A year ago, I wrote a piece describing my intense hatred of bumper stickers. I thought my arguments were compelling and irrefutable, but it seems that I would have done more for the cause if I had tied my column around a dog’s neck, shot the dog and set it on fire. I continue to see cars plastered with labels that get only more idiotic as time goes on.

But what I’ve come to realize in the year since I wrote the column was that bumper stickers aren’t the problem - they’re only a symptom of a cancer that’s eating away at the heart of America.

That cancer is excessive self-disclosure. People want you to know exactly what their personality is like as far in advance of knowing them as possible.

They announce it through bumper stickers, T-shirts and, if that doesn’t work, by opening the conversation with a description of themselves.

All of us know people who love to talk about themselves; people who ramble on, not about what they’ve seen or what they’ve done or even what they’re thinking, but who blather relentlessly about what kind of a person they are.

“I’m crazy. I’m seriously insane,” says the perky junior sipping her latte.

No, you’re not. Laughing loudly and standing on your chair at a bar don’t mean you’re crazy, it just means you’re drunk and, if not that, simply gregarious.

The truly insane are too busy making hats out of tinfoil and accusing me of stealing their magic box to have coffee at Starbucks. The truly insane don’t spend a half hour putting on their makeup, because they don’t leave their houses. Stop telling people you’re crazy or else I’ll believe you and inject you full of haloperidol.

A close relative of I’m-so-crazy is the guy who tells the world, “I’m a psycho.”

These tend to be boys with haircuts that prove conclusively they’re not psychotic. Ted Kaczynski is psychotic. He had the hair of a psychopath: long, shaggy and matted. If you have gelled, frosted hair that’s trimmed every two weeks, you’re not a psychopath. If that’s not enough, consider that psychopaths tend to wear, say, dead mice around their neck. They do not wear hemp necklaces.

Occasionally I’ll hear, “If I like you, I’ll do anything for you, but if you cross me, I don’t take any crap.” Oh, well, that’s a rarity. Most people walk around smacking their friends over the head with crowbars, but if you hurt them, they’ll buy you an ice cream cone.

This statement has a depth and profundity similar to that of, “I like things that are good, but if it tastes bad, I won’t enjoy eating it. Oh, and I have legs.” Let me be the first to announce to the world that if I like you, you probably won’t like me back, but if you cross me, I’ll walk away crying.

More annoying than even that is, “I have this wall, and I don’t let most people in.” This is infuriating to the point of making me spasm. Everyone has a wall. If I did not have a wall, I would leave my car door unlocked with $100 on the front seat, and I would tell random people that geese scare me more than anything else.

“Having a wall” simply means not telling everyone everything; if anything, telling people this means you have less of a wall than someone who doesn’t tell people they have a wall.

“I like artsy stuff,” is often heard in one of two places: either in line for a movie from someone on a first date or else at T.G.I.Friday’s, which is usually where the person from the movie line loves to eat.

It’s a pointless statement - there is no “artsy” category at the video or record store. Consider that, compared to Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews is artsy. Artsy has no real meaning beyond “Things I think I should like,” which makes the above statement equivalent to, “I like things I think I should like.”

Take every black-turtleneck-and-little-glasses-wearing person you see, and realize they spend most of their time announcing they like whatever other people tell them they should. They’re worse than conformists are, because they’re striving to be nonconformists. This is why I love Christina Aguilera.

Again, I’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg. The same principle - broadcasting your intended image to the world - applies not only to bumper stickers and conversations, but to clothes, haircuts and anything else you can wear.

There’s a clothing empire built on people who want to tell the public they played baseball and lacrosse, even if it was on a team that never existed. There are people who want the world to know they are hip and ironic enough to find Atari shirts funny, even though they don’t find paying $20 for one laughable.

My message is a simple one: Let me find out for myself what kind of person you are.

Don’t warn me in advance with bumper stickers, don’t paint it on your clothing and don’t have a conversation with me in which you explain the résumé of your personality.

Let it reveal itself over time, and I will come to discover that you are, in fact, less interesting than I was hoping you would be.

Just kidding. Oh, I’m so crazy.

Rishi Kundi, a State News graduate columnist, can be reached at kundiris@msu.edu.