Have you ever wondered about the stickers on someone’s laptop? If you said yes, you’re not alone. Jessica Watts has the story on what you can learn about a person from their stickers.
Have you ever been in class… at the gym…or at work and noticed the stickers on someone’s laptop or water bottle? Did you wonder if there’s a story behind the pretty designs or logos?
You’re usually right. Stickers can actually help you learn a lot about someone.
Matilda Stubbs is an adjunct professor in anthropology at Northwestern. She specializes in material culture, which is…
MATILDA STUBBS: “Basically all of the ways that culture is materialized in everyday life. And o ften we think of material culture as being artifacts or designed objects or inventions that humans have made or used, but really material culture are any of the objects that we use to define our culture.”
Stickers are part of our material culture. They can represent different parts of your identity…a band or movie you like…or even a place you’ve traveled to.
[nat sound of Chen explaining stickers]
Claire Chen is a Medill freshman. She uses stickers on her laptop to express her interests, and show off some of her favorite color schemes and aesthetics. She says they make doing school work a little more fun.
CLAIRE CHEN: “It’s nice to open my backpack up and I take my computer out and it’s like not a blank space of gray. It really does like make my mornings better. When I have to take out my computer and do work, at least I know I look good while doing it.”
[nat sound Bishop explaining stickers]
Weinberg senior Stella Bishop also keeps a collection of stickers on her laptop. She says hers fit an aesthetic purpose and tell her story.
STELLA BISHOP: “All of my stickers have a story behind them. Most of them are souvenirs, but then I always choose the cutest one.”
Both Chen and Bishop have laptop stickers that show places they’ve been and groups they belong to. But stickers are used for more than just showing people what kinds of things you like.
Stubbs mentions how they can be used for directions.
STUBBS: “During COVID for example, stickers were used a lot to communicate and disseminate vital public health information about everything from where you should stand at the airport to I know stickers on like bottles in the nineties about ‘this is unsafe’,’this is icky’, you know, safety stuff for kids.”
You probably come across stickers more than you think you do. Think about it. Did your coffee cup have a label with your name on it this morning? Have you received any packages recently? Did you check a bag last time you traveled? All of these involve stickers! Stubbs says that’s part of their materiality.
STUBBS: “Thinking about how stickers can non-verbally communicate and the kind of power of that. I do think that like most people don’t think of stickers as something that you don’t see, but you actually can experience the materiality of a sticker even if you don’t look at it.”
Bishop says there’s also some diversity in the kinds of sticker users.
BISHOP: “I feel like there’s two types of people with stickers. There’s like the people that buy a bunch of stickers and there’s people that like slowly collect them”
Recently stickers are moving beyond the laptop and water bottle and onto digital platforms. You can create stickers using any picture in your camera roll, and use them to react to text messages. But does this take away from what makes them special?
STUBBS: “The thing about an actual sticker, though, especially if it’s something you’re given in the moment and it’s something that is only gonna stick onto your sweater or your shirt for a certain period of time, that also kind of adds to its significance in that it’s sort of special in the moment that you got it.”
We can all remember the feeling of getting a sticker after doing something well when we were young. A fond memory that can extend their shelf life beyond a one-and-done interaction.
STUBBS: “Getting a sticker on a stationary surface, like a poster board or on an assignment that you can then maybe hang up forever or frame or store forever could be another way of thinking about the kind of lifespan of a sticker’s use source of significance.”
But that’s not always the case, usually they don’t stick around for long according to Chen.
CHEN: ”Stickers are not permanent and they will go away and they can change as a person changes. So it’s not like you gotta commit to a sticker and have it for the rest of your life.”
So take a look around your class, your gym, your work and notice, what do your stickers say about you?
For WNUR News, I’m Jessica Watts.
