Eggshell stickers
I have always believed for some reason that everyone around me knows more than I do about "cool kid shit." It turns out that most of the people I know actually don't know even the first thing about graffiti or sticker slapping, which is pretty crazy.
I don't know the names or artists of about 90% of the songs I hear on the radio, but I do know about eggshell stickers. So I get to be the cool kid on this topic for once.
Have you ever wanted to put up a sticker that you don't want anyone to be able to take down? Post office labels can be used as stickers, and they're totally free... but they can be shredded by someone who takes even a little time to pick at them. Vinyl stickers are no good, either, because they come off easily all in one piece if you try hard enough.
Eggshell stickers, however, just let your fingernail (or scraper) glide right through them. They have zero structural integrity; picking off a bit of the sticker will just rip the sticker and leave the rest of it firmly tacked down. Anyone trying to take off an eggshell sticker is going to have to scrape the whole thing off bit by bit, very slowly.
You can get eggshells pre-printed by a company, if you like. In Los Angeles, you'll often see sticker advertisements for Eggshells LA, a graffiti supply company/studio artist/maybe a creative agency??? that has in the past pasted up "buy from us or you're a cop" type messages - on eggshells - all over town. If you see a lot of eggshells up with graffiti tagger names on them, they were probably printed by the hundreds at a place like this.
You can also buy them blank in solid colors from other places and draw on them with a marker or a paint pen. Eggshells are probably too weak for you to safely press on them firmly with a ballpoint pen or a pencil, but any pens intended for graffiti calligraphy will probably write nicely on an eggshell.
The point of an eggshell sticker is to get a message up in the way that is as hard as possible for someone to take down. They are most often used by people in graffiti communities, where the goal is to simply write your own personal name-logo on everything. But I think they're best used in political contexts.
So, let's say that your city has been invaded by an occupying military force that is doing ethnic cleansing by kidnapping people who look poor and brown. Let's say you're getting very upset about this and you find yourself full of frustration and rage. Well, one thing you could do... if you wanted to... would be to find a sharpie in your household and write your opinion about this on a bunch of eggshell stickers.
You could then place these stickers in public locations. Good ones include: parking meter posts, crosswalk button posts, the backs of road signs, fire hydrants, electrical boxes, and the metal enclosures for below-ground HVAC installations.
This is, technically, not allowed, but I'm hoping that some angry people have finally gotten to the point where they're realizing that doing things that are not allowed is often extremely important. My philosophy is that if you are not willing to do even the smallest things that are not allowed, you may find yourself a little too unfamiliar when you finally find yourself required to do bigger not-allowed things. This is a small thing that is easy to practice!
If you'd like to do this not-allowed thing for close to completely free, you should check out the post office. In the US, the post office is required to give you shipping labels for free. But if you'd like to do this in the most irritating way possible, despite the small cost, I recommend eggshells.
I do not recommend getting them printed. You do not actually need to buy pre-printed stickers from anyone to prove that you're not a cop. Writing and drawing is fun. It is a great way to pass the time. I bet a lot of you haven't practiced your handwriting in a while... this would be a good way to practice!