I was driving the other day and drove past a car with a bumper sticker that said what would Jesus do. A little farther down the road, I saw a car with those stick figures pasted on the rear window that showed a mother, father, two kids and a dog, all with stick smiles. Then the political bumper stickers, Trump for President (far too many), the yellow and pink ribbons, the affiliations with military branches, colleges, sports teams, the baby-on-boards . Each little bit of adhesive and paper a way for drivers to share with a world, that has no idea who is driving the car and doesn’t care, who they are.

And it struck me. Social media isn’t new.

Yes, with Facebook and other social media, you can use more words, illustrate with video and high res pictures. You can change your message more often. But is social media really so much different than those stickers that still find their way onto our vehicles? Isn’t the judgment you feel as you idle behind a car plastered with opinions you don’t share the same as a post or a tweet you can’t stomach?

There must be something innate in humans that compel us tell the world who we are or, more accurately, who we think they are.

Case in point. I pulled up behind a beat up old junker with a bumper sticker that said Honk if you like to fuck. I had to admit, I was curious what kind of person would put that on his or her car. So I passed the car, taking a good look at the driver. Grungy fortyish guy going to seed with a soiled baseball cap, jowly cheeks and a few scraggles of hair he called a mustache. And I wondered what he would do if someone ever did honk. But I didn’t test it out. Kind of creepy and, frankly, I didn’t care enough to find out. So like the sad man in that car I stayed anonymous. Sound familiar?

Nothing new about social media. People put something about themselves into the world and others make judgments about it. Bumper stickers may be an early link in social media’s evolutionary chain, but I suspect not the only one. Humans just can’t help themselves.