"Branding"

This may prove to be a sidenote to my last post, it may not, but it deserved a mention.

My moms two friends just visited from santa cruz and berkeley. They're really nice people that i've never had any problems with. So i went to the park with the dog to read and came back and they were talking about this thing called branding. Branding is in essence using semiotic and linguistic psycological effects in order to sell yourself or your company or your city to people. It surprised me because I hold a certain level of respect for these people that they didn't see the outrageously obvious support of dishonesty and lying for all humanity. This deppressed me. Really. This is a whole "philosophy" of bussiness and sociality that says that people need to discover a part of their 'personalities' that can be brought out and sold; for job interviews, for new friends, etc.

Maybe this isn't so readily apparent to the person who is not aware of the study of semiotics and who is not in a philosophic state of mind. This idea simply tells people to lie. It tells people that being your own human being is not an option. It tells people that they must attribute themselves to certain phenotypes of personality that our commercial culture has pre-dictated to them. It's like you're given a choice of 50 people you can be and then you live that persons life. There's much to be expanded upon in this and I invite people to do so because it makes me angry so I'll start saying biased shit...