Throughout history, livestock have been branded as a way to identify their owners. As I roam the hallways and breezeways of FAU on the first day of classes, I am overwhelmed by a mosaic of brand names crowding my periphery. There are logos, trademarks, and insignia all over the place. To me, this whole scene is so reminiscent of the branding of cattle that I am thoroughly sickened. I wonder: Are students oblivious to the fact that they have been branded?

In today’s global marketplace, companies sell their brands before they sell their products. The brand is a separate entity, a sort of psychological manifestation that sells the product through the strong mind-engaging effect it has on the consumer. Take the urban hip-hop wear so popular these days – it is branded specifically to elicit feelings of street smarts and ghetto-cool in those who wear it. I’m amused by certain students who were obviously born and raised in the suburbs of mainstream America. These students seem to believe that by pulling a new Sean-John sweatshirt over their head they magically become hard-lined gangstas capable of surviving the hardships of the hood. I’ve noticed that some people even change the way they walk when they put these clothes on.

I find that a vast majority of American college students want to spend exorbitant amounts of money keeping these companies in operation. They happily pay for various types of clothing due only to the company logos scrawled onto them. These products literally turn the wearer into a walking advertisement for the brand. The most amusing part of this whole scam is that students are ready and willing to fork over their hard-earned money in order to advertise for these companies. One would think it should be the other way around.

One would also think that if somebody were going to pay a company for the honor of becoming their walking billboard that the person would first look into the practices of that company. This doesn’t seem to be the case. Most of the apparel companies popular in the United States use sweatshop labor from third world countries. Those people that toil endless hours in unsafe working conditions sewing up the knit cardigans, fleece vests, and cargo pants worn by FAU students are living in poverty within the confines of countries most students will never visit. Students walking the halls with these brand names emblazoned on their chests will probably never see the tired faces of those who are oppressed, harassed, abused, and mistreated while carefully creating their clothing and accessories.

There’s a sort of power that transcends the actual plane of reality where The Gap clothing, Starbucks coffee, and Nike sneakers sold throughout America exist, and it becomes another form of tangible energy: in essence, a brand. The Gap Inc. website states that walking into any of their stores (they also own Old Navy and Banana Republic) is literally walking into a brand. They have strict rules detailing the layouts of their 3,522 U.S. stores so that customers approach an optimal shopping experience, one in which they feel compelled to spend money and drive up profits for Gap Inc.

Starbucks also is a branded universe. Their overpriced offerings, mediocre coffee concoctions and unimpressive desserts, are not what are being sold in their coffee shops. In actuality they are selling a brand – a comfy place to pull up a chair, read a newspaper, listen to jazz, have a delightful conversation, and sip overpriced coffee that was picked by poverty-stricken families in Latin America.

A brand is like a parallel reality, a black hole of sorts where a T-shirt, pair of sneakers, or cup of coffee can be taken in with an other-worldly power. A person from another culture could hypothetically hold these products in their hands and study it endlessly without ever understanding where the supernatural power comes from, for the power does not reside in the object itself, but in the carefully woven ad campaigns that tout the brand.

The brand does not exist in any objective sense that can be felt in the hands, but exists in the communal psyche of the American culture. Though this sounds far-fetched, it is astonishingly real and happening right now. People are being bought and sold. They, like cattle, have learned to follow complacently wherever those that own them want to lead.

So, are we really owned by Coca-Cola, Gap, and Starbucks? Maybe so. This branding of human beings and the natural world that they reside in is quite a scary proposition. Companies can and do brand the world in which we live and breathe.

Corporate giants and their advertising firms have made huge deals of money capitalizing on the basic psychological necessities of the human population, and especially college-age consumers. These companies feed on the human need for love, acceptance, and belonging. They feed on insecurity, low self-esteem, and ignorance. Consumers become the prey of the bloodthirsty corporations who quite literally brand their logos into the human psyche. This branding starts immediately with the first signs of life, from infancy onward.

Through it, people become automatons, slaves to the corporate brands. They blindly walk through life with a complete existence revolving around brand name merchandise. This merchandise somehow gives them a purpose, a meaning. Major corporations take on a sort of religious idolatry, whereby they give people hope and happiness. It was an executive for McDonald’s that was quoted comparing the universally recognizable logo of the golden arches to a woman’s breasts – to the sustenance offered by the mot