by Octoth0rpe
6 subcomments
- I've had my eye on this pack of stickers for my next laptop upgrade: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1133836260/cursed-programming-s...
(the joke here is that all of the tech has the wrong logo, ie the javascript sticker has a java logo, the vscode sticker has a vim logo, etc)
by Defletter
10 subcomments
- > 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.
- My laptop has stickers, one of which is a photo of my previous laptop and its stickers. One of those is a photo of the laptop before that…
by grafelic
12 subcomments
- My laptop hasn't had stickers since a CTO asked why mine didn't have any stickers like the ones on the laptops of his cool cloud team. Personally I've found laptop stickers bad taste since then.
- 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.
Stickers are kinda like currency at hacker conferences and a great way to meet new people.
- Some laptops clearly belong to the cheerful juniors celebrating their coding practices (git! npm! vim! Python!), and some are very political; once you filter those out, what remains are interesting examples of people expressing themselves.
by SparkBomb
4 subcomments
- I used to put stickers on my desktop PC and laptop when I was in my early 20s. Then I realised my laptop was kinda free advertising for whatever companies product I had stuck on the back.
Now it seems have come very "corporate cringe", similar to the 16 pieces of flair at Chotchkie's. It also looks a bit childish IMO.
- 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
- 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 saw laptops like those on hackathons and always sort of assumed they were their personal machines. Kind of surprising to read here that some of those were apparently (company-owned) work laptops.
Startup culture?
by Tabular-Iceberg
5 subcomments
- I got rid of all mine after getting disillusioned with every one of the causes they represented.
- Ripoff of https://devlids.com
Choose taste, choose the original!
by zygentoma
11 subcomments
- Shameless plug for those who still need more stickers for their laptop:
ssh stickr.shop
- I once (legally) bought a second hand laptop with a big anti-theft sticker on it. The sticker warned that removing it would leave a big "STOLEN!" mark, which it did. I covered it up with a new sticker.
- 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?
- I used to put stickers on my work laptop. Then one day I upgraded my laptop, which meant handing over my old one with stickers.
Which meant scrubbing it (there's no reason I'll let whoever receives it to scrub it for me)
Which was an absolute pain.
I don't put stickers on my laptops anymore.
- There are laptops with a display on the outside to display stickers.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrINRHeNDQA
- Stickers themselves can be fun and quirky, but I for the life of me can't figure out why people would put such extremely divisive and workplace-unnecessary messaging on their MAIN WORK DEVICE as many of these have.
The kind of lack to integrate to a team having your pride flags, literal death threats to perceived enemies, furries, loli anime, etc on a thing you intend to bring to the workplace to do all your work on isn't good for your career and sure as hell won't not be noticed by people whose responsibility is to judge risk and liabilities for example.
Tech stacks, not party flags.
by WaitWaitWha
1 subcomments
- Some pen test teams use laptop stickers as an excellent resource for proper social engineering.
Some cyber companies explicitly prohibit stickers on company laptops.
by jones89176
0 subcomment
- Here's a good talk that gives some advice on how to make good stickers yourself:
https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57194-from_c3stoc_with_love_...
- My favourite sticker is a play on „Atomkraft? Nein danke!“ [0] (nuclear power? No thanks!) and says: „Atomzeit? Nein danke!“ (Atomic time? No thanks!)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power%3F_No_Thanks
- Same thing as devlids:
https://devlids.com/
- Love this!
Many of my favorite stickers come from here: https://github.com/mkrl/misbrands (and some of it's forks).
Vim/Vscode still gets the best reactions.
- I've done this on my current laptop, and when it eventually stops serving me I will frame the lid as a humble piece of art for my office. (7 year old HP running linux, need to replace the battery soon but otherwise still perfectly serviceable)
by reaperducer
10 subcomments
- 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.
by fennecbutt
1 subcomments
- I've just covered mine with furry trash stickers.
- A lot of German users. I guess they have a much active hackerscene. Which is true because I literally got my laptop sticker cut out with a cricut cut at a Berlin computer club.
- I used to not be on "team sticker".
My wife, however, loves to customize her stuff.
Fast-forward a few years of that and her laptop breaks down. We drop it off at a local repair place, only to have the business itself fold up with everyone's gear inside it. Former staff then went to great lengths to find customers and return equipment. We were able to recover the machine from a box of co-mingled broken laptops, mostly because it was visually customized. Not everyone else was so lucky.
Point being: the experience was just like having unique looking luggage, and just as useful and important to do. You don't know when you'll need this, but when you do, you'll be thankful.
- Inspired by Talia Smiley, I’ve started wearing a roll of dinosaur stickers on my belt and offering them to random strangers and at networking events.
