How well do you know your brands?

Constantly we are being bombarded with advertisements for the new apple product, Goggle chrome book, and/or car sales. Constantly we are seeing so many brands that are through at us from all sides, starting from infancy to adulthood. We all recognize the Apple, Disney, Facebook, McDonald's, etc. logos because they have been with us for a better part of our lives. So considering this, it wouldn't be hard to play a game that required us to simply name the brand based on said brand's picture, right? This past week I had the pleasure to play such a game, the Logos Quiz available for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and was disturbed to find out that I knew more brands than I expected to. Playing this game, as with any other game, can become addictive. The rules for the game are simple enough. Choose a logo, answer it quickly [to accumulate more points] and correctly and move on; the more points you get the more hints you accumulate. Simple enough, I thought as I started playing and accumulating more and more points. Before I knew it I had opened level two and I was more than eager to open level three. As I moved on to level two, I noticed that the game becoming increasingly difficult. I didn't recognize some logos, thus I was becoming increasingly frustrated. I used my hints when I got stuck but some of the hints weren't making any sense to me. So I asked my friend, who was sitting next to me at the time for help. If she didn't know the answer, than we looked up the hint online. Somewhere in the middle of all this competitive madness, I realized that I was obsessing over the logo of a brand! I couldn't believe it, I was after all taking a class about this very thing; our consumer culture. By testing my knowledge about what I know and don't know, this game was proving the very thesis of my class; does the advertising that surrounds us have lasting impacts on our lives? Yes, it does. This game is clearly the result of our consumer culture. We are able to recognize these brands, thus able to play this game, because they have been with for far too long. Upon coming to this realization, I laughed at myself but I didn't stop playing the game. If anything I began to play it more intensely because as disturbed as I was of my new found knowledge, it was only a game, right?