“There have got to be so many people who are so embarrassed to be repping him on the streets driving their Teslas and who want to completely disavow this guy.”
Drag Race
For longtime Tesla owners, Elon Musk’s increasing rightwing crusading has made their electric cars into mortifying red flags — and now, a bunch are sticker-slapping back.
As the climate change news site Heatmap reports, a Hawaii-based sticker maker is doing a booming business selling bumper stickers to Tesla owners who, as one of his wares advertises, got their EVs “before we knew [Musk] was crazy.”
“I started making stickers on my own before the Elon sticker,” explained Matthew Hiller, the Waikiki resident behind the popular Etsy shop “Mad Puffer Stickers.”
An aquarium employee who often makes “fish stickers” for work, Hiller said that he got the idea to start making his tongue-in-cheek accessories in 2023 when considering buying a Tesla of his own. After Musk purchased Twitter and started his “extreme censoring,” however, the creative realized he definitely couldn’t handle the heat that came with being associated with such a toxic brand — and that gave him an idea.
“I figured, there’s no way I’m buying a Tesla — but there have got to be so many people who are so embarrassed to be repping him on the streets driving their Teslas and who want to completely disavow this guy,” Hiller told Heatmap. “Because I know I would want to sell mine immediately after I saw what he was doing.”
Hiller’s first sticker, a small run of the aforementioned “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy,” repeatedly went viral on social media and even ended up on news sites like Business Insider and the Washington Post. Unsurprisingly, that meant he had to print way, way more.
“I would be selling five to seven a day,” he said, “and then suddenly, there would be 50 a day because someone else talked about it on Reddit.”
Line Goes Up
More than a year in, Hiller says that the attention his anti-Musk stickers have gotten is “insane” — and that in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s electoral upset, sales are up “unbelievably.”
“I can barely keep up,” he told Heatmap. “My full-time job is at the aquarium, and I come home and pack stickers until 11 p.m. It’s just me and my wife doing it all.”
Obviously, there are lots and lots of cheap knockoffs being sold on Amazon and other such sites — but considering that Hiller’s are less than $10 a pop without Etsy’s sale prices, getting an original is still a viable option.
In a “ballpark” estimate, the sticker salesman said he’s sold more than 10,000 units since last year, with an average of 180 going out per day.
“It’s rough,” Hiller said.
More on anti-Musk sentiment: Elon Musk Responds to Concerns That His Political Antics Are Tanking Tesla Sales