in remembrance of my sticker collections by Audrey C. '24

Many months ago, I broke my water bottle cap. I tried to find a replacement cap or even a replacement bottle of the exact model so that I could harvest the cap. But alas it was simply not attainable for reasons detailed in this dormspam I sent out of desperation:

I will pay $15 for an H2GO 20.9oz asi51197. If you attended the Green Hills Software x WiEECS tech talk in September of last year, you might’ve gotten this exact water bottle.

Story behind this is that I dropped my H2GO 20.9oz asi51197 from a great height of three feet and the lid broke. I could just use one of my countless other swag water bottles, but I’ve accumulated a year’s worth of stickers on this one that I refuse to throw out. Apparently H2GO is a brand that exclusively does corporate swag, so if I wanted to buy one, I’d have to buy 500. I’ve also asked several hallmates to let me see if their hydroflask/other branded lids work on mine. Unfortunately they did not, so i am resorting to dormspam.

Best,
Audrey

bcc’d to dorms
green hills software green for bc-talk

Someone actually responded! We met up at Maseeh and exchanged $15 for a water bottle that the other party probably got for free. But a second chance at life for my dear water bottle, one covered in stickers bearing grand stories and cherished memories, was priceless.

I broke my water bottle cap AGAIN in the exact same place last week. It was on the ledge of my lofted bed. I must’ve kicked it off in my sleep. Not only did the thin plastic shatter, so did my heart. For I knew that to be the end of my water bottle.

Luck had it that my laptop screen recently started flickering, to the point where looking at it instantly made my head hurt. My laptop also had barely one working usb port left and a broken internal mic, so it was also time for my laptop and her beloved case to go.

But my water bottle and laptop case’s legacy will live on through this blog. I admit that I wrote this blog for selfish reasons; like yes I want to share what each sticker means to me but I really just want to immortalize them somewhere on the Internet. Material possessions may come and go, but digital footprints are forever.

A. Stickers that I designed

MIT Spinning Arts

I wasn’t born a firebender, so I settled for joining Spinning Arts. While waving around fire is certainly fun, it’s the spinning community that I love and care about more than anything. It’s one of the few performing arts clubs with basically no barrier to entry: beginners are given the same opportunity to perform as people who’ve been spinning for years, because of just how empowering it is to dance with fire in front of a supportive crowd.

I love making these opportunities happen and watching individuals grow over time as both performance artists and leaders responsible for keeping the club safe. As a result, I’m serving on the exec team for my third year now (I’m president this year)! I designed this sticker for the club two years ago, heavily inspired by the phoenix imagery from  the old (aka pre-pandemic) club branding. The phoenix imagery is quite fitting for our club at this point of time. The pandemic gouged huge gaps in club knowledge that we’re still rebuilding to this day, but each cycle of new members and emerging leaders makes our community that much stronger, more vibrant, and alive.

All this time, I thought firebending was destruction. But now I know what it really is. It’s energy and life.

~ Aang in Avatar the Last Airbender

East Campus REX 2022

Every REX, bushy tailed prefrosh run around campus to find their home on campus, and East Campus goes all out in hopes of luring prefrosh into its asbestos filled, fire code violating corridors. Last year East Campus built a roller coaster and a pirate themed fort. To go with the pirate theme, I designed this sticker with the (mostly tongue in cheek) phrase that’s featured on many EC REX shirts in years past.

EC is undergoing renovations for the next two years to address the asbestos and fire code violations, but still has huge plans for this upcoming REX to lure prefrosh who may be interested in living there in 2025 and beyond!

Stickman

Stickman was my first home at MIT. Stickman is symbolized by a *gasp* stickman and an octagon, because there’s a giant cement octagon that other halls hatch elaborate plans to steal. I lived there during my freshman spring, along with most of my podmates.⁠01 during this covid semester, you got up to five other people who you could interact with normally. you had to remain socially distanced from everyone else While the pandemic took away so much from my freshman year, I have so many fond memories from living on Stickman and wrecking havoc having fun with my podmates.

Class of 2024 sticker (freshman year)

Fun fact: this sticker design has already seen the light of the blogs, in this is fine by Gosha. I drew this sticker for a sticker pack, which the 2024 Class Council later distributed to the entire class.

If the Stickman sticker was a positive representation of my freshman spring, this one is its negative corollary. Our class lost so much to the pandemic: we did our first semester completely virtually, and we were allowed on campus for our second semester, but with heavy restrictions and still mostly virtual classes. The world was metaphorically on fire (and literally if you were in California at that time), yet somehow we were expected to do our classes, figure out how to MIT, and otherwise proceed as if everything was fine. I think the idea behind my sticker resonated with many of my classmates, as I’ve seen it on so many laptops across campus.