“Hi I’m Kimberly, can I tell you about my startup” lands way worse than “Hi I’m Kimberly, would you like a dinosaur sticker for your coffee / MacBook?” Sometimes they even stick around for the pitch, but it’s nice to be able to instantly make someone smile in three-second interactions
- It's moistly about being able to recognize your laptop from others when the company has standardized on as sdinglke model. I have an Epson ColorWorkjs C4000e label printer and design and print my own, but some my 13 year old daughter designed for me and are extra special.
by oldestofsports
1 subcomments
- I always thought stickers were mega-cringe, like saying ”look at me, I went to all these conferences, I’m such a hacker nerd, I use linux BTW”
- Stickers on the laptop was such a small, wonderful part of college for me. Very minor, but the strategically perfectly imperfect placement of a sticker on my laptop when it was deemed to be worthy was so much fun. My favorite was a sticker meant for a hot beverage carafe to label it with the contents that I took that just read "HOT WATER".
I have a Framework now and haven't adding anything to it (because it's easier to clean), but maybe I'm missing out.
- When humans are lost into the screens, the screen-backs make a desperate attempt to talk to other humans.
- 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 had a load of stickers on my old machine. I kept the laptop but felt the need to remove the stickers. I think part of me had moved on from what they represented - mostly past interests. Another part of me never liked how they overlapped, I tried but it didn't really work for me. It raises the question: are stickers randomly placed or is there some deliberate pattern to them that I just can't see? Do you just slap them on, or precision place them to look random?
by bargainbin
3 subcomments
- Such a bunch of negative folks in here. I personally stickerbomb every company laptop I get knowing full well some poor guy in IT is going to have to scrape it all off.
I once had a loaner thinkpad for two days whilst my MacBook was bricked by Jamf - best believe they got that thing back covered.
His face when I handed it back to him, priceless.
Side note: What is that massive yellow CYBER sticker that seems to be on 80% of them? Feel like I’ve missed some kind of political movement.
by 0xbadcafebee
2 subcomments
- you can tell who's old... i see 6 cDc stickers, 3 L0pht stickers, 1 HNN, 1 attrition. i see SUN and 3dfx, that's pretty tight. i lol'd at "libc.so.6"
- I slapped a nice sticker of a boat anchor on my work laptop. Seemed fitting. Slow (thanks to 4 separate malware/virus scanners), weighs a ton, lasts for an hour on battery.
by jones89176
0 subcomment
- See here for some archives:
https://hacker-archive.org/s/Start/item-set/6601
https://github.com/mwarning/chaos-sticker-collection
- 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.
- I wish I could buy the Aaron Swartz sticker
- One of mine is on quite a few laptops and at least one server: https://shop.kyefox.com/products/were-here-were-queer-connec...
I was hoping, though not expecting, to spot it in here.
- I love this. Will submit a few of mine soon.
by b_e_n_t_o_n
0 subcomment
- This makes me wanna go buy some stickers...
- I think the most interesting aspect of this is how divisive something as innocuous as putting stickers on a thing is. What causes people to have a strong opinion on this one way or another?
Personally I don't find it hard to put stickers on things because I am worried about being silly, but I find defacing an otherwise clean object difficult. Like getting a brand new car or phone and trying very hard not to get a scratch. Once the first scratch is there you stop worrying about it.
Once you put down the first sticker I imagine that worry goes away. I think getting a tattoo is still an insurmountable problem for me personally, but I get it.
- I think it is a wonderful pop-art exhibit!
- In case you’re wondering, this is 我 (me).
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4148-1.jpe...
- I can only show my laptop without stickers:
https://i.ibb.co/TDmXWBpc/Whats-App-Image-2025-11-12-at-11-3...
by mindcrime
2 subcomments
- I don't have a great picture of mine that isn't obscured by other "stuff" in frame, but for an idea of what my laptop looks like, see:
https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg
- Unfortunately, my company asked me to remove the stickers, as they don’t reflect the company…
by smallmouth
0 subcomment
- The only sticker I've ever put on one of my laptops was an Apple sticker. The laptop was a Dell.
by Antibabelic
0 subcomment
- My friend bought a bunch of generic kids' stickers with flowers, kitties, cars, Minions and such, and plastered his laptop with them to make fun of this trend. It looks great! Tons of glitter
by Night_Thastus
1 subcomments
- That DS9 "in the pale moonlight" sticker is awesome.
by nticompass
0 subcomment
- Hmm... I wonder how many of these are ThinkPads.
I found this site a few days ago and uploaded my laptop, which just so happens to be a ThinkPad X270.
Mine: https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/1000008753-1.j...
- Don’t know about the story telling as in a story about the past of the laptop. I have a lot of colleagues who come back with a full plastered laptop the second day they receive a new machine. I think that there is a culture of either leave you machines pristine or show you don’t give a f… how expensive it is. Sure the world is not black and white here so.
