I’ve been planning for some time to write an article on laptop stickers, so when I saw Andrew Reynolds with a flamboyantly decorated laptop at the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference, I had to ask for a photo. Not only did Reynolds let me take his picture, but he also said that he had written about laptop stickers on his blog (check out cool photos!) a couple days before, which only shows that there is no such thing as a new idea and that great minds think alike. Ha.

My fascination with laptop stickers began when I was reporter with the JoongAng Daily-International Herald Tribune in Seoul. The laptop sticker was a status statement- even worse than a press badge, because it loudly stated which media you were working for, and those from the more famous media obviously were snobby about it.

Going to press conferences, I realized that a lot of the reporters from media that were less known tried to get seats close to the speaker so that the names of their media (pasted on their laptop cover) would appear when the press conference was televised.

I had never really seen other types of stickers (probably since most people were using company computers) but one of my co-workers/friend and I put a little rubber duckie sticker on our computers; people commented the act as being a very “girly” thing to do, as if stickering one’s laptop was on the same level as glittering up one’s cell phone.

So you can imagine how surprised I was when I saw Sallie’s laptop last year. Sallie, a former lawyer-turned-journalist (whose daughter is the same age as me) showed up at one writing class with a laptop that had a huge sticker of a condom on it and underneath, the words “JUST WEAR IT.” I haven’t seen yet one that tops Sallie’s but I’ll be on the lookout