And I'd rather see graffiti, even if I find some ugly, than ads all over. And there's way more public ads anywhere than graffiti. I think local urban expressions like stickers and graffiti is pretty cool. The mainstream prefers ads I guess.
For one thing, it can be costly to remove graffiti. And when it's on publicly owned property, who pays for that removal? The public, of course.
If, for example, a train is the target of graffiti, it will often need to be taken out of service. This, then, results in a degraded service to the travelling public.
Furthermore, graffiti artists often put themselves in dangerous situations. Numerous people have been seriously injured or killed when doing graffiti. That not only sucks for them, but also has various knock-on effects.
Some graffiti art can look really nice, whereas others have little artistic value. Regardless, the negative impacts of graffiti should not be overlooked.
The cost incurred here is a choice the owner makes when they disagree with the aesthetics of the graffiti.
The aesthetic argument here is trying to validate a violent act. A lot of graffiti is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay.
But imposing your own preferred art on public commons is a (minor) form of violence, in any economic system. Especially when you do so with paints of questionable chemical composition, or with images/text that is likely to offend.
I would also say that doing the same thing even on your own property can be reprehensible, as long as it is visible to the public. Just because you own a house doesn't mean you should be able to make it look however you want on the outside, especially not in ways that are actively unpleasant to those of us that need to walk by it every day: we the public should have a say in how your private property looks. A most anti-capitalist position.
Sometimes councils put up several designs to be voted on by the public, but they will largely follow a bunch of design norms that will be whatever the architecture firms they hired think is trendy, for example.
And how many election programs even talk about artistic taste? That's not why we elect people, and making that an election point would be a distraction from real problems, so why not let society be and if people are more artistic in one area and make more public art, let them make it?
Even beyond electoral politics, many cities have public NGOs and other organizations that seek to shape this sort of thing from an early stage through various legal means (and sometimes even through civil disobedience, like tying themselves to a building to protect it). If they are broadly in line with the tastes of the people, they tend to thrive; if they are not, they will often die out.
And yes, in certain cities and towns, people actually like the way grafitti looks and are bothered when someone goes and whitewashes a beautifully painted wall. That's perfectly fine, and is a part of the culture and esthetics of that place (and here, destroying the art that people enjoy is an act of violence against the public and/or the artist). But it's also perfectly fine for other places to want neat walls with clean textures, and marring their beautiful walls with grafitti would be an act that goes against the public.
Ephemerality is known, understood, accepted, and even leveraged in art. I don't think this is an efficient deterrent, or even a deterrent at all.
It's the other way around, if it isn't quickly removed it will be encouraged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
What is 0 encouragement/discouragement? It's not obviously easy to define. One definition is doing nothing = 0 encouragement and 0 discouragement. By that definition, not removing graffiti (aka doing nothing) is not encouragement, it's simply doing nothing: a lack of encouragement and a lack of discouragement.
Because we haven't agreed on a definition of 0 encouragement and 0 discouragement, saying "decreasing encouragement" and "increasing discouragement" mean basically the same thing.
"Doing nothing" results in encouragement in the broken windows theory:
Under the broken windows theory, an ordered and clean environment, one that is maintained, sends the signal that the area is monitored and that criminal behavior is not tolerated. Conversely, a disordered environment, one that is not maintained (broken windows, graffiti, excessive litter), sends the signal that the area is not monitored and that criminal behavior has little risk of detection.
There's also the same analogy to refactoring in software engineering. If a project is well maintained with every incoming feature, then a big refactor epic won't be necessary.
"The stop of encouragement will prevent the start of discouragement" doesn't mean that the reverse is true ("the start of discouragement will promote the stop of encouragement"). So it isn't stating basically the same thing.
The big irony in social studies with the broken windows theory is that discouragement often feels easier to practice than maintenance to an outsider. Or, in analogy to software engineering, a one time big refactor feels easier to do than continuous maintenance, as all the work actually included in a refactor (team syncing, product without features etc.) is mostly overlooked during the development if maintenance is not well practiced.
I'm going to spray a can of paint on your car and explain to judge that "it's thuuuomas's problem now, since he disagrees with aesthetics of his new car color".
