in the sticks

ok, so a couple of days ago friko did not understand what is apparently a US phenomenon with the little stick figure families.

these little decals appear mostly on SUVs and they've gotten totally outta hand.

here's just one of many stick family generators you can use to get your very own indicator for criminal types which SUVs they should follow.

you know, because especially if you have children, you should advertise both on your car and your house the exact composition of your family. if you still have room on the back window of that thing, you should also put on decals that advertise your children's schools and your family activities. all this is a useful catalog of information for a predatory criminal.

but you wonder maybe where these things came from.

the only history i can find is this one (which i am certain is neither rigorously researched nor complete), but there is some perception (and is is a perception i share) that these thing showed up first on the cars of that sort of family who wished to announce to the world that they were a two-parent mixed-gender family doing their best to fill up the place with NORMAL kids, because those sorts of people just never really get tired of announcing their sexual preferences and their reproductive status to the world.

the trend was almost instantly picked up by anyone and everyone who wanted darlin' little stickers and then you started to to see two mommies and a baby, or two daddies and a dog, and my personal favorite, two adults and a pile of money.

happily, with most of the companies where you can order these stickers, you can order them in any configuration of adults/ children/ pets and in some cases aliens and zombies.

of course, there's been some backlash.

this imgur user added a figure to the neighbor's collection.

and here's a roundup of some of the more interesting ones.

the other day i saw an SUV go by with a set of these things on the back, but on the side windows there were more sets in different configurations. what is that? "here's our family and by the way here are the families of everyone we know?"

or is it more like WWI pilots, keeping score?