Making the possessive pronoun "my" part of the name of a product not intended for preschoolers is a subtle judgment on the personality and intellectual level of the product's intended purchasers & users.
— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2025-08-18T17:32:20.897Z
Most stupid fads last only a few years at most, and then they’re gone. But labeling everything “my this” or “my that” as though it were a product aimed at first-graders started with Microsoft’s inane “My Computer” and similar drivel in the mid-90s, and has only grown worse since. Websites presumably intended for adults in areas ranging from banking to healthcare are burdened with the puerile label, which I can never read without imagining it scrawled in crayon. They irritate me so badly I find myself unable to use anything so dubbed; back in the long-ago days when I was still using Windows, one of the first things I’d do upon getting a new computer was to get rid of childish display terms, substituting more adult ones like “Computer” (for “My Computer”) and “Garbage” (for “Recycle Bin”). As far as I can tell, the only reason for the continued popularity of this patronizing pap is that it reflects the corporate world’s opinion of the average intellectual level of US consumers, and given the political and social developments of the past 30 years, I can’t really say they’re wrong. 
