I saw something disturbing on Facebook this morning. It was a human-like face, but distorted. I couldn’t stand to make eye contact with it for long. It was a sticker, a goofy little illustration now available to place in comments on Facebook. Think of it like an emoticon on steroids. Since I hadn’t been paying attention, this was the first I knew about the advent of comment stickers. I sensed an oncoming plague. Fortunately, there’s a cure in the form of the Unsticker.Me browser extension.
That first comment sticker rose up like a harbinger of a plague. I had to know how bad it would get, so I challenged my Facebook friends to sticker a comments section with the most obnoxious ones they could find. I kicked things off with a barfing face. My savvy friends followed it up with a fox licking a popsicle, a sharp-toothed scary face, a couple of Power Rangers and a swatting cat paw. It didn’t end there. The onslaught kept coming, soaking the comments with an animated mustachioed cat in a top hat and a big screaming squinting face. Make it stop. Please.
It was time for the cure. We can lay our unending thanks at the feet of Rodney Folz for creating Unsticker.Me. He declares his hatred for both Facebook stickers and fun. You can download extensions for Firefox or Chrome, or download the source code if you like that sort of thing. I loaded it up in Chrome and revisited the sticker-infested comments section I had started. Sweet relief. All the images had been wiped away. All that remained was a polite notice reading “[sticker].”
Stickers in comments isn’t the end of the Facebook world, but there may be days when you just don’t feel like dealing with giant “OMG” or drunken-chicken stickers clogging up your feed. Those are the days when you can fall into the comforting arms of Unsticker.Me and make it all disappear. For now, I’m planning to leave stickers on. If my Facebook friends can’t control themselves, at least I’ll know where to turn for help.