Apparently it also made its way into a Caltech discord server:

I don’t get how it’s an insult?? Y’all are the clowns for having to plagiarize use another school’s graphics but I digress.

Class of 2024 sticker (junior year)

Sad cat was distributed to our class by the 2024 Class Council last year. IHTFP!

Refraction meme cat

Refraction cat wasn’t intended to be a sticker, but Winnie was testing out the sticker printer at the IDC and refraction cat got to hitchhike on her print job.

Big Dijkstra Energy

Gloria ’22, Margaret ’23, Penny ’24 and I run an instagram account of wonderfully awful math/CS pickup lines, @big_dijkstra_energy! We started this account during the pandemic as a way to cope with the …pandemic. Here’s what I wrote about Big Dijkstra Energy in my blogger app (which is now open), trying to convince the Blogger Overlords that meme content creation would translate into blogging skillz:

BDE began as a way to continue my longtime hobby of drawing and to become closer with friends I met virtually. 

I think BDE has since blossomed into an online community, one that’s brought people together during quarantine and hopefully will continue to post-covid. Our followers have told us that they love sharing and enjoying our comics with their fellow nerd friends/family/partners. And Instagram insights corroborate with the fact that our comics are being shared. Sometimes people tag their friends in the comment section too. It’s so heartwarming to hear that we add a bit of laughter to people’s days. 

We also think about how we can build community beyond just drawing comics. That has led to two successful Nerdy Pickup Line Tournaments, distributing physical Valentine’s Day cards to all students living on campus last spring, and emailing a couple hundred virtual cards as well.

We’ve slowed down our posting, but bad puns are still going up once in a while!

Taking advantage of Stickermule’s 10 for $1 sale

Stickermule runs a 10 stickers for $1 (with free shipping) promotion for new customers. Naturally I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to stickerify some of my art.

Unfortunately, Stickermule must’ve caught on that people were creating new accounts for the sake of getting this deal. At some point, they started requiring a unique phone number for  creating a new account. I’ve long exhausted⁠02 and all the fake phone numbers on Google have already been used by people with the same idea as me my list of friends who are willing to let me use their number and didn’t want to use this deal themselves. But I also learned that Stickermule’s owners monetarily support causes that I don’t agree with, so I haven’t used Stickermule since anyways. If you’re looking for a high quality sticker supplier, Vinyldisorder runs sick deals every two months or so.

B. Stickers that Margaret ’23 designed

Wide Tim

IG: @wide_tim, Redbubble: @Marge-Z-Art

Wide Tim is not just a perpetually happy go lucky, wide eyed, wide smiling beaver. Wide Tim is an icon of our time. Wide Tim is a movement. Wide Tim is everything.

For real though, Margaret’s brain child Wide Tim has most definitely cemented his spot in the MIT zeitgeist. Thanks to Margaret, Wide Tim has an entire line of merch ranging from T-shirts to keychains to physical stickers to a WeChat sticker pack, participated in nearly every club on campus (all documented on his Instagram page), and welcomed prefrosh with wide arms during CPW.

It is without a doubt that Wide Tim’s popularity has surpassed that of the official Tim mascot. Now all we need is a Wide Tim fursuit.

Glow in the dark Widened Timothy

He glows green in the night. His unblinking eyes watch me sleep.

Big Dijkstra Energy pickup line tournament winner

During IAP 2021, CPW 2021 & 2022, the BDE crew organized Nerdy Pickup Line Tournaments, where participants submitted lines and viewers voted on them. “Just the 2 of us is <3 [less than three],” which was actually submitted by Andi ’25 when he was but a wee prefrosh, won second place during the CPW 2021 tournament! Margaret drew out his submission into the cute imagery above, which she then printed as stickers.

C. Stickers with other MIT origins

Tetazoo Squanch

I’ve lived on Tetazoo during my sophomore and junior years. It’s a hall with a long vivid history, so as SwagComm (committee that handles swag), Rihn ’23 and I ordered a ton of merch with designs that go way back. This particular holographic sticker features the squanch, Tetazoo’s coat hanger boi mascot. Apparently the squanch has its own Urban Dictionary entry that provides a bit more detail on its origin, but I’ll leave that for you to google.

update: tetazoo glounge

CJ’s blog on mailing list culture thoroughly explains the history behind the infamous “update: tetazoo glounge.” The tl;dr is that Tetazoo loved and continues to love starting flame wars on dormspam, a group of mailing lists that reach nearly every undergraduate. Perhaps the most infamous dormspam thread was one where someone would respond with “update: tetazoo glounge” (and consequently push that thread to the top of the entire undergraduate population’s inboxes) each day for many many years.

