If I get one more email promoting a seminar about “Personal Branding”, I am going to walk to whichever hellhole you are sending those missives from and rub a towel soaked in my cat’s pee all over your face.

Because a) people are not “brands” (unless you meant branding as in “cattle branding”, in which case, no, thanks) and b) part of the dehumanization we face on the internet stems from this idea that brands and corporate identities dominate discourse and are interchangeable. If corporations are people (and we seemed to have accepted such premise) then, of course, people can be corporations as well! Except that no, that’s not how it works. And like Sady Doyle pointed in a comment here, it’s easy to make a leap from “I hate Ikea” (a brand), to “I hate you” (another perceived brand).

So really, unless you find joy in the pee soaked towel, spare me those emails.

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