Laptops with Stickers

These comments are rough. Some weird hostility to self-expression in here.

"Back in my day, laptops were about TECHNOLOGY! Where's the conservative stickers!?" Ok, put some "conservative stickers" on your laptop and submit a pic to the site-- no one's stopping you.

I was born in early 90s; all laptops in my memory have weird, silly stickers on them.

You're not a real programmer if you don't have a "I vibe code AI slop in NextJS" sticker on your MacBook

To be fair, I bet pictures with "Yay Facism!" stickers are probably taken down, as they should be.

In the early to mid 90's, geek culture had a thing for ironic agitprop. Great stuff... deeply cynical and very Gen X.

It's hilarious how ready to be angry people are, these are mosaics and all we have if pro laptops are destined to be grey or less grey

There will be a time when people putting svastikas will be considered brave heroes. And then it'll be banned again. And then it'll resurface again. Turns out, "things that are obviously morally right" radically chances over time and across cultures.

Any group that gets its kicks out of pretending to be fools will soon find itself filled with fools who think themselves in good company - Abraham Lincoln

> a time

... and a duality within the present forms of society in which either expression is interesting enough or leads up to a significant event such that we will remember it in the future. No time has been one-sided as in the way you put it.

Where do you draw the line? One of them says "Socialist alternative".

Agreed, some weird hostility. I have laptops going back to the 90s all slapped up!

BTW I've been following LK for quite a while now and hope to use it sometime in the future. My regular DM is committed to a different platform, but I have a story that might turn into a campaign and I'd sub to LK to run it. Keep up the great work!

I'm glad to hear it; thank you! Reach out if you have any questions or recs. :D

Just out of curiosity, what makes you think that everyone thought Naziism was morally right at its peak?

It entirely, entirely depends on what part of the country you live in. Near me a car with a lot of stickers usually indicates Q anon/Trump/Lets go Brandon etc.

Several other European countries imitated German fascism in the 1930s (e.g. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia). This is well known in Eastern Europe because that brief period has cast long shadows to this day. Even in relatively faraway South America, Germany and Italy inspired several political movements.

Sure, not everyone thought Naziism was good, because you can’t find any political philosophy in human history that everyone has the same opinion about. But it was still seen as a model by millions of people outside Germany until Germany started obviously losing the war.

Correction: very often it's "elect the (whichever) politician running for President two or three years ago", because people rarely remove the bumper stickers they've applied. Once the next Presidential election starts up they'll slap the new sticker on top of the old one, but in 2006 you were still likely to see "Vote for Bush" or "Vote for Kerry" stickers, despite the fact that Bush was ineligible to run in 2008 (having served two terms) and Kerry was unlikely to run in 2008 (failed candidates rarely get nominated again by their party — not never, obviously, but rarely). By 2008 the Bush stickers had been mostly replaced by McCain stickers and the Kerry ones by Obama stickers, but in 2006 you would still see plenty of bumper stickers from the 2004 elections.

Come to the south, I see more "Don't tread on me" snakes, there was a lot of FJB and other Biden hate, "Come and take them" stickers, "Charlie Kirk American Patriot" stickers, all sorts of heavily religious stuff like "One nation under GOD", etc. Liberals around here will have small lgbtq/ally stickers and pro evolution/science stickers but it's not like liberal enclaves where you'll see plastered subarus.

I don't see much hostility at all. A few people don't like them. That's not weird hostility, isn't it just self-expression? Like the stickers that oppose or express a dislike of something, which presumably aren't weird hostility either. People are allowed to dislike or disagree or make not entirely positive comments. Sure some would just scroll on, arguably that's the better thing to do, but commenting in self-expression is really fine too. It seems like a strange kind of fragility and inability to tolerate or understand that people don't all think alike which would jump to thinking that is "hostility".

I have had the opposite experience living in the south. The cars with the most bumper sticks around here are owned by conservatives. Today I saw a truck with a US flag in place of its tailgate, "I back the blue" painted on the rear windshield, a Trump sticker, a sticker that said "Don't steal! The government hates competition." and more.

There was some paper that associated number of stickers on a car with extremety of their tribal group beliefs and more aggressive driving. I don't think it transfers to laptops

Agreed. Some forget that the US has this beautiful great thing called freedom of speech, meaning that some can express to like things, as well as dislike things! It's not uncommon to find stickers among laptops where some are excited for environmental safety and conservationism, and some are for Tesla / Palantir and the values and ethos that they want to perpetuate across the globe.

There are a lot of flagged comments at the bottom

Some people like naziism.

Those people were wrong.

This isn't some kind of "oh morality is relative and somethings are cultural", it's just objectively wrong, regardless of who or how many people claim to like it.