Resistor color codes

I got this resistor color code sticker from Steve Banzaert, who teaches 2.678 Electronics for Mechanical Systems. Apparently, you can read the resistance of a resistor by looking at the four colored bands. Each band corresponds to a number determined by the color code, and the resistance can be calculated as ([first band]*10 + [second band]) * 10^[third band]. The fourth band is the resistance tolerance, which tells you how precise the actual resistance is in comparison to the labeled resistance.

CPW Beaver stickers designed by Maxwell ’24

IG: @happy_meex

Maxwell made the cutest series of beaver bois doing busy beaver things for CPW 2022! They’re some of my favorite stickers ever.

Spicy sticker from Bianca ’24

SPICY

Clubs that I’m sort of or not in (but their stickers are cool!)

The Borderline manages the 200 ft long augmented reality mural tunnel under Building 66, as well as a few other augmented reality installations on campus. Learning that there are art communities like Borderline at MIT was huge for my prefrosh self. Since then, I’ve animated a few augmented reality overlays for murals painted by other artists!

I’ve long admired the Asian American Initiative’s work in advocacy and engagement surrounding Asian American issues. Their annual zines are always gorgeous and hit deep in my soul. Every semester I tell myself that this is the semester I’ll get involved, but alas time is scarce. Maybe next semester.

I’ve also never really interacted with the Chinese Student Association, but their Panda Express sticker was cute and therefore ended up on my laptop case.

iHQ

The Innovation Headquarters is housed in the same building as the Admissions office and supports many entrepreneurship and venture programs. I’m not very familiar with the entrepreneurship scene at MIT, but it seems like if you have an idea, it’s not hard to get money for it.

WARNING

It simply appeared on my water bottle one day. No idea how.

D. Stickers from small businesses/organizations

Cat stickers by Radhia Rahman

IG: @knives_meow, YT: Radhia Rahman, website/shop

I’ve been watching Radhia’s Youtube vlogs of being a freelance artist since basically when she first started posting. Radhia prides herself in being a queer Bengali American from New York City, so people who share any of those identities might especially enjoy her art and content. Either way, Radhia’s vlogs are so well edited and relaxing to play in the background. Behinds the stickers on my laptop, I’ve also bought some of her risograph prints that currently adorn my walls!

Another cat sticker by Yat Cat Print Co.

IG: @yatcatnola, website/shop

I bought two mystery screenprinted shirts from Yat Cat Print Co. and they also came with this sticker! (One of the shirts ended up having the same lineart cat and the other had mushrooms. I was very happy with the mystery pack).

Yet another cat sticker by an artist who I don’t remember :(

I picked up this audacious boi from an art market in Manhattan Seaport. Unfortunately I didn’t take note of the artist I bought audacious boi from :(

Smol birb

IG: @therevolutionarymushroom, website/shop

I got this smol birb from Revolutionary Mushroom at the same art market!

Even more “cat” stickers

I got these stickers sometime during high school at a boutique somewhere in California. In other words, it’s been too long for me to remember how these came to be.

Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE)

Last October, I went to MICE and marveled at the rows and rows of independent comic artists, from published graphic novelists to printer paper zinemakers. Unfortunately I had to leave shortly after I got there, but I’m looking forward to the next time MICE rolls around.

Boston Dyke March

Winnie got me these adorable possums from the Boston Dyke March last year.

Dark Monk

Dark Monk, based in Salem MA, is where MIT Spinning Arts gets all of our fire prop making supplies and premade props. Last year I ordered some kevlar wicking and assorted hardware to mess around with, and my order came with this sticker.

Flowtoys

Flowtoys is to LED spinning props like Dark Monk is to fire spinning props. While we usually emphasize the fire aspect of Spinning Arts because fire is hot and sexy, spinning LED props is a discipline of its own right. LED props allow for theatrics that fire wouldn’t allow, like wearing a costume that isn’t firesafe (pretty much anything that’s not 100% cotton or denim), coordinating LED patterns to the performance, and touching the lit up part of the prop.

I bought a pair of Podpoi from Flowtoys last year to explore these artistic possibilities. They were quite the investment, but they’ve been so worth it. Podpoi in particular have a lifetime warranty, can be programmed and synced up with other pairs of Podpoi too.

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My new water bottle and laptop are currently devoid of stickers. While Victorian era widows were expected to mourn for two years, I’m sure my old water bottle and laptop case would want us to move on, to live life to fullest. I see many more stickers in my future, but I’ll never forget the ones that came before us.