"Sarah likes Pringles." The immediate meaning of this phrase is simple and innocuous. But I hate it. Nor am I alone in being repulsed by the deeply entrenched tentacles of product and corporate brands within ‘social' media spaces. I've written about this issue from the human side before, about how the simplicity of platforms such as Facebook indirectly encourages users to treat themselves as marketable commodities. But this aspect of social media would not have been so obvious to me were it not for the fact that plenty of real brands have embraced social media with vigour. Coca-Cola has far more Facebook friends than you or I. And since you and I both agree that the number of Friends or Likes accrued on an individual's profile shouldn't really matter, why then do so many of us contribute, hypocritically, to a world where that precise quantification of value is paramount?

"Tom likes Pringles."

Whether or not you agree with me that the design and functionality of a social media platform has any demonstrable impact on the commodification of people's personalities and experiences, one thing seems irrefutable. And that is that businesses love being on social media. Let's take, for example, Pringles. When looking through a list of brands with the most successful Facebook presences, I was surprised to see Pringles in the top 20. Coca-Cola, Disney and Starbucks may have been well ahead as expected, but Pringles, the ubiquitous yet bland staple of party-food menus, was ahead of McDonalds, Angry Birds and Xbox.

It seems that the ubiquity of the product to which I refer corresponds well to that brand's success virtually. Pringles' Facebook page is currently celebrating the 17 millionth Facebook Fan. At the time of writing, they are in fact nearing the 18 millionth fan. "Like us," the large advertisement which greets you implores, "You won't regret it." An over-sized additional imperative riding on the back of a giant Pringle provokes the user with an accompanying arrow. "CLICK THE LIKE BUTTON," it says, and many do.

"Steve likes Pringles."

Yet plenty of other people don't. Walter Kirn has blogged about this very issue, and with due degree of anti-commercialist ire has posed the question, "through what sorcery or sophistry had we been convinced to sign away - for nothing, for worthless virtual beads, for the privilege of being allowed to speak and mix in a manner that had formerly been our right - controlling interest in our own identities?"

Kirn goes on to postulate that Facebook's users, the very stores of its wealth, might consider banding together and asking for a share of the platform's profits. Those profits, remember, are considerable. And 83% of them come from advertising - that's money brands put into their presence on Facebook so you and I will be more inclined to buy their products or look at their Facebook page. "We don't build services to make money," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said, "We make money to build better services. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximising profits."

But this is a characteristic piece of propaganda. All over the Facebook pages of successful brands lie invitations to be part of the "Community." The "Starbucks Community," the "Coca-Cola Community," the "Pringles Community" and so on. There are offers which range from exclusive material and purchasing opportunities to colouring-in downloads for your kids. This may go beyond the simple transaction of cash for product, true, but it is grossly misleading to suggest that it is ultimately about anything other than maximising profit. Of course it is. What Zuckerberg is talking about is really best described as a kind of gamification of consumerism. Being a consumer today is about 'engaging' with a brand, becoming a mouthpiece for the product. We are the most successful advertisements ever designed - and we don't even know it.

"Rebecca and two other friends like Pringles."

The value of a Facebook fan? Two years ago, it stood at $136. The figure is presumably even higher today and can be explained by looking at how brand awareness spreads among Facebook users discuss products on social networking sites. As that awareness grows, so do sales. Facebook readily promotes the Like button as a tool for cultivating brand awareness and blogs targeted at PR professionals frequently and openly discuss the hard-and-fast 'value' of all kinds of social media services to business. The degree of interaction between the vast majority of businesses and users is inevitably as shallow and formulaic as transactions between two parties online can get - and that's saying something. Does Linda from Connecticut, whose photo was featured on the Oreo Facebook page today as a weird kind of digital birthday gift, really appreciate the gesture as a meaningful one? It might be, for a moment, thrilling, to know that 24.6 million other aficionados of ‘The World's Favourite Cookie' now know the date on which she was born, but whether or not Linda actually feels like she has benefitted from the stunt is an open and irrelevant question. Either way, Oreo looks like they care, and have succeeded in extracting some of the significance of an otherwise private event for the benefit of its brand image. Linda's birthday is now simply a component in Oreo's marketing machine. Twist, lick and dunk.

"Do you like Pringles?"

For me and many others these interactions between individuals and businesses have encroached too far into the social media space. Online, there is a sense that users constantly find themselves fighting for meaningful interaction between one another at the very instances when those interactions get bought up or aped by corporations who must always remain somewhat aloof and alien. The paradox and implicit juxtaposition of these experiences leaves the whole of social media feeling tarnished, commoditized, dull and lacking in innovation. If I were Mark Zuckerberg, I would be far from celebrating this state of affairs, I would be deeply concerned. But then again Zuckerberg has far more faith than I do in the loyalty of Facebook users, and their en masse adoration of simple, shallow, digital pleasures. Facebook, whose inane system of exchanging 'pokes' preceded the 'Like' model, was never more successful than when it was at its most banal. Indeed, the network is more popular and more profitable now than it ever has been before.

So while others like me reduce their interaction with Facebook to a bare minimum, a majority remain entrenched in the service. While I wish they would leave for pastures new, perhaps forming a completely original, independent and truly social network, it is to the unchanging Facebook masses that international businesses and brands flock with such glee, for the spoils are plentiful and unending. As I see it, this is one of the great signifiers of our hypercommercial culture. And no, I don't Like it.