A Coke and a Scowl.

 I bought a Coke the other day.

 No need to congratulate me.

 I've done it several times before, if I'm honest, and can only apologise for not informing you at the time. These days, however, buying a Coke has become its own special hell.

 It all started when the powers that be at Coca Cola decided to put names on every bottle at random. Personally, I don't need to search through a fridge to find the one bottle with my name on it - I'm not five. At the same time, my refusal to play along with their pointless exercise in narcissism means I'm frequently stuck walking around with the first bottle I came to, which will invariably identify me as Annabelle or Tiffany or something equally butch.

 Not that narcissism was the driving force behind the campaign. The original slogan was "share a coke with...", so that buyers could see a coke with someone else's name on it and buy it for them. Possibly as a wedding or birthday present, or else as a startlingly inconsiderate gift for the diabetic in your life.

 Either way, our increasingly flabby populace quickly decided "fuck that noise", as sharing is for pussies. We wanted our own names on our bottles - three hundred and thiry milliliter, red capped, non-biodegradable monuments to ourselves to cherish for all eternity, or at least take a Facebook profile shot with.

 What's more depressing is how well this all worked. People, by and large, didn't share my indifference to the labels on Coke bottles. They were elated to see their own names written down somewhere on a shitty drink, as if by magic. The campaign was first extended due to its success and now features brand new ads in which a fictional dog is trying to find a Coke with his name on it, in flagrant disregard of the fact that dogs a) can't fucking read and b) REALLY shouldn't be given Coke in the first place.

 The viewing public, meanwhile, have rallied behind this Frankenstein-like cross between rampant commercialism and The Littlest Hobo without ever once seeming to notice (or object to) the fact that Coke is now basically saying "If you care about having your name on your coke bottle, you're as stupid as an animal that's often surprised by its own farts."

 This is the reason - the exact, concrete, tangible reason - that big companies continue to treat people like shit and ignore our protests.

 Because they can.

 Next time someone complains that big business thinks we're all idiots, point to the nearest dullard, proudly clutching a "personalised" Coke bottle, and explain that companies treat us like idiots because we act like fucking idiots. We get legitimately excited, as a society, about someone stamping a facsimilie of our name on the disposable wrapper of a sugary drink and then wonder why the rich and powerful don't treat us with respect.

 Because we're idiots, babe. It's a wonder we can ever feed ourselves.