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.
Wow most of these are quite the contrast to what I used to see back in the day. At least in my circles it was just a collection of the technologies you’ve learned and enjoy. These are more like bumper stickers on the back of car. To each their own I suppose.
When I was going to conferences, my laptop stickers were a public display of "these are technologies that I use and you can strike up a conversation with me about them." To an extent, a resume that you can glance at from across the room.
It's a bit of a statement for what you're trying to communicate with that lid - professional experience, political statements, personal "this is neat"...
And part of this is a for me the lid of the laptop is something that I'd need to be able to be comfortable with displaying in front of a CxO without worry about if they may be offended or not (though perl might be offensive to some).
I've got stickers on my laptops. None of them are political, but I've got various indie fashion brands, music related, furry stickers, etc. If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine. I can go work anywhere and have enough savings that it would be no inconvenience to me. I wouldn't want to work with someone who couldn't handle some trivial self expression on the back of a laptop.
So far no one has ever been offended by this though. HN is far more sensitive than the average CTO.
> If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine.
That can be a healthy attitude outside of work. People love personality.
But at work, that's not a healthy attitude. You're there to work together, not to be uncompromising in expressing yourself. Your stickers are probably fine, but I can also imagine plenty of musical artists that would certainly be offensive (and rightly so) to some people, whether for their lyrics or for their criminal behavior -- and then the attitude of "that's more your problem than mine" is not gonna fly.
Seems to be in line with those I've seen for the past, oh, twenty years. Nerdy media (lots of Star Trek, video games), tech stickers, Linux users of course, a lot of political ones (oft left-leaning and lots of tech-related causes and groups like the EFF), some just plain silly/funny. Generally I see laptops with stickers in larger urban areas or university towns. Though honestly even ones I've seen in very small rural areas are generally similar, but maybe that just reflects the culture of those who tend to go to coffee shops and libraries and also wants to adorn their laptop.
I've been putting stickers on all of my laptops for decades. I get all my laptop stickers from @HackerStick3rs mainly and then cybersec conferences (like DEF CON, BSides, Saintcon, Nolacon) are my other main source of them.
One time when I left a job and had some really rare stickers I bought an identical ThinkPad and swapped the entire upper half of the machines with each other.
That work-related aspect is what I was thinking about too. I’m not sure what it looks like in various workplaces, but I’m always a bit curious around the policies they might have around putting lots of them on employer-owned laptops. I think in tough times when maybe it’s not easy to replace hardware, it can be annoying for an IT person to receive some where they have to peel them off and use Goo Gone on them.
Looks like many people here in the comments don't hang out at hacking events that are not purely tech-focused. In European hacker camps these kinds of stickers are the norm, especially the political ones that, because of the very nature of those camps, lean heavily progressive if not anti-capitalist/anarchist.
There used to be a startup
that sold ads on laptops. You got sent a sticker, had to put it on your laptop and take photos with the laptop and varying sets of people in them to get paid.
Wonder what happened to them.
I am a bit curious about the amount of politically progressive stickers however. Like, is sticker-ing your laptop just more of a 'progressive' thing to do? Do political conservatives not sticker their laptops in the same way that they generally do with their bumper stickers?
I think there's just a link between sticking stickers on things and being somewhat expressive, artistic, willing to stand out. While leaving the laptop blank is more likely someone more dry, reserved, etc. There's also a link between stickers and graffiti culture which I wouldn't describe as progressive but more just unconventional/rebellious.
I've never seen a conservative sticker on a laptop before. Then again, stickers, tags, etc. are more of an anti establishment thing. Those things don't mesh well with conservative views.
It's interesting that these are labelled 'creative'. They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.
I was at SIGGRAPH many years ago in a line behind some artists. They were talking about how all the engineers dressed the same. This is true. But was also true was that you easily tell the artists as well, they all dressed carefully and differently, within the bounds of their style and were just as easily distinguished.
Definitely a lot of cybersecurity stickers, but that aside, I see many, many different opinions, positions, and preferences represented in those stickers.
There's a laptop with multiple Amazon stickers, a laptop with Google Cloud stickers, and another laptop with a "There is no cloud, only other people's computers" sticker, and various self-hosters. There are people with local stickers from many different countries. There are people who care about repairability, people who care about reproducibility, people who have nostalgia for specific technologies, people who would love less of specific technologies, Windows fans, Apple fans, Linux fans, Intel fans, IPv6 fans, heavy metal fans, Pokemon fans, Simpsons fans, television fans, Vim users, tabletop gamers, cycling fans, shoe fans, coffee fans, tea fans, anti-AI people, pro-AI people, anti-blockchain people, pro-blockchain people, people who like to layer stickers, people who like to carefully arrange stickers.
Among the politics alone, there are many many opinions expressed, and I'd bet the owners of those laptops could have vigorous political arguments about the right way to do things.
Hmm... Does the current crop of Apple laptops have a glowing Apple logo?
