Branded Hearts & Broken Wallets

Let us speak of love. Not the mortal, fleeting kind—no, the *real* romance: the torrid affairs we have with logos that wink at us from billboards, the siren songs of jingles that nestle into our brains like earworms with a PhD in manipulation. These are the paramours that stalk us through grocery aisles, seduce us in airports, and whisper sweet nothings like *“Buy One, Get One Free”* in the dead of night. Gather ‘round, fellow consumers, as I serenade the brands that have branded my soul—not with a hot iron, but with a loyalty program and a vaguely dystopian algorithm…