The Difficulty of Naming Content

Episode 1 of Don't Hold Back, King of Rage was originally called Rage King Kim Chimchak.

Naming has never been easy. Capturing the essence and summarizing the story in a title is hard enough on its own — call it "branding" and the weight becomes crushing.

When the content is clear, the name follows from it; when the name is clear, it helps lock down the content. In practice, however, development proceeds when both are still vague, which makes arriving at a name that truly fits feel nearly impossible.

When we were preparing our YouTube content, we received a wide range of directives. Because we were working from a goal — "we need to do video" — rather than from genuine enthusiasm for what we could do best, we ended up searching for whatever was within reach.

In those very early days, the channel name we worked with was "Dan-jjan-dan-jjan" — sweet-salty-sweet-salty, an expression for the rhythm of life in your twenties.

The sweet episodes would carry themes like "life is sweet" — covering personal taste (retro culture, owning your preferences), consumption (who cares about impulse spending, it feels right), and living (eating and living well even alone).

The salty episodes would handle the tearfully brutal side: going deep on grievances (get angry on your behalf), it's okay to be sensitive, and so on.

And as a neutral category, we had the "bland" episodes: transparent advertising (news that looks like an ad, but openly so), and content good for zoning out.

Looking back, the framework wasn't bad — the naming came from thinking through content, then finding the umbrella term that fit. But "Dan-jjan-dan-jjan" always felt more optimized for food, cooking, or mukbang rather than the life of a twenty-something.

In the end, we needed to work at a more granular level building individual pieces of content, so we set that larger frame aside.

Then, during a long, long, long series of meetings, something came up almost by accident — and that became our main content. It started from a process of nailing down the character of our on-screen lead, Mikael (a junior colleague). Since we didn't have a particularly distinctive presenter, we dug deep into his character to figure out where the appeal was.

What we found: maximalist personality, sneaker obsessive, surprisingly quick reflexes, beard, voracious reader, bold, easily provoked, a need to correct wrongdoers, outrage, grievance, exasperation — we ended up knowing our lead character fairly intimately. TMI-level intimately, including when he woke up and how many times he used the bathroom. And from that came a character we felt genuinely comfortable with.

That character became the concept of "King of Rage."

As a journalist, Mikael was a calm, measured professional who'd been in the field a long time — someone who sees the full picture. As a private person, he was unmarried, deep in internet communities, sympathetic to online grievances, the type who felt genuinely wronged by injustices and needed to see them put right before he could let it go.

What if there were a show where someone who's annoyed, infuriated, but too lazy, a bit scared, or simply unsure how to retaliate — could find the method, go do it, and give you the solution? That's where Don't Hold Back, King of Rage was born.

The original working title was Rage King Kim Chimchak. The two words were intentionally contradictory — meant to show Mikael's dual nature. But "sounds too much like Chimchak-man," "the pronunciation is too hard," and other objections piled up, and eventually the current title emerged.

I'll attach the original concept brief below and continue the retrospective in the next installment.

---

Rage King Kim-Chimchak

l Concept

The moments in daily life when common sense fails you. When you're furious but have no idea how to respond satisfyingly. Moments of deep-seated frustration — a guide to exposing and dismantling the contradictions of everyday life, featuring one person who snaps immediately and another who vents openly.

l Themes

It's okay to be sensitive. Respect others' right to dislike things. Deep frustration calls for punishment. Getting angry on your behalf. A society where common sense applies.

l Goals

— Finding absurdity in everyday life; providing a guide to resolving it.

l Tone & Manner / Reference

— As a journalist, the baseline is delivering facts, conveying refined information. Even in the moment of reportage, the journalist remains calm and objective. But can journalists who are also just people living their lives really stay that cold-blooded in the face of infuriating situations?

— Content that finds the maddening, aggravating problems of daily life, goes out and confronts them directly, gets angry as a regular person rather than a reporter, argues with local offices, and explores how to live without getting ripped off — what does common sense even mean?

l Characters

— The type who bites down on a story by instinct: files police reports, argues with district offices, contacts manufacturers. Gets angry when anger is called for; says what has to be said when it does. The Rage King. Calm most of the time.

— And the counterpart: good things are good, let's just get along for now. The patient saint who absorbs slights and ends up worse off — but whose inner edge sometimes surfaces unbidden, suddenly going cold and demanding explanations. A saint most of the time.

l Topics

The types that get tagged [extreme frustration warning] in online communities.

Daily flash-points. The things you might be told you're oversensitive about, but which, by common sense standards, absolutely warrant anger.