The converting power of bumpers

[dreaminghope]

Has anyone ever changed their opinion about an issue because of a bumper sticker?

I saw one of those cars with a thick layer of bumper stickers across the back. This one was an environmentalist vegan car (Go vegan!, Save the whales!, Save the animals! Stop "sport" hunting! *, etc.). Setting aside the actual content, upon seeing it, I wondered if anyone has ever read a slogan on a bumper and gone: "Oh my God! I never thought of it that way!"

Perhaps a sport hunter in a beat-up, mud-coated pick-up truck is heading back from the woods with a cooler of freshly butchered wild game (let's pull out a whole bunch of stereotypes... or we'll just refer to my sister-in-law's boyfriend, who fits this description perfectly). While stopped in traffic, he ends up reading Stop "sport" hunting! on the back of the hybrid car in front of him. And maybe it's the power of the sarcastic quotation marks, or maybe it's the eye-catching colours, but suddenly he regrets the death of the animals he hunted and he renounces his hobby and all the parts of his lifestyle associated with it. He goes vegan and stops wearing leather.

Perhaps a young environmentalist on a bike, heading home from their socially- and environmentally-conscious work, sees a Save the whales! Collect the whole set! sticker on the back of the SUV that cuts them off. And maybe it's the witty sarcastic slogan, but suddenly he realises that he has been wasting his whole life and hasn't been making nearly as much money as he could have been. He becomes an advertising executive and buys a Hummer.

Ah, the hypothetical power of bumper stickers!

Really this is all idle wondering. I think people put bumper stickers out there to advertise who they are, not to convert anyone else.

*On a side note, I think that's the only correct use of sarcastic quotes I've ever seen in public. How many grammar geek points do I gain because that's why I noticed the stickers? Or do I lose vegetarian points for not noticing the stickers for their pro-animal stance?

Comments

[catmcroy.livejournal.com]

My all-time favourite bumper snicker is still the one that says "Militant Agnostic. I don't know and you don't either!"

[breklor.livejournal.com]

Sometimes conversion happens through elegance of persuasion - an argument worded so wisely that it is inescapable - and sometimes through sheer weight... smoking, for example: smoking has become socially unacceptable through the snowballing effect of increasingly large numbers of people outwardly disapproving. I think bumper stickers contribute to that, if only in a small way...

[darianhawke.livejournal.com]

or we'll just refer to my sister-in-law's boyfriend


So.....Heather's your sister-in-law now, eh?

:p

[fruitkakechevy.livejournal.com]

I don't think that bumper stickers really mean to convert anyone.. what I think they do is help to normalize a way of thinking/being that isn't mainstream. One bumpersticker wouldn't do it, I think, but what if someone kept seeing bumper stickers that were radically different to her worldview.. wouldn't that differing point of view seem a little less insane simply because many people were actively showing that they shared it?