My new least-favorite word.

Of all the stupid affectations of our modern era of marketing, the apotheosis might be the overuse of the word "my."

Right around the time apps started coming out, brands have been prefixing their apps with my.

So, you have my verizon.
my at&t.
my disney experience.
my chevrolet.
my ford.
my new york.
my las vegas.
my philips 66.
my e-trade.
my citi.
my chase.
my bloomingdales.

And so it goes.

My (haha) two cents is that the prevailing wisdom behind this naming convention is this. Some brainy blowhard says, "consumers are in control." Or, "we have to put customers first." So the next logical conclusion is that they've appended my onto everything.

Meanwhile, in today's plutocratic America where wealth and capital are becoming more and more concentrated, big business is getting bigger. If you think you have a scintilla of control over your gas and electric bills, your phone bills, your cable bills, even your rent and mortgage bills, if you think you have any chance of those things being "my" things, you're a resident of the ever-expanding planet dumb. 

All that being said, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the MTA, the organization that runs New York's subways and buses, has just come out with an app called--you guessed it--my MTA.

Now, come on.

There's hardly an entity anywhere more authoritarian, more menacingly bureaucratic, more Kafkaesque than the MTA.

Also, less service-oriented, less responsive to its customers, less caring than the MTA. 

The idea that adding my to the name of their app will make them "customer first," is as ludicrous Donald Trump actually becoming president.