The six words guaranteed to offend almost anyone

There comes a point in every Uber ride when the obligatory conversation comes to a natural conclusion. You’ve covered off “Hello, how are you?” and exchanged pleasantries about your respective days. Perhaps you’ve asked how long the driver has been “doing this for”. In return, they may inquire about what it is you do or where you’re off to.

With this portion of the social contract satisfied, both parties are free to settle into a comfortable silence. The radio is turned up, the passenger pretends to do something on their phone, and everyone is happy. Five stars.

I’ve never been offered a lookalike that isn’t mildly offensive.Credit: Fiona Bianchinotti

However, occasionally, you will encounter a driver keen to keep the good times rolling.

I found myself in this situation last week while riding to work. Having completed the back and forth, I looked out the window, aware that my Uber driver was staring at me in the rearview mirror. “You know, you remind me of someone,” he said.

In my experience, this is a can of worms best left unopened because the answer is either disappointing at best or mildly offensive at worst. Not wanting to be rude – but desperate to limit the damage – I volunteered that I had a very “common face”. A 35-year-old white guy with brown hair and a five o’clock shadow? I could be anyone!

Not content with this diversion, the driver drummed his hands on the wheel, deep in thought, and then said the six terrifying words we all fear: You know who you look like?

This is the precise thing people say right before making an offensive comparison you will inevitably hate. It’s never: “You look like Brad Pitt.” But, instead: “You look like my second cousin Brad, heavy drinker, recently divorced. He’s a nice guy, though.”

I know this because doppelganger chat has not been historically kind to me. It’s a long-running family joke that in my early 20s, I bore a striking resemblance to k.d. Lang, the beloved singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Admittedly, we had similar hairstyles, and, for a brief period, I experimented with neckties, which are famously part of Lang’s look.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with k.d. Lang. She’s a four-time Grammy Award winner, and her rendition of Hallelujah is up there with the most moving covers of all time. However, as a 20-year-old guy navigating my formative years, it was confronting to be told I looked like Canada’s most famous lesbian.

And therein lies the problem with “you know who you look like?” By its very nature, it is a loaded statement that exists only to remind us of the deep chasm between how we see ourselves and the way others view us.

If you listen to internet philosophers “what matters most is how you see yourself.” Which is all well and good until someone makes an unflattering lookalike comparison.

This desire to tell people they look a bit like other people is actually a human design flaw, part of the familiarity principle. Turns out we are hardwired to develop a preference for things we are more familiar with, meaning we instinctively seek out links that make sense to us.

Unfortunately for our precious egos, we happen to live in a time when comparison is king, largely due to the two usual suspects: the internet and celebrity culture.

These days, countless websites allow users to upload a photo, and they will spit out your doppelganger. TikTok has a celebrity lookalike filter that scans your face and tells you which famous star you resemble. (I got Jake Gyllenhaal, so the TikTok one is flawless). If you’re feeling particularly brave, there’s even a Reddit thread dedicated solely to people posting photos of themselves and asking strangers on the internet which celebrity they look like.

Failing that, there’s a high chance your friendship group has indulged in one of the great conversation topics of the modern era: who would play you in a movie? Spare a thought for my friend who cast objectively good-looking Austin Butler to play himself, only for the group to declare he’s more of a Steve Buscemi.

As much as we loathe to admit it, each of us trots around believing we present a certain way, unaware that self-perception is just self-delusion. It’s not until an outside entity, say a chatty Uber driver, bursts the bubble that we are made to reckon with a different reality.

For the sake of my already-tarnished reputation, I will keep my Uber driver’s answer between us. But needless to say, it was crushing, mainly because I could see what he meant.

Sharing this doppelganger update with my family WhatsApp, my sister was first to reply with a series of cry-laughing emojis accompanied by a single text: “Well, at least he didn’t say k.d. Lang.”

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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