Sticker Your Way to Freedom
The sticker is the most time-honored method of dispensing wisdom and satire in small, bite sized chunks. Stickers can be put anywhere, in a minimum of time. While still technically vandalism, they aren’t as considered as bad as paint. If you have a pocket full of stickers, you are a lot less suspicious than a pocket full of spraypaint cans.
Some stickers mimic or blend into existing signage, disrupting people’s train of thought for a long time. Their lack of obvious features makes them hard to notice for the sticker cleaning establishment, but their presence is noticed by the thousands of everyday onlookers who read the sign. One prominent example is the “Driving” sticker, that is bright red, and placed under the word “STOP” on stop signs. The new sign reads, “STOP DRIVING!” with a subtle subscript “Walk, bike, use public transportation!” Some dilligent soul has utterly plastered my area of town in these stickers, hitting just about every stop sign between me and the Medical school. I get a grin whenever I see one.
In a similar act, Subvert has designed THIS sticker, which is one of the most clever I’ve seen in a long time. Its subtle, it mimics existing gas station signage, and it gets right to the point. Plus, the designer is selling them at cost (actually, at a defecit to himself, because of the time he has spent dealing with it). He is taking pre-orders at the moment, 10 stickers for 3 bucks. I bought 30.
Remember, they are still on ‘pre-order’ while he waits for the printing company to finish, but he seems like a nice legit fellow with a good cause, so I trusted him with my 9 bucks. I’ll be carrying these little buddies around with me for awhile!
Thursday 29 Aug 2002 | Sam | Uncategorized
Sam’s excitement about the “Thank you for supporting Global Terrorism” sticker was interesting enough to make me check out the link. Well, like most “bumpsticker philosophy” it’s like using a cinder block to peel a hard boiled egg. Or using a shotgun to kill a fly in your kitchen. Sure it works, but at what cost?
For example, your “Thank you for supporting Global Terrorism” sticker sits next to the gas pump handle. A single mom working a desperate minimum wage job so she can go to night school and support her two kids because some asshole used to beat her up—- she’s supposed to be inspired to stop driving to her shit-hole job? And the guy who helps car pool with his office stops by to fill up. He works hard to get people to join the car pool and help out. He’s helping global terrorism?
I think it’s the height of naiveness to think that insenstive over-consumers will even (as the sticker’s author contends) for a nano-second seriously re-consider his/her over consumptive lifestyle and crummy earth-unfriendly choices. It is exactly that sort of lack of awareness which will piss off those of us trying our best and be ignored by the insenative boobs around us. (whew, that made me tired…)
So the business owner sends out his counter droid to scrape off the sticker, oops, it’s vinyl so he has to take some gas on a rag to wipe off the residue, now the vapors are in the atmosphere and on the hands of the counter droid. Hey guys, whose being earth-unfriendly now?
I like what Ghandi said,
“My life is my work”. I don’t think he said, “Stickers will change people’s minds.”
Nuff said, thanks for listening.
His Dad
Well, I certainly don’t think that a sticker is going to change the world in the same way as a well organized social campaign, but I think they have some value.
The part they play is basically equivalent to political cartoons. A political cartoon is no replacement for concrete political awareness, but it brings to light some critical irony within a current issue. You don’t really know any more than you did before, but you may be aware of some perspective that you weren’t aware of before.
The sticker’s primary goal is to be humorous, it mimics the existing signs, it has all the usual gas station stuff on it, and then an absurd punchline.
Even if you put these other places (not on gas pumps), people understand the gist. The first three items are things that instantly remind people of gas stations, and simply seeing the sticker’s shape would bring that to mind for most people.
If you are confident that you are doing whats right, and that you are doing your best to be a responsible gas user, then you shouldn’t let a sticker make you angry. Do you get angry when you see harsh or opposing political viewpoints on stickers? Or do you just let it roll off your back, because you are confident in your beliefs?
I don’t think anyone is of the opinion that this will single handedly change anyone’s mind about anything, but the irony of the situation is worth sharing.
I try to live by my message, and I think that has more effect than 10,000 stickers. But in an age ruled by advertisements, even the counter-culture gets their 15 seconds of attention.