I also hate 99% of grafittis because most are just a big autofellatio, wasting even more space than tags but equally pointless. I don't give a shit what's your stupid nickname, draw/write something cool you idiot.
Eh, the people I saw tagging are middle class.
What about tags on trains, transit stations, public parks/hospitals/schools/etx? Go take a shit on some rich dude's property, not this
I'm just asking for people to make a little doodle instead of a signature. That's enough
Look into the grafitti tagged NYC trains of the 70s — grafitti used to be one of the 5 elements of hiphop and was a way for the people to express themselves (see The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five). I'm not saying that what you're seeing now is the same thing, but grafitti can serve a purpose
The rebellion is obviously targeted at the authoritarian state which claims the right to decide how everything looks. Huge fucking billboards everywhere? Sure, why not, it makes someone money so it's cool. A bombing is a claim to the public space. It's anarchist - pieces can be crossed at any time, but they are not. Because writers have rules everyone agrees on, without police enforcing them. Get a load of graffiti culture, it's fucking amazing. Except the very problematic machismo tho
Yeah, probably the central problem is that graffitis culture is kinda "foreign" to my city, imported from yank pop culture.
As I said, the graffiters I know are bougies.
I saw good and bad examples.
And I have been on trains which for some reason people destroyed three years after buying new formations, and some other lines are impecable with +50 yo formations
It does take money out of the precious limited train budgets to clean them up, especially when they paint over windows which is a hazard in an emergency situation.
Its sorta like the broken window fallacy(not broken window policing), that doing something bad(ie breaking a window for a glass person and carpenter to replace) doesn't make a job have more of a purpose by giving them something to do, but actually hurt the budget and possibly cause positions to be lost.
edit: Dang, I'm not talking about the broken window theory of policing areas. I'm talking about those dudes who tag the sides of metro trains, all the way up to huge organized whole car paint jobs. Everyone loves trains till they got nicknames on em. All these downbears for defending the trains.
Isn't the broken window fallacy famous for being a bad studynevermind I'm thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
Our trains are full of adds, on almost every surface. I'd prefer the tags to the ads and double that for tags on ads.
Ads are junk, they provide nothing to us, and for our subsidised and still 'private' rail companies they just add more to private pockets.
Edit: spelling
It's an interesting point your trying to make there. As I said, our transport system has been privatised, but at the same time is heavily subsidised by the state, to the point that it would be cheaper for the state to collect fairs and run the system (which we can't do now apparently because it would interfere with the free market).
This might be different elsewhere, but here in Australia most public transport has subsided the loss and provitised the profits. These ads do not contribute to the running of the transport, they simply turn profit for the owners of the trains. It has nothing to do with "not run without profit".
Saying that tags and ads are on the same level is an interesting argument given that information. Assuming they are both 'bad' (which I don't), one of these bad things profits a multinational corporation and is an eyesore, the other may simply be considered an eyesore (again, not my opinion).
Tags are never as bad as advertising, and are absolutely reclamation of public space from corporations.
TL;DR Trains good, cars bad, tags good, advertising bad.
I can see where you're coming from, but I think we're having a fundamentally different view of what a tag is doing.
You continue to use words like 'destroy' - it is clear that you feel tags somehow reduce the function of public transport, which I don't think they do.
In the case of graffiti, whether tags or not, my argument is they have as much of a right to be there as advertisements. I don't see them as an eyesore, but even if they were they are equally valid as the ads on the wall, posts, and backs of seats.
As you mentioned, without going in to specific examples of public transport the argument as to whether the profit goes to improving the service is valid, but I can only say from experience (working in state government) that the profits from ours go nowhere but the pockets of the corporate owners. The state pays for everything, and it's a well known rort.
Clearly were at loggerheads. I believe tags are valid, good and cause no harm to the train, and are certainly more valid than the ads and have a place there. I also like how tags look. You don't like how they look, and therefore believe they should be gone. There is really nothing I can say to convince you, and that's ok. This probs shouldn't be the biggest cause for division on the website.
grafitti whips ass and honestly someone doodling "penis" repeatedly on an otherwise totally soulless, completely plain electrical transformer already makes it look better, let alone grafitti with actual effort. while yeah i'd def prefer things with effort, even just plain writing is more interesting than a bland cement wall or whatever, so hell yeah go for it
thats my hot take for the day thanks for reading
Plain writing are usually good, or at least fine. I understand that "tags" are those weird signatures.
tagging names is beautiful and it is art. It is especially an art style native to big cities and urban communities and totally precious to me.