... and is there a HAL sticker that has a red lens in the middle that would glow red if I put it over the Apple logo?
Where do people buy laptop stickers these days? My wife got a new computer a few months and couldn't find anything cute and tasteful. Everything was brands and anger. The places she used to use are gone, and Amazon proved useless.
Most of the stickers I've got have just been given to me. At house parties or conventions or with clothes I bought. I've then commissioned an artist to draw my own stickers which I got printed and hand out.
Stickers get handed around like business cards so the stickers on your laptop/fridge are almost like a record of the people you met.
At least those cars exhibited some kind of aesthetic merit, albeit of opinable taste. Most of these pileups of stickers are just an incoherent mishmash of corporate trademarks and political orientation signals. They only share the attention grabbing attitude.
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.
Wow most of these are quite the contrast to what I used to see back in the day. At least in my circles it was just a collection of the technologies you’ve learned and enjoy. These are more like bumper stickers on the back of car. To each their own I suppose.
When I was going to conferences, my laptop stickers were a public display of "these are technologies that I use and you can strike up a conversation with me about them." To an extent, a resume that you can glance at from across the room.
It's a bit of a statement for what you're trying to communicate with that lid - professional experience, political statements, personal "this is neat"...
And part of this is a for me the lid of the laptop is something that I'd need to be able to be comfortable with displaying in front of a CxO without worry about if they may be offended or not (though perl might be offensive to some).
I've got stickers on my laptops. None of them are political, but I've got various indie fashion brands, music related, furry stickers, etc. If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine. I can go work anywhere and have enough savings that it would be no inconvenience to me. I wouldn't want to work with someone who couldn't handle some trivial self expression on the back of a laptop.
So far no one has ever been offended by this though. HN is far more sensitive than the average CTO.
> If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine.
That can be a healthy attitude outside of work. People love personality.
But at work, that's not a healthy attitude. You're there to work together, not to be uncompromising in expressing yourself. Your stickers are probably fine, but I can also imagine plenty of musical artists that would certainly be offensive (and rightly so) to some people, whether for their lyrics or for their criminal behavior -- and then the attitude of "that's more your problem than mine" is not gonna fly.
HN is still not a quarter as sensitive as most corporations that aren't tech.
> though perl might be offensive to some
Now I'm tempted to make a set of: Perl, COBOL, Java Beans, Java EE, ActiveX, Silverlight, VB.Net, ActiveDirectory, Kerberos, ...
Seems to be in line with those I've seen for the past, oh, twenty years. Nerdy media (lots of Star Trek, video games), tech stickers, Linux users of course, a lot of political ones (oft left-leaning and lots of tech-related causes and groups like the EFF), some just plain silly/funny. Generally I see laptops with stickers in larger urban areas or university towns. Though honestly even ones I've seen in very small rural areas are generally similar, but maybe that just reflects the culture of those who tend to go to coffee shops and libraries and also wants to adorn their laptop.
Ha, what a throwback!
I remember this one with the Intel SSD sticker:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-320-ssd-300-gb/imag...
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_6571.JPEG
"The Intel SSD 320 is the much anticipated follow-up to the Intel X25-M, easily the most popular consumer SSD to date."
https://www.storagereview.com/review/intel-ssd-320-review-30...
Time flies, such a nice upgrade back in the day; now we take these things for granted.
[EDIT]
I just saw the fon.com sticker too… nostalgia hits hard.
I used that on a vacation in Madrid back when Starbucks was filled with people on their laptops, mostly white MacBooks.
I absolutely love this website.
I've been putting stickers on all of my laptops for decades. I get all my laptop stickers from @HackerStick3rs mainly and then cybersec conferences (like DEF CON, BSides, Saintcon, Nolacon) are my other main source of them.
I get the feeling about 90% of those laptops belong to either cyber security folks or rust developers. Just a gut feeling.
I always associated these battle-jacketed MacBooks with Ruby developers. But Ruby developers were the Rust developers of their day.
When I was in university a classmate had a sticker of the bsd demon (whose name I do not know) which was perhaps sexually assaulting Tux.
On his thinkpad obviously. Creative and memorable.
It's funny awkward when you get fired and your laptop is covered in stickers
I'll submit mine later today to this comment, I'm a poser lol eg. I don't daily drive Rust but I like the crab and the Gopher
Kinkpad lol that's good
One time when I left a job and had some really rare stickers I bought an identical ThinkPad and swapped the entire upper half of the machines with each other.
You can heat most of them and take off easily. If the IT transfers laptops to other people, they surely have a system for cleaning already.
A system for cleaning!
"You might want to give that a wipe."
That work-related aspect is what I was thinking about too. I’m not sure what it looks like in various workplaces, but I’m always a bit curious around the policies they might have around putting lots of them on employer-owned laptops. I think in tough times when maybe it’s not easy to replace hardware, it can be annoying for an IT person to receive some where they have to peel them off and use Goo Gone on them.
I think of it as optimism/a power move, I'm here for the long run.
