It began with one man's dream. A dream of the perfectly-realized American company.

A company that would create dissatisfied customers in the process of exploiting demoralized employees while selling overpriced and ineffective products to remediate the problems caused by the very process itself.

A company that would become the bold embodiment of every shortcoming rife within corporate America. A business dictatorship with draconian tendencies. A company grossly obsessed with margins. A peddler of absurdly embellished corporate publicity.

A company that would abandon conventionally desirable demographics to embrace pessimists, underachievers and the chronically unsuccessful, selling them shiny encapsulations of their own shortcomings.

On March 23rd, 1998, the dream became a reality, when Despair incorporated.

Around the world, individuals trapped inside other incorporations of despair began to hear of the dream. In a random email from a old friend. In small hushed gatherings in a break room. On a poster on the wall of a disaffected college student. Overcome with surprise, they themselves had to see if the company was for real, if the products were for real, if the spin was for real. And in discovering that they were in fact as real as any other company's, they submitted to become customers themselves.

And as time wore on, something unexpected happened. They began to realize that they themselves were virtually employed by Despair, Inc., though it hid behind a million other names. Trapped inside high-tech startups, financial institutions, college dormitories, government agencies: all virtually employed by Despair, Inc. Even as they communicated their grief to peers both within and without their companies, secretly acknowledging their ultimate employer in their communications. Including their final employer's very logo, :-( in their daily, unhappy communications.

It began with one man's dream.