Known on the whole street

There is a seller of phone covers and chargers in downtown Cairo whom everyone in the arcade knows by name.

He is not known for his stock. He is known for the shouting. For telling a customer a cable was original when the box said otherwise. For the videos he posts mocking the stall opposite, which get passed around and laughed at and passed around again. When people give directions in that arcade, they use him as a landmark.

By one measure he has won. He is the most talked about seller on the street. Ask any of the young men who work there and they will tell you who he is without needing to think.

But fame comes in two kinds, and it is easy to forget the second. There is being known because people trust you, and being known because people warn each other about you. Both get a name repeated. Only one of them brings anyone back.

The second kind is not an accident. It does not happen to a seller who was trying to be honest and got unlucky. It is built, one cheap shortcut and one complaint at a time, by someone who decided that being talked about mattered more than what was being said.

A quieter seller two doors down has the same covers at the same prices. Fewer people know his name. The ones who do send their cousins.

Being known is easy. Being known for the wrong thing is a choice, and a strange one to make on purpose.