7 ms·
> Your real middle class refuses to show any but the most bland books and magazines on its coffee tables: otherwise, expressions of opinion, awkward questions,
by Defletter 11mo ago
> Your real middle class refuses to show any but the most bland books and magazines on its coffee tables: otherwise, expressions of opinion, awkward questions, or even ideas might result. -Paul Fussell, Class
The greyification of our lives, the loss of whimsy and kitsch and being too afraid to be a little cringe, I get the sense that a lot of people associate "growing up" as the loss of any and all expression: we wake up in our grey beds in our millennial grey house, drive to work in our grey car to work in our grey cubical, etc, etc. If you want a gauche laptop covered in stickers, do it, embrace the gauche. Everyone sneering at you is more miserable than you.
- JKCalhoun 11mo agoThank you. I have tried to raise my daughters that way despite, potentially, (occasionally) embarrassing myself or the family. God, I can't stand living in an artless world.
- fipar 11mo ago"Go ahead on Mr. Businessman You can't dress like me" Jimmy Hendrix, If 6 was 9. Has another relevant spoken word bit about waving his freak flag :)
- SparkBomb 11mo agoIt has nothing to do with that. A good portion of these stickers are to do with things that are political or quasi political. What tends to happen is that a lot if times people have been burned in someway for supporting an idea or a cause. This is often because people have been fooled by charlatan, or it was later revealed that things were more complicated or different than they were led to believe. Cringe and why people hate it is best explained by watching the very first episode of the UK office. Most people want to go to work, turn up and do their time and go home. People that are often top enthusiastic are difficult to deal with day to day. People that adorn their personal possessions with slogans are seen as a warning sign.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago[flagged]
- creaturemachine 11mo agoPrior to secret ballots being a thing you would have voted "viva voce" by saying your preference aloud. Violence and intimidation were common.
- marcosdumay 11mo agoThere's no problem with publicly engaging in politics. In fact, it's a great thing to do. What is a problem is doing it on an environment where participation is mandatory or required for basic survival.
- SparkBomb 11mo agoI think generally people are I'll equipped to engage publicly in politics. Politics is an extremely dirty game and can be extremely divisive.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo agoMy friends are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Strangers usually only offer shallow ridicule and trolling- especially online.
- benchly 11mo ago> sacred knowledge? I think you might be romanticizing this, a bit. When you convince the public that not talking about something is the best course of action, they become a lot easier to control. We learned this during WWII with the propaganda machine that was fully employed on all fronts, and arguably before that with the work of Edward Bernays and people like him. If public discourse and debate could be quashed, then it was much, much easier to simply tell everyone what their opinions of a thing should be.
- ebarila 11mo agoits cringe because its not an original expression, its overdone and heavily political and obnouxious.
- Fnoord 11mo agoBut why so many stickers? Why so many tattoos? Why not pick one you very much like and agree with? Less noise. More signal. Less is more. I don't like many of the ones mentioned on this website but here are some minimalist examples [1] [2] [3] [4] and an exception I do like a bit because of the custom shape [5]. [1] is more like a skin. [1] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/20250221_003331-1.jpg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/20250221_00333... [2] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/laptop_cover.jpeg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/laptop_cover.j... [3] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_1259.jpg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_1259.jpg [4] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_5753.JPG https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_5753.JPG [5] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/54917193947_1fb7e447c2_k.jpg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/54917193947_1f...
- q3k 11mo ago> But why so many stickers? I 'unno, it's fun I guess? I see a sticker I like somewhere, brain goes 'heh, neat' and so I put it on my laptop with the other stickers. There's not much more to it.
- korse 11mo agoI happen to heartily agree with you but now we're talking taste and... yeah.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoWhy? Because your aesthetic taste is not universal.
- ant6n 11mo agoWell, you cant argue about taste.
- imwillofficial 11mo agoMy stickers will one day have layers as I stack them again and again. Anthropologists of the future will be able to trace my beliefs, humor, and tech stack from my laptop lid alone, adding to the corpus of knowlege for tech workers in the late american period.
- constantcrying 11mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- thepryz 11mo agoI like to view it as living authentically and seizing every opportunity to add a little color or whimsy to the mundan, but to each their own.
- jakeydus 11mo agoYeah, OP's username seems pretty appropriate
- constantcrying 11mo agoAuthenticity is in your heart. Putting stickers onto your laptop, which is the least authentic thing for a software developer to do, makes you just look ridiculous.
- jakeydus 11mo agoI'll be honest I think that dying on the hill of "putting stickers on your laptop [...] is the least authentic thing for a software developer to do" makes you look pretty ridiculous.
- constantcrying 11mo agoDoing something, which is so extremely commonplace does not make you unique in any way. Do you really think something, which is so extremely common among software developers, has the potential to showing your uniqueness. The hill I will die on is that I despise outward signaling, especially outward signaling of something like "uniqueness".
- 11mo ago
- cortesoft 11mo agoI don't judge people who put stickers on their laptop, but for me I don't simply because it brings me no pleasure or joy. I have never really understood decorative things in general. It is probably part of my neurodivergence, but I just don't get value from decorative things.
- 12_throw_away 11mo agoTBH I think putting stickers on your laptop is a practical imperative, as it makes it much less likely that you'll accidentally grab someone else's.
- ymsodev 11mo agoI feel like this direction of thinking is also a bit reductionist: there are plenty of reasons not to want to put stickers on a laptop. For me, personally, I don't like stickers because a year or two later, they don't represent how I think anymore. It's not an expression I would make today, it's a ghost of my old expressions. And I feel like this greyification is only true in theory from the perspective of the manufacturers. I still run into plenty of people that are not afraid to decorate their space, laptop, or whatever else. Greyification actually makes sense precisely because everyone has a different way of expression. That's why canvases are still white; you just have to find a different primer.
- kbelder 11mo agoNot everybody copying a fanciful trend is, themselves, a fanciful independent free thinker.