Mayday has been a continuing spiritual reference point throughout Raymond Hou’s (Raymond’s) growth. He does not call himself a superfan, has never bought an album, and has attended only two online concerts. Yet since elementary school, he has copied Mayday lyrics into a small notebook with a galaxy-covered Starry Sky cover. The notebook became an index to several stages of his life: each page corresponded to an age, a song, and a state of mind. In 2020, Raymond devoted episode 32 of the Raymond Thirty podcast to “To Mayday,” mapping the band’s influence on him in detail and using it to state his position on “motivational fluff” and the “disillusioned.”
Lyrics as an emotional map
Almost all of Raymond’s memories of Mayday are tied to specific turning points in his life. In his first year of junior high, his family was struggling and his parents’ relationship was tense. He copied “Nine Ball” and turned over the line “Who loves me? Who has my back?” in his mind, learning to recognize the people who had his back. Two romantic disappointments around the time he was preparing to enter senior high school corresponded to “Contentment” and “Monkey King.” In his first year of senior high, he found a group of friends, then felt hurt when others considered him too energetic; this corresponded to “Trash Truck.” In his second year, he became vice president of the student club federation at The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, but repeatedly ran into obstacles and doubted himself. He listened to “Fool” more than a hundred times and drew strength to persist from the repeated “la la la” at the end. Marking a difficult period with a song was one of his main ways of processing emotions early in life.
The affiliated high school and doubts about “mainstream success”
Raymond and Mayday share an alumni connection: he was admitted to the band’s alma mater, The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University. The first half of the “Cheers” music video was filmed at the school; climbing over walls, the retro bathrooms, and comics hidden in desks were all familiar scenes. What truly changed his perspective, however, was the second half of the video: getting married and having children, buying a house, owning two BMWs, and playing golf. After watching it dozens of times, he realized these were not simply “various scenes from society,” but “various scenes of mainstream success.” As someone on a mainstream path who believed he had a non-mainstream mind, he began to wonder: “Is this really what I want?” That doubt later ran through his two changes of major, his decision to give up a degree that was nearly within reach (see Six Years at National Cheng Kung University: Changing Majors Twice and Extending Graduation), and his rejection of a life whose ending could already be seen. It is closely tied to his self-identification in The Tortoise Philosophy and Blue-Collar Roots.
From consuming motivational fluff to “toxic positivity” in reverse
He stopped copying lyrics in his third year of university. Under intense financial pressure, he worked constantly, and his taste shifted from inspirational content to satire and “toxic positivity” in reverse. He described the path of life as “positive → worldly → cynical → worldly → positive,” and at one point he was stuck in the cynical phase. He said the path was like quicksand: the deeper one sank, the easier it was to lock oneself in an iron house, saying “life isn’t worth it” while blaming others, and becoming embittered. Because he had personally gone through this stage, he could later understand the “disillusioned” who disliked Mayday, and became clearer that he did not want to remain there.
A defense of “motivational fluff”
The core of “To Mayday” is a statement of position. Raymond argues that there is nothing inherently wrong with motivational content; it is simply treated as a derogatory term in the Chinese-speaking world. As a result, people who share inspirational content are considered essential professionals in the West but are often seen as frauds in the East.1 He believes that most of the time people do not need the cold water of blunt truth; they need a reason to keep going. He distinguishes two attitudes: resentment asks “Why me?” while cynicism asks “Why does he deserve it?” He chooses the former—one may complain, but then turn the question toward oneself rather than accuse others. His approach to paths that do not suit him is: “We learn from methods that are good, appreciate the ones that are not right for us, and that is enough.” This attitude of not spending hostility on differences is consistent with his later orientation toward Stoicism and A Rational Optimist.
A model of long-term persistence
Ultimately, Raymond’s references to Mayday point to persistence. He uses a remark by the band’s lead singer Ashin at a 2020 online concert to set the tone: in a year full of change, they still wanted to hold on to something that would never change. He also often cites Leonard Cohen’s line, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in,” to explain his own attitude: not the cynicism of pretending there are no cracks, but the awkward willingness to walk the path again after seeing them. To Raymond, Mayday models a long run in which one acknowledges cracks but still believes in light—lyrics that complain without blaming and express confusion while turning back to question oneself. This stance of “enduring for a long time without letting yourself turn into a pot of cold sarcasm” has become a reference point he revisits while building content, paid memberships, and his personal brand (see Resentment Is the Strongest Fuel and Super Individual).
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “To Mayday: Thank You for Simmering This ‘Chicken Soup’ for 20 Years. It’s Not Just About Youth and Dreams, but an Attitude to Life We Need,” WordPress, 2020-06-03. View original ↩