- I had a great stickered laptop for a few years, lots of valuable stickers I'd collected at various hackathons and such, but .. Apple stole it!
I had to get the screen replaced, and no matter how hard I pleaded, Apple refused to give me the old screen back to hang on my nerd wall.
I remain convinced that some Apple tech has a collection of these screens, somewhere, on their own nerd wall.
Grrr...
- I used to like stickers too when I was a child.
by ninetyninenine
5 subcomments
- Like covering a Lamborghini with cheap bumper stickers.
- I chuckled seeing the one with stickers taken off of fresh produce. My SO bought me a whiteboard so that I would stop placing such stickers on random surfaces.
I like to look at stuff personalized like that, but I would never settle on any design for longer, so I don't do it myself.
- What's the best way to reproduce some of these stickers at the highest possible quality?
- I used to add stickers obtained from visiting my company's clients/partners to my laptop. After 5 years the laptop was basically advertising a bunch of dead brands (either through acquisition or lack of VC funding).
- Somewhere I have a "RUN GCC" sticker from the Free Software Foundation that I was given by Daniel Stenberg (author of curl) at some meetup here in Stockholm.
That would actually be kind of cool, I always end up not being able to make up my mind about what would be worthy.
- When I'm driving around town and I see that soooo many vehicles have a sticker on the back, or a license plate frame, or something that advertises for the place that they bought the car at. I do not understand this at all.
by litbear2022
2 subcomments
- I think some people would be very interested in similar satirical stickers.Unfortunately, this link is sold out.
https://www.aliexpress.com/i/1005005801847872.html
- It's all fun until you want to sell the machine and the stickers discolored the case. Some stickers adhesive seem to react with the coating on MacBooks and permanently discolor them.
Just be aware of that :)
- I would be interested in seeing images of "anti-stickers"
I've seen a few movies where apple laptops are show with a clear apple logi...
But I've also seen movies where the logos are removed or altered. It would be interesting to see images like that.
- I've never been able to bring myself to put stickers on my laptop - not since the Titanium PowerBook came out.
Everything else in my life? Covered in them. But my laptops are always pristine. This has always made me faintly sad.
- My stickers are totally awesome but I could probably be deanonymized by sharing them (since they are so unique and special) so you all will not be graced by their beauty and artistry.
- Thank you so much.
I had to dig out my old laptop from computer science college.
I remember that I love doing this and that it changed appearance over nearly 5 years.
It brings back good memories.
It was really a cool idea.
- I don't really get the language or tool stickers but stickers of places you've been like city specific or conferences makes sense to display.
- In my professional experience the number of stickers on a laptop is generally inversely proportional to the owner’s ability to write software, or even use said computer for that matter.
by ubermonkey
0 subcomment
- I didn't do stickers for a long time. Then I did.
I like them. The ones on my machine are mostly from small, local businesses I enjoy.
- I like having at least one or two stickers on my laptop, just so that I can easily tell which one is mine.
by whalesalad
0 subcomment
- On my M2 Air I've got In-N-Out, Python, the little flame from my solo stove, and the entire bottom of the chassis is an enormous tux penguin.
- I’ve seen it fairly commonly for people to have company stickers on their laptop and have worked places that distribute these stickers. I always found it terrible security, it’s basically advertising what someone would get if they stole your laptop.
Self expression is fine, I personally want the most boring looking computer possible
by ostwilkens
0 subcomment
- Love it! I'll showcase my sticker collection on my laptop as soon as I come up with a way to make them reusable.
- The one with velcro tape, allowing to put patches on the laptop is clever!
It results in a bulgier laptop, but still, clever!
by binary132
2 subcomments
- It seems to me that about 10-15 years ago, laptop stickers were a little more like patches on a punk jacket; that is, they were meant to show something about the cons or competitions you have participated in. A few such places would give out stickers.
At some point, people saw the cool-looking stickered-up laptops and thought they would also look cool and put fun stickers on their laptops to show that they also can google things. This diluted the original social signal value until it was completely ubiquitous, kind of like if everyone started putting whatever patches appeal to them on whatever jacket they wear without any thought to the idea of their origin. By that time, the original sticker-signalers had all moved on to other signals.
- 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.
by voganmother42
1 subcomments
- The lego laptop cases are fun, or I would love one sticker I could doodle or draw on
by lawlessone
0 subcomment
- Hey i like it , but i can see most of them appear to have original filenames on them when i mouse over them.
- Wow. Impressive collection!
- Good lord, what a load of curmudgeons some of you are.
Decorating things makes them look pretty and covers up the corporate free advertising. It's not any more complicated than that.
