a small thing that I hate, and many of the rest of you probably hate it too

Businesses speaking in the first person on my behalf in a failed effort to create a sense of comfort and inclusion.

Example: when McDonald’s tried to call itself “My McDonald’s.” Many people reacted with a chuckle, but I found that it made me a bit more annoyed than that.

Or Amazon, which is generally a very well-run company… When I see the bar on top of the screen that says “Graham’s Amazon.com,” I feel a sense of loathing at their unwanted intrusion into the first person domain. Stiff formality and politeness seems better in the business context. (I don’t care in the least if random strangers email me by first name, as often happens. But when a business does it, it feels really insulting.)