I remember the first time I saw a girl with a Nike swoosh tattoo. It was on her left shoulder

about the size of one of those small bananas you see in organic food stores that aren't

really bananas.

This was in the early 90s, a period when consumerism and NAFTA read as major looming threats

to the planet.

Savvy Gen Xers like me were culture jamming and ad busting and fighting consumerism at every turn.

I have a friend who put tape over the word fender on his guitar because he didn't want the

brand to matter more than the sounds of his instrument.

I mean, we all knew it was a fender, of course it was.

He was just interrogating commercialism hard.

Which is why the Nike swoosh on that gal was so shocking.

Like she was just doing it.

It was dangerous and heretical and powerfully contrary. I saw that swoosh and I contrary.

I saw that swoosh and I feared her.

My lousy anti-commercialism was no match for her brash embrace of brand identity.

She literally branded herself with the brand dude like a

brand. It was easy to throw Generation X Shade on the brainwash masses in their

cookie cutter sweatsuits but what happened when SkyNet became self-aware?

When the masses embraced their brainwashing.

We were safe up in our unassailable dark towers of self-published zines and vandalized billboards.

We figured the world was dumb, but we would stay smart.

Little did we know.

...