The hate on political stickers I get though.
by joshdavham
13 subcomments
- 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?
by AbraKdabra
1 subcomments
- I like stickers from conferences but I also love my notebook clean, and if I ever do it, my brain won't let me do it wrong, I will put them well and organized. There has been some times that I saw people receive stickers and immediately put them in their notebook lid like, however their hand lands on the notebook, crooked, overlapping other stickers and I'm like "holy crap no please don't".
by constantcrying
0 subcomment
- Very thankful for these laptops stickers, it makes it extremely easy to identify freaks and losers in tech.
Yeah sure, your laptop is "killing fascists", by you seething on Mastodon or blue sky and writing corporate SaaS slopware.
- OMG, I hate stickers on laptops so much...
by doppelgunner
0 subcomment
- I'm not a fan of laptops having stickers unless it blend well with the design/color of the laptop. Too much stickers will make it look messy.
by tacker2000
0 subcomment
- But what about the resale value??
by portaouflop
0 subcomment
- I wouldn’t wanna be caught on the US border with some of these!
Crazy that this is one of the first things that came to my mind
- they need to make laptops with a color e-ink lid so you can easily create and update your
- kinda funny that I recognize a bunch of those laptops from people I know
by MemesAndBooze
0 subcomment
- Wow, absolutely alternative.
- miss my first laptop I had while interning in SF. Each sticker was its own memory
- -> bad OPSEC ;-)
by enraged_camel
1 subcomments
- My hot take: laptops with stickers are simply mini-billboards and I resent that they are a thing. The owner doesn't even make money from it!
I'm fine with self-expression (like with tattoos, which can be super interesting and creative) but am broadly against people shoving their likes/dislikes on everyone's face. I don't have any laptop stickers or bumper stickers and don't wear branded clothing.
- Wireshark, doo doo doo doo doo doo.
by ungreased0675
0 subcomment
- My favorite laptop anti-sticker https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Stickers-are-Prohibited-...
Would fit well here judging from some of the sentiments expressed.
- i was honestly expecting an articule about how cringe putting stickers is but ok.
by 4gotunameagain
0 subcomment
- Am I the only one that finds sticker bombed laptops cringe ?
The vast majority of people with stickerbombed laptops are either extremists (either side, equally bad in my view), or wanna be techies who are rarely competent.
- My fave sticker:
"Data In the Streets"
"Riker In the Sheets"
lol.
- i need more stickers
by nathanmills
0 subcomment
- Gives me the same ick as tattoos.
- "Do Not Crush", "BASH".
- I really like the massive Beagle Bros Software sticker. Someone has good taste.
by bitbasher
3 subcomments
- I get the feeling about 90% of those laptops belong to either cyber security folks or rust developers. Just a gut feeling.
- Worth noting is that there is a non-zero number of political stickers on these laptops, and they seem to all tend towards the far-Left. It could make one wonder about the general political leanings of hackers and open source contributors.
Why is it important? A lot of projects took a stance on Russia-Ukraine [1], GitHub blocked the entirety of Iran [2] and I don't doubt that codebases now take a stance on Gaza-Israel.
The top-middle says "NAZI HACKERS FUCK OFF" [3]. They likely mean a new definition of "Nazi", and that could include you. Why point out this sticker particularly? Because it is directly aggressive towards a hacker they perceive to hold that label, and that they have labelled that group with one of the worst possible labels. By doing so, they can justify pretty much any level of aggression through the use of dehumanisation (ironically, a method employed by the Nazis).
The Python Software Foundation refused $1.5mn in funding [5] because they could not agree to be non-political. They would not agree to act without favour. Maybe today this doesn't concern you, but look more closely at the stickers of the people that have infiltrated these institutions. Do you think that you will indefinitely remain on the "good side"?
The Linux Kernel's previous Code of Conflict [6] was quite a rational approach, it was a market place of ideas (contributions) where they did battle. There was no barrier to entry and everybody would be critiqued equally, in the single objective of creating the best possible kernel. Diff this with the current Code of Conduct [7] where there is a barrier to entry, and the focus is on the feelings of the people and not on the quality of the kernel.
We should keep politics out of code entirely, and the quality of the code should speak for itself.
[1] https://github.com/petrussola/help-ukraine-open-source
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ci6ydi/github_banned_a...
[3] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4529-2.jpe...
[5] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/python-reject...
[6] https://lwn.net/Articles/635999/
[7] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-condu...
by dinkleberg
10 subcomments
- 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.
by braden-lk
9 subcomments
- 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.
by ChrisMarshallNY
2 subcomments
- I think it's cool, but I could never see myself doing it, because I used to go through a new laptop every couple of years.
In any case, the point is moot, now. I switched to using a desktop, in my last upgrade since retiring.
by Findecanor
1 subcomments
- 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?
by subjectsigma
2 subcomments
- “We’re all unique and special, just like everyone else”
(Some of the stickers are kind of cool, but I just can’t understand the logic behind thinking your MacBook #12,372 with a Python sticker on the back is worth flaunting online)
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