Here Comes Trouble

Tröuble is Mike Lin’s middle name; literally. He legally changed it at the end of 2025 during the initial stages of his campaign for District 10 Supervisor. He added an umlaut to the “o,” a gesture reminiscent of the excesses of Mötley Crüe – themselves inspired by the Löwenbräu beer they were drinking when the discovered their name – or Spinal Tap’s furious parody.

Both could apply in Lin’s case, but neither of these extremes are the reason he now refers to his original appellation, “Michael James,” as his dead name.

“I was inspired by Taylor Swift’s song ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and even named one of my kittens Trouble, whom I had to euthanize in September 2025 due to him being born with feline leukemia virus.”

Lin’s leap from exaltation to tragedy in the space of a single sentence isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, a part of Lin’s personality that he pushes at you with unfiltered force even as he lists other reasons for the name change, including a preference for Mike over Michael, a desire to increase search engine results relating to him – too many people are named Michael James Lin – and what he calls a transformation into a completely different person after surviving bouts of severe depression, suicide attempts, and manic episodes.

Lin was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1972. He grew up in Youngstown and attended Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, near Cleveland. He graduated from Pomona College in 1994 with a B.A. in International Relations and moved to San Francisco three years later to attend the Academy of Art before dropping out after a semester.

In 1998, the middle of the dot com boom, he found work as a web designer with Adjacency, whose office was at 17th and Kansas streets. From 2002 to 2006, Lin worked at Yahoo! and then became the second user interface designer at LinkedIn. He left in 2010, before the company went public, but stock he’d acquired during his time there made him a multi-millionaire when he sold his holdings.

The good times were cut short in 2013 when Lin was laid off after three years with Zynga, a video game developer. Less than two months later, he was admitted to the Kaiser Psychiatric Health Facility in Santa Clara on an involuntary hold and diagnosed with major depressive disorder. After a week, he was treated for five days at a step-down residential center, Casa Phoenix.

He was again admitted to the hospital on a 5150 order when he threatened to kill himself, along with his wife and children.

This cycle continued for nearly four years. A summary he provided to the View reads like a rollercoaster of nothing but downward spirals. He got divorced. He lost custody of his children. An extended stay with his in-laws in Taiwan ended in an assault on his father-in-law and another lengthy hospital stint.

In the middle of it all, he engaged in such expensive and newsworthy activities as filing for trademarks on popular cultural catchphrases like “Nasty Woman.” Some of them led to legal battles, such as one with Kobe Bryant when Lin trademarked “The Black Mamba” three weeks before Number 24 did. The case was settled out of court. Lin is proud to have a signed check from Bryant to him in the amount of $4,500.

For the last year Lin has managed his mental health with a combination of medication and regular workout sessions at a local gym. Getting his life back on track enabled him to see the possibility for others to do the same. Watching Andrew Yang run for president in 2016 helped Lin recognize the power of participation in the political process to raise awareness of important issues. Unlike the other candidates competing for the D10 Supervisor seat, Lin isn’t in it to win it. 

“I would be delusional to think I have any chance of defeating a candidate backed by billionaire money like Theo Ellington,” he said. 

Instead, Lin hopes to educate people about mental health by being the first supervisor candidate who has publicly made known they have bipolar disorder. He also wants to convince Taylor Swift to host her Lover Fest West Festival in San Francisco so he can thank her in person for writing songs that helped get him through periods of severe depression.

“It would make a great chapter in the memoir I’m working on.”

The View agrees.