Sergei Kourdakov - The Hype

I never saw Sergei Kourdakov’s adrenalin charged presentations in churches or auditoriums.  His hyped-up image that you read about in newspapers was unfamiliar to me.  I never knew that side of Sergei.  He was never intentionally showy.  Sergei’s stature and awkward new-to-this-country manner, however, did attract attention everywhere he went.  But he never tried to impress me with the public side of his life.  In fact, he was the exact opposite when we were together.  He was not the least pretentious—he was thoughtful, fun, and considerate.  I never saw the hype.

Hype, what is hype actually?  It means publicity, buildup, and hard sell—to promote or publicize extravagantly.  That is exactly how Sergei was portrayed at public events.  He was an outgoing speaker, and it came naturally to him.  Did he like that exaggerated part of his new life in the U.S.?  Honestly, I don’t think he did.  He told me he didn’t quite understand all the attention and publicity he attracted.  It surprised him.

So why all the hype then?  Urban Dictionary describes hype as a clever marketing strategy in which a product is advertised as the thing everyone must have.  If you think about it, in an indirect way, Sergei Kourdakov was the product…what he had to say was the product.  Unfortunately, the marketing and the hype were necessary to make Sergei’s story known.