I think it is a wonderful pop-art exhibit!
Looks like many people here in the comments don't hang out at hacking events that are not purely tech-focused. In European hacker camps these kinds of stickers are the norm, especially the political ones that, because of the very nature of those camps, lean heavily progressive if not anti-capitalist/anarchist.
There are laptops with a display on the outside to display stickers.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrINRHeNDQA
There used to be a startup that sold ads on laptops. You got sent a sticker, had to put it on your laptop and take photos with the laptop and varying sets of people in them to get paid. Wonder what happened to them.
I love this. Will submit a few of mine soon.
Unfortunately, my company asked me to remove the stickers, as they don’t reflect the company…
The company I work at has a strict no stickers policy, that's why each and every one of my laptops is covered in them.
You can put them on your car, bike or rucksack
Drink bottle is a good one. Large stickerable canvas that sits on your desk and is your own property.
Plenty of room on my forehead.
This makes me wanna go buy some stickers...
This one is really cool.
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/20250221_00333...
I love the sticker bomb aesthetic on the others, but there needs to be more like this. Anyone got any other examples?
This was super fun to browse!
I am a bit curious about the amount of politically progressive stickers however. Like, is sticker-ing your laptop just more of a 'progressive' thing to do? Do political conservatives not sticker their laptops in the same way that they generally do with their bumper stickers?
I think there's just a link between sticking stickers on things and being somewhat expressive, artistic, willing to stand out. While leaving the laptop blank is more likely someone more dry, reserved, etc. There's also a link between stickers and graffiti culture which I wouldn't describe as progressive but more just unconventional/rebellious.
I've never seen a conservative sticker on a laptop before. Then again, stickers, tags, etc. are more of an anti establishment thing. Those things don't mesh well with conservative views.
I believe bumper stickers are only really a thing in the US.
It's interesting that these are labelled 'creative'. They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.
I was at SIGGRAPH many years ago in a line behind some artists. They were talking about how all the engineers dressed the same. This is true. But was also true was that you easily tell the artists as well, they all dressed carefully and differently, within the bounds of their style and were just as easily distinguished.
Definitely a lot of cybersecurity stickers, but that aside, I see many, many different opinions, positions, and preferences represented in those stickers.
There's a laptop with multiple Amazon stickers, a laptop with Google Cloud stickers, and another laptop with a "There is no cloud, only other people's computers" sticker, and various self-hosters. There are people with local stickers from many different countries. There are people who care about repairability, people who care about reproducibility, people who have nostalgia for specific technologies, people who would love less of specific technologies, Windows fans, Apple fans, Linux fans, Intel fans, IPv6 fans, heavy metal fans, Pokemon fans, Simpsons fans, television fans, Vim users, tabletop gamers, cycling fans, shoe fans, coffee fans, tea fans, anti-AI people, pro-AI people, anti-blockchain people, pro-blockchain people, people who like to layer stickers, people who like to carefully arrange stickers.
Among the politics alone, there are many many opinions expressed, and I'd bet the owners of those laptops could have vigorous political arguments about the right way to do things.
The only one I liked is the HAL sticker.
Hmm... Does the current crop of Apple laptops have a glowing Apple logo? ... and is there a HAL sticker that has a red lens in the middle that would glow red if I put it over the Apple logo?
No glowing logo since before the USB-C/touchbar generation, about 10 years ago
Like covering a Lamborghini with cheap bumper stickers.
It's like people want to show what they care about rather than how much they spent on the hardware... There may be a reason.
Where do people buy laptop stickers these days? My wife got a new computer a few months and couldn't find anything cute and tasteful. Everything was brands and anger. The places she used to use are gone, and Amazon proved useless.
Most of the stickers I've got have just been given to me. At house parties or conventions or with clothes I bought. I've then commissioned an artist to draw my own stickers which I got printed and hand out.
Stickers get handed around like business cards so the stickers on your laptop/fridge are almost like a record of the people you met.
Etsy has some, but you can also print your own for not much.
Try redbubble, I have a lot leftover stickers, because I got too excited ordering
This is the equivalent of lowered Honda civics with ultra cambered wheels, ground lighting, and farty mufflers. Cringe in 2005. Cringe today.
The above is a self-referencing comment.
At least those cars exhibited some kind of aesthetic merit, albeit of opinable taste. Most of these pileups of stickers are just an incoherent mishmash of corporate trademarks and political orientation signals. They only share the attention grabbing attitude.
I expected better from the title.
Civics are more based, though.
Based. Right from the 4chan cringepool.
I really like the massive Beagle Bros Software sticker. Someone has good taste.
Likewise, that one really stood out!
What a mess. Most of these are cringe and lack aesthetic sense.
Can you point us to a resource that would layout guidelines for placing laptop stickers in an aesthetically pleasing manner?
apple.com
Good thing they're not yours, then
Not to mention: overtly vulgar in language.
Most of the owners probably feel the same way about you :-)
I absolutely hate stickers too. You're not alone.