Edit: like, I dont know how to explain this without being super hippie about it but, when i am in a space where the identity of the people who live there are completely sanitized, to see grafitti, a tag, a little message, w/e its like a beacon. Even something as simple as a name makes me want to cheer and say: yes! You live here! This space is yours too! Like, putting a name to a face.
I feel the same way, though I only lived in a place with a lot of graffiti for a couple years. There was this one area where people would just go absolutely wild and it was a great place to hang out because there was new names/pictures every week.
A lot the culture behind tags is tied to the act of claiming a space or tagging a hard to reach area, and when you're approaching tagging with that mindset you're likely to write "RNAi was here" or something. It's hard to explain, but I don't see how you'd get taggers to stop putting up their nickname or whatever without completely destroying the culture around it
I feel like Berlin Kidz really push the limit there. Like half of what makes their stuff cool is how hard it must have been to get there. https://ilovegraffiti.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Uber_Freeks_Film_by_Good_Guy_Boris-Grifters-Code12.jpeg
Yes, but to expand the analogy it's dogs pissing on other, meaner dogs territories cause the mean dogs are jerks and claims too much shit
tags are good and if you don't like them you need to learn how to read different regional handstyles hope this helps
I didn't know anything about tagging, but then I worked with someone who was involved in the local tag/graffiti scene and while I still don't fully understand it, I respect it a lot more. Some of these people spend years developing their tags and it's sort of a way to voice their discontent with the system.
Like saying: "Fuck you, you can't tell me what you own" in less words.
Op doesn't live in the USA, so tagging is an imported style that can have pro-USA overtones compared to local street art forms.
I remember a writing I saw a long time ago that said "Javier, te amo - tu lechona" ("I love you Javier - Your piggy")
It really stayed with me.
Copjacketing :haram:
https://archive.iww.org/content/no-badjacketing-state-wants-kill-us-let%E2%80%99s-not-cooperate/
The vast majority of people with shit takes aren't cops and calling them cops with 0 basis just does the feds work for them.
i get why someone would be sensitive about this, but i gotta be honest, i was making a joke
and? It’s not like that everywhere and it’s the kids of rich people not the owners lol
Of course all the libs here would upvote an I Hate Graffiti post.
I dunno. I see graffiti as a way to reflect “ownership” over the property. I’m sure most writers wouldn’t necessarily see it that way and just want to put their piece up. But I know the bourgeois and their cop goons definitely see it as a property crime — aka “this shit ain’t yours boy.” I guess I think of them as lumpenproles expressing some political and cultural dissent.
Plus, with the artsy graffiti being fetishized, I almost like that they revert to normal stencil shit, tbh. Good ass artists have even lost trademark lawsuits. Sucks.
Good ass artists have even lost trademark lawsuits
Huh? h-how?
Idk, most grafitties I see are just a name, nothing else, no message, no cool drawing, just a colorful name that nobody gives a shit about. Maybe once upon a time the styling of the name was something cool, but here and now it just feel copy pasted, even more here in latam.
But then you have a lot of cool muralists, some have tremendous skills, others not, but all of them are recognized by the local people. Like, the stick-drawing bunny with a hat saying "we are running out of time and nobody is listening" is like a big landmark in my neighborhood, while nobody cares about the dude who graffits "viquingo" everywhere.
They lose intellectual property rights over it because of the doctrine of “illegality” — the underlying act was illegal; so you’re SOL.
I feel you. Especially since I grew up with a lot of writers who just wanna show they have a bigger dick than other writers.
But I still think that because writing on walls is perceived as a property crime by goons and capital, the inherent act is indicative of class warfare.
Unless they tag on my shit. Then it’s on like monke kong.
I don’t give a shit what’s your stupid nickname, draw/write something cool you idiot.
:100-com:
seems like having a canvas and only signing your name in the bottom corner, over and over again
jokes on you,
oh no!
your upper class
neighbourhood
has writing
on it!
:sadness:
is my stupid nickname
That's so fucking cool LMAO
Also, here in my country, from time to time, there are waves of random car arsons. Why? Pyromaniacs I think
