Editor Lyndon Keane is perplexed about the fascination people – especially those visiting Cape York each dry season – seem to have with plastering stickers boasting their passing presence on anything that can’t escape their reach, including road signs. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
Call me out of touch, jaded or plain clueless, but I cannot for the life of me get my head around a fad gaining momentum on the tourist trails around Cape York: the obsession with plastering personalised stickers on any flat surface within arm’s reach.
Are we really at the point as a society we feel compelled to not only create individualised merchandise for our travels, but leave them at random spots along the way in a self-indulgent, adhesive trail that would shame Hansel and Gretel into rethinking their penchant for breadcrumbs?
I know, I know, it’s probably at the lower end of atrocities perpetrated by visitors to our part of the world each dry season, but it genuinely perplexes me why people would obsessively cover road signs, fences, toilet walls and myriad other inanimate objects with glossy, graphic-designed proof of their being?
I’m sure Baz and Rhonda are having the time of their life on their “Big Lap 2024” but how many people do they honestly think are going to see their sticker slapped on the Pajinka turnoff sign on the PDR and ponder what the couple thought of the burgers at the Archer River Roadhouse?
I saw their sticky offering when I pulled up to get a photo of the sign for this editorial, but every other time I’ve been doing at least 100 kilometres an hour when in its vicinity. I expect the same could be said for most motorists, so I’m not sure how big an audience Baz and Rhonda are expecting to amass and lure to their Instagram account with their questionable self-promotion choice. Yes, they had even come up with a hashtag for their adventure that was about as original and cringeworthy as you’d expect. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: an influencer isn’t a real profession – just get a merchandise-, hashtag-free job and be miserable like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, it’s not the strangest place I’ve seen a sticker during my dry season travels this year. The gold medal performance for that goes to the individual who thought it would be a marvellous idea to slap evidence of their stopover on the back of a toilet door at a well-known Cape York roadhouse. Do you really want the sort of followers who are going to whip out their phone on the throne in the middle of an important transaction to give your Gunshot effort a like and supportive comment?
On my way to Weipa a few weeks ago, I drove past a young bloke putting his sticker on a road sign on the PDR. Seeing an opportunity to get inside the head of a decal fiend, I hit the brakes, spun around and pulled up beside him to have a yarn. The brief conversation went something like this:
Me: What’s the go with the stickers?
Him: What do you mean?
Me: Why are you on your tippytoes trying to slap your sticker on a sign that’s already covered in them?
Him: Well, everyone else is doing it.
Me: I get that, but what are you hoping to achieve?
Him: It lets people know I’ve been here.
Me: Are you anyone of renown people would be familiar with?
Him: Nup, but I’m trying to get to 500 followers on Instagram and this lets everyone find me.
Me: But none of the cars driving past are stopping – it’s a sign on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
Him: You’ve got to be out there to be a player.
Let’s have a collective rethink on the whole throw-a-sticker-on-any-surface mentality. If one of the high points of your Cape York experience is attempting to peel the adhesive backing of a cheap sticker and whack it on public infrastructure a few dozen times, you probably need to take a long, hard look at your life in your undoubtedly sticker-covered mirror.