“Hey, I’m going to hold a gun to your head. If you don’t give me $100 I’ll shoot you. Remember though that the cost incurred here is a choice you’re going to make if you disagree with my actions. I can’t truly force you to do anything…”
I see no problem with this, if someone graffitis public trains or a park bench there's zero need to paint them over. Some karen in the municipality decided a bench should be painted green or a roundabout have some weird sculpture, but a random citizen can't paint some tag on a light pole? Give me a break. It's not like there's some holy committee of aesthetics at your local council.
Citizens can even "fight among each other" by painting it over when they dislike what was there before. It has no downsides on functionality, if anything the extra paint coatings protect the public objects more from the elements.
I live in Japan which is usually free of litter, put a few empty beer cans on the floor and come back 24 hours after and you will have a trash pile. I don't need a paper to tell me that.
The "furthermore" and the "Regardless, the negative impacts of graffiti should not be overlooked" do feel a bit AI-esq these days, but it was only yesterday that I myself felt like I was writing like an LLM by responding to a "you misunderstood, I meant …" with an "ah, now I understand": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380692
And your framing is odd - can you only dislike one of these things? Graffiti or ads? There are successful movements to rid cities and scenic areas of ads, or to tone them down.
Graffiti makes the world more beautiful. Try and find the beauty in the world around you.
It is a vandalism and you shouldn't normalize it.
You don't get to tell me what I find beautiful.
Right. That’s the point. In public spaces, the public has chosen what it believes to be beautiful. Illegal graffiti is one person forcing their aesthetics on everyone.
Plenty of cities have surfaces that are open to being grafitti’d. In those cases, the artists bothered to think about others before taking unilateral action.
For private property I agree with you, the owners have it how they want to have it.
When it’s mattered, I’ve showed up. Or signed petitions saying something is ugly and would benefit from being replaced by just about anything else.
Plenty of communities embrace their mural and graffiti culture. Plenty don’t. Imagine if someone who doesn’t like murals went around whitewashing painted walls.
The reason is that whoever puts an ad does so on their own property. You don't put an ad on someone else's wall against their will.
Graffiti, on the other hand, is usually done without authorization from the owner of the wall or facade being graffitied.
EDIT, for the mods, artificial or not: Japanese spoliation aesthetics are a safe-ish counterexample for rightwingers as they localize the field of contention to the high local effort-high social payoff quadrant, where existing metrics are not questioned. You really want to constrain debate to the low local effort-high global payoff quadrant, which triggers all stripes, but are most relevant for humanity. Consider a GPT7 that requires only 10 dollars to train. Its worthwhile to think about but scares the bejeezus out of most folks.
Analogously, left wingers want to move the debate to low local effort-low global cost quadrant, because it seems straightforward to redefine cost metrics… moat and bailey dynamics really, quite curious.
But you're right, certainly not as bad as a bank robbery.
How about neither?
Seems like you got the idea. Give her some stencils and have some fun.
It's the difference between vandalism and art.
My university for example, in every single room, every single table is scribbled on and marked for years and years. When I arrived there as a fresh faced student I saw scribbles that were 30 years old. Some people left their names, some people said they didn't like professor X, some people left Maxwell's equations on there. I'm so glad the university didn't consider it vandalism. This could be applied to so many more things. It had zero negative impact on my education or experience in the classroom, so how can it be considered vandalism?
They can involve multiple lives being at much greater risk and a large amount of resources allocated to criminals. The fact that it doesn't come from the bank but an insurance agency doesn't change anything. The money comes from somewhere.
The context was the graffiti subculture around the German rail system, although I didn't specify, that's what I was referring to. Of course graffiti on private residences is practically just vandalism. There aren't subcultures around that though, besides subcultures that just revolve around general vandalism.
In that vein, you should probably get graffiti insurance if that's a concern.
I get your point though, on reading the comment I replied to, after reading yours, it's clear to me that the equivalence implication is fairly weak. Your interpretation seems more accurate.
I am for tough penalties on the authors of grafitis. At least make them pay the full cost of cleaning them up plus heavy fines.
I somewhat agree with you if we are talking about low effort tagging, especially on homes.
However if I had to choose between some ambitious criminals being given a large amount of money or if some wall getting a bad piece of art on it, I would always choose the latter.
Its Art.
I would like to understand why people take offense in it - especially if done on places that are so non-important.
It's a reason it is a crime, although sadly it doesn't seem to be really enforced or punished, given the prevalence.
There is whole subculture, competition and collaboration networks between fan groups.
Some call it bestial street fighting where people lose lives and health but some might find it fascinating…