Defacing My Own Tesla Before Anyone Else Could

Yes, I bought a Tesla in November 2024. I want to address that up front, because it matters for everything that follows.

By the time I bought the Model Y, the politics around the company were already fully on fire. Musk had spent the election cycle as the world’s loudest surrogate for a candidate I did not vote for, the X feed had become whatever it is now, and the Cybertruck had already taken on the cultural meaning it has today. I knew all of this. I bought the car anyway.

Why I Bought One

The short version: I wanted an EV, I’d test-driven the alternatives, and the Tesla was still — by an unfortunate margin — the best electric car you could actually buy. Charging network, range, software, driving feel. The competitors were close on paper and not close in the showroom.

I separated the product from the personality at the wheel of the company, accepted that this trade-off would feel weird, and signed the paperwork. It fit what we needed when nothing else did.

The strange part of the current moment is that a lot of the people most likely to vandalize a Tesla today are the same people who would have congratulated the owner a few years ago for ditching a gas-guzzler. Same car. Same emissions. Different valence.

My Solution: Deface It Before Anyone Else Can

Rather than worry about it, I went the other direction. I run a small apparel brand called Crooked Number, so I designed a sticker pack called Elongplant — riffing on the CEO’s name, clearly a joke, and stuck a few of them on the car.

The goal isn’t to take a side. It’s to signal that the person driving the car has a sense of humor about the whole mess, which seems to be enough to take it out of the “anonymous symbol” category and put it back in “guy with a weird sticker on his car” category. A keyer needs the car to stand in for an idea. Make it stand for a punchline instead.

So far, plenty of double-takes, a few smiles, and nobody’s keyed it.

If You Want a Set

The Elongplant collection lives at crdnbr.com/product-category/elongplant-techtile. Even if you’re not buying stickers, the broader point still stands: the car is just a car, and the move is to remind people of that any way you can.