As social media continues to take over our lives, companies are relying on it more and more for affordable (or even free) marketing. Nothing creates a buzz faster than a popular Instagram post or Facebook video. Think of all the hole-in-the-wall restaurants that now have lines around the block, just because a customer posted a picture of their food to a social media account. Social media can be a company's greatest resource if they know how to use it properly.

Everyone is familiar with Starbucks. After all, it's a multi-billion dollar company with stores on pretty much every street corner. One big thing that Starbucks is known for is the baristas misspelling customers names. It's become such a funny phenomenon that pictures of the most ridiculous misspellings have been going viral on pretty much every social media platform.

The cup in the picture above is clearly supposed to read, "Aaron/Erin" rather than "Air Inn". Starbucks baristas simply can't be this dumb across the board so what is with this cup catastrophe?

Many people are starting to speculate that the whole thing may be a giant marketing ploy. The conspiracy theory is that corporate Starbucks is telling employees to misspell names as horrendously as possible in the hopes that customers receiving the cups with the misspellings will post pictures to social media, therefore creating free buzz and marketing for Starbucks.

Whether this proves to be true or not, it's a genius way to properly utilize social media and our society's newfound need to share every single thing that happens in our day-to-day lives.

Or maybe baristas just get a laugh out of the customer's reaction when they pick up their drink.

I guess time will tell. In the meantime, if you don't support "The Man", you should probably stop posting your Starbucks cups on Instagram every time a barista gets your name wrong, just to be safe.