was useless in India. The most common name? Amit Kumar. With 250,000 actual users. Search results showed thousands of vaguely similar guys. The feature collapsed.
You're at soft play. Your two-year-old wants "the blue ball." You hand them a blue ball. Wrong. Screaming now. Not that one. Not that one either. Which blue ball? There are seventeen identical blue balls in this pit. You're holding three. None are correct.
The blue ball they want might not exist. It might be from last Tuesday. It might be a false memory. You're on your knees in a ball pit having an existential crisis about identity while other parents step over you.
Facebook added mutual friends and location to fix Amit Kumar. You need the same: "the blue ball from the basket," "the blue ball you had yesterday," "the blue ball that definitely exists and is not a stress hallucination."
Specificity is the only path out of the ball pit.