I'm taking up vampire hunting - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

> Some people like naziism. Those people were wrong.

In your individual opinion. In mine, too, and hopefully everyone else’s here. But the OP was clearly talking about what views are presented as “morally right” by normative social forces, and those clearly differ across time and place, often as political power waxes and wanes.

Yeah, even in those. There was like one low effort obvious troll, others are just self-expressing their dislike, pretty similar to many others here expressing their like of the stickers or the website with similar kind of quips.

I tend to just scroll on if I don't like something, rather than commenting about it. But I would be lying if I said I've never done it. It's a very human thing, on a forum like this that invites open discussion about things it is fine, and pretty obviously if the pictures have a bunch of political messages on them you would not be flabbergasted to see a some political comments. Maybe the comments are cringy, silly, wrong, not aligned with your beliefs, or unnecessary, but seeing hostility in disagreement or dislike is a pretty bad place to be.

All the cars with political stickers I see are conservative ones. I live in Texas, in a blue city too but still its all punisher stickers and other wannabee-badass-signalling, or pro trump / liberal tears type stuff. Never anything pro liberal

Socialist Alternative is an Australian political org. They're one of the tiny Trotskyist factions that always seem to form any time two or more Trotskyists work together. That's why it's on a laptop next to a bunch of other far left political stuff. They're pretty much the opposite of "Yay Nazism!"

Or were you drawing an equivalence between the two?

> Ok, put some "conservative stickers" on your laptop and submit a pic to the site-- no one's stopping you.

I didn't see any Java or COBOL or even .NET stickers, but there was at least a fairly clean one with a Sun sticker. And some Debian stickers, but those were a bit more cluttered. And maybe even that one with the cat around the Apple logo.

Do you see me petitioning the site to remove their comment? They are welcome to have bad taste and a bad attitude.

If you go to an art show and are like, "Wow, these all suck! Why didn't any of you artists do art the way I think it should be done?!"

That's not self-expression. That's being an asshole.

Non sequitur. I was addressing what I did see in your comment, and nothing I wrote suggested or implied that you did or even thought any such thing.

"You know who else made laptops wear pieces of flair?"

Yeah, that was the big takeaway from the social experiment that was 4chan. If you ironically pretend too long to be trash, you will gradually become trash.

Okay. Were you hoping I would address this scenario of your own fabrication, or are you able to make your point using this actual situation right in front of us that we are discussing?

People self-expressing dislike for some content under a link on public forum that explicitly invites comment is not hostility. Making comments and disagreement about politics is not hostility (particularly in response to political content being posted). It just isn't.

If you posted up a page of pictures of "Lifted trucks of West Virginia adorned with creative bumper stickers" here you would get a lot of negative opinions and politcial commentary. That also would not be "weird hostility", it would be completely obvious and understandable preferences and opinions ranging from people who don't like the trucks or covering them with stickers, to those who feel strongly about politics.

Again, you're allowed to discuss things and disagree with them. People aren't assholes or hostile for doing it. Learn to live and let live, no need to try to guilt people about it.

Daniel Tosh said the best:

Don’t put stickers on your car. Despite what you think they say, know they read, “I’m poor.” No one cares who you cheer for or what you believe in. Just drive a little faster.

I mean, some of these stickers could just represent self expression of anger.

It’s interesting the top comment is a self expression against people’s self expression against the self expression of the stickers.

Everything here seems to boil down to self expression. Even the flags and downvotes of the content at the bottom is a form of self expression.

This comment is my self expression about all the inception of self expression.

And now my brain hurts.

Considering where most of the pictured laptops (likely) originate from, I would beg to differ.

> Okay. Were you hoping I would address this scenario of your own fabrication, or are you able to make your point using this actual situation right in front of us that we are discussing?

It's not a "scenario" - it's a comparison, an example. It's no different to this forum - people choose to come here. Someone chose to share TFA. People chose to enter these comments and shit on people's design choices and take weird stands about political balance.

> If you posted up a page of pictures of "Lifted trucks of West Virginia adorned with creative bumper stickers" here you would get a lot of negative opinions and politcial commentary. That also would not be "weird hostility", it would be completely obvious and understandable preferences and opinions ranging from people who don't like the trucks or covering them with stickers, to those who feel strongly about politics.

Sure, these are obviously the same...

> Again, you're allowed to discuss things and disagree with them. People aren't assholes or hostile for doing it. Learn to live and let live, no need to try to guilt people about it.

Those people could "learn to live and let live" with regards to people harmlessly putting stickers on their laptops.

> It's not a "scenario" - it's a comparison, an example.

Semantics. You invented a scenario and you attempted to make some point that presumably you were unable to make with the situation at hand.

