There’s a lot of things that people will buy for their trucks that make no sense to me. Artificial genitals, for example. But there seems to be something of a renaissance going on in the medium of those see-through rear window stickers people put on their trucks.
The one that first caught to my attention and then slapped my attention with the dead fish of pure bafflement was this rear window decal:
If you don’t have kids, you may not immediately recognize that image. It appears to be some sort of screengrab from an episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, a spin-off of the old PBS Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood show. It’s targeted at pre-schoolers, and has a very nurturing, gentle sort of tone.
In many ways, it’s the exact thematic opposite of a huge, black Ford F-350 Super Duty dualie pickup truck.
And yet, there it is, available on Amazon for about $55.
Who the hell is buying this?
I thought maybe this was just the random result of some bot that picks images for these decals, but if you look at the larger selection of rear-window decals from the seller, it looks like they’re mostly pretty expected stuff for the medium of a truck’s back window: distressed American flags, howling wolves, the kind of crap that’s effectively like having your truck grow a mullet.
Most of these seem too on-the-nose to be the result of a totally random AI algorithm doing the picking, right?
But there’s some remarkable exceptions, too: a stock photo of pizza, another car, even the carpet pattern from the hotel in the movie the Shining.
Are actual, truck-owning people buying these? Is there a big-ass truck rolling around out there now with a rear window full of pizza or a frozen moment where a young tiger learns the value of sharing?
Ours is a strange, wonderful world, friends.
(Thanks, Eric!)