> It's no different to this forum - people choose to come here. Someone chose to share TFA. People chose to enter these comments and shit on people's design choices and take weird stands about political balance.

I think it is different. If it were not different you would not have been compelled to think of it.

> Sure, these are obviously the same...

Now you don't like "comparisons"? It's more similar than your one.

> Those people could "learn to live and let live" with regards to people harmlessly putting stickers on their laptops.

Expressing a dislike for something is not incompatible with live and let live. It is participating in a conversation. It's not hostile, it doesn't need to be guilted or suppressed or name-called.

> I think it is different. If it were not different you would not have been compelled to think of it.

Not actually responding to the essence of the comparison.

> Now you don't like "comparisons"?

Just bad-faith comparisons that equate "Just Be Yourself" stickers with "I hate fags" stickers

> Expressing a dislike for something is not incompatible with live and let live. It is participating in a conversation. It's not hostile, it doesn't need to be guilted or suppressed or name-called.

Again, if you consider a group of people sharing their art between each other and having a conversation about it, and someone comes in and is like "This art is stupid." that is hostile. That is exactly what is happening here.

> Not actually responding to the essence of the comparison.

The comparison was a bad-faith strawman that did not reflect the conversation here. In that situation a person might be an asshole, possibly even hostile. That does not automatically make these commenters hostile assholes, that's just the height of intellectual laziness.

> Just bad-faith comparisons that equate "Just Be Yourself" stickers with "I hate fags" stickers

No I didn't make that comparison, and you're a nasty and intellectually dishonest person for trying to say I did.

> Again, if you consider a group of people sharing their art between each other and having a conversation about it, and someone comes in and is like "This art is stupid." that is hostile. That is exactly what is happening here.

No that's not hostile. Somebody submitted this content inviting the HN community to comment on it and oh my god not everybody loves it. Some even hate it and are blunt about it. That's not weird hostility, it's people self-expressing their dislike of things in not always polite terms. Like some of these laptop stickers are doing.

"People expressing their hatred for art in impolite terms" is not hostile to you? What exactly would hostility in this context look like to you? Or is it just not possible to be hostile about this?

No but that's my point, the nazis had to march entire classes of people to death camps at gun point to be considered "normative," and even then there was a resistance movement not only in every occupied country but also Germany itself. The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.

And even now we see that the normalization of naziism is apparently impossible - I was incredibly cynical about the American right wing happily embracing naziism, but I guess I was partially wrong: there's a schism this week over popular American right wing media figures platforming the nazi Nick Fuentes.

Ah, yes, downvoted and flagged comments is how I know someone is wrong and not worth reading.

Thank you for being a voice of reason within the hive mind.

It's annoying to me that you're not allowed to even slightly critique things anymore without people blurting out the thought-terminating cliché "Let people enjoy things!", which attempts to do nothing more than shut down interesting conversation because somebody doesn't like said conversation. (Let people enjoy critiquing?) It's behaviour like this that makes me dread the inevitable Reddit exodus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...

For 15 years I have seen only one laptop sith sticker. Its unprofessional for most corporations...

> The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.

Before modernity, extraordinary violence and propaganda were, well, ordinary. Hitler just made that work on industrial scale, but the underlying moral ideas weren't anything new. During antiquity, people didn't mind slaughtering entire cities. Even more modern history is full shit like that, look up Mongol invasions.

BTW don't you think that it's a little awkward that in modern times "pirates", which were people that'd literally kill seamen for profit, are considered a fun Halloween theme for children? I can imagine that in 500 years Nazi costumes will be similarly normalized.

Well, if we want to be pedantic, and of course we do, I'd say the stickers are a form of self-expression and the comments are a form of expression, some of which seemed cynical and/or biased due to most of those laptop lids featuring a high proportion of innocuous logos, video games, ironic meme culture stuff, cute animals, some flags, and if I really look for it, some resembling vaguely anti-authoritarian themes

By the time the "death camps" started, Nazism’s takeover of Germany’s society was complete; peer pressure was now doing the work that initially thugs had to do. Yes, there was a resistance because there will always be people who disagree with whomever is in power, but those people where acting against the norm. Only with Germany losing the war were they rehabilitated in the eyes of Germany society at large, and initially with some grudging resistance here and there.

This is why posting about how “Nazism is objectively immoral, m’kay?" misses the point and can be counterproductive. The whole reason that fascism is a continual spectre is that, it turns out, by appealing to people’s base instincts and cracking heads, a malevolent political form can completely sidestep morality and institute the society it wants to see.

I was simply pointing out that most people cannot even see the content of those messages so they might have just missed them.

I'm not sure why you interpreted my comment in the way that you did.

You're being weirdly hostile.