High School bathroom graffiti: intellectualized

[Shoesonforyou]

In spite of the usual "eff you"s, "so-and-so sucks"s, and "your mom (insert miscellaneous sexual activity here)"s, I have recently....found.... some rather interesting discussions and thoughts scrawled on walls of my high school. They reminded me of the spirit of xkcd, and I thought I'd post a couple.






Thoughts?

[fenrir_darkwolf]

The images weren't loading for me, had to access them manually (what a pain in the ass it is to copy AND paste) but I loved the first one... and I couldn't read the writing on the second one. What does it say?

[fenrir_darkwolf]

Never mind the images loaded I really should be more patient.

[Kasperl]

Unfortunately the toilet graffiti at my uni isn't that creative, generally. The best I've seen was 'Oh, and what's the speed of dark?' in the local Irish pub, somewhere below "His vibrato sounded like he was driving over a plowed field with weights tied to his scrotum".

[mrbaggins]

"Love hurts just as much as it heals - Find a balance"
"True love is the balance - but it's up to you to strike it."

Too mushy for me, but the writing for both is awesome (And obviously female)

[ICDB]

Yes, unfortunately in my school if those were found in a boys' bathroom underneath would be some sort of
"FAG GROW A PAIR"
"HOMO"
"_______ WROTE THIS SO GEY"


sigh

[Shoesonforyou]

Yeah, I've heard from guys that there's nothing remotely similar to this on the walls of bathrooms they frequent. Graffiti is an odd phenomenon as it lends a certain permanance to whatever's written or drawn, but those who execute graffiti tend to be the same one's who don't have much worth saying.

Case in point:



Mrbaggins, I'm curious to know how you knew it said "..strike it", as that it what it says, but it was cut off in the picture.

[Master Gunner]

I don't know about you, but for me "strike it" isn't cut off at all, I can see it clearly.

[Korandder]

My artist friend recorded graffiti she found in high school bathrooms then projected the graffiti back onto the school in the middle of the night using an overhead projector.

[TheAmazingRando]

Yeah, I've heard from guys that there's nothing remotely similar to this on the walls of bathrooms they frequent. Graffiti is an odd phenomenon as it lends a certain permanance to whatever's written or drawn, but those who execute graffiti tend to be the same one's who don't have much worth saying.

Case in point:



Mrbaggins, I'm curious to know how you knew it said "..strike it", as that it what it says, but it was cut off in the picture.

They didn't even get the quote right.

[mrbaggins]

I don't know about you, but for me "strike it" isn't cut off at all, I can see it clearly.

This^

I can see the whole thing perfectly.

[Shoesonforyou]

Well, I'm glad you can read it, but hurrrumph... I spent an inordinate amount of time cropping and resizing those photos because on my broswer the don't fit. Hurrrupmh.

[ICDB]

Actually in my school's bathroom there was a rather aggressive pro-weed poem once ahah. However, the janitors paint over everything that comes up, so there's no 'permanence.'

[diotimajsh]

Funny, just today I was in a bathroom, looking at the graffiti critically, and wondering, "Why is it so rare that we find anything beyond the amazingly crude in bathrooms?" I was almost tempted to write out something of my own to do something about it.

[Rippy]

I've always wanted to graffiti something super-lame on a bathroom wall, like "Say NO to drugs!".

Then I remember that I'm too good of a person to vandalize. I could use dry-erase marker maybe?

[Shoesonforyou]

Funny, just today I was in a bathroom, looking at the graffiti critically, and wondering, "Why is it so rare that we find anything beyond the amazingly crude in bathrooms?" I was almost tempted to write out something of my own to do something about it.

I dare you.

[pedestrian]

There's one stall in one of my school bathrooms in which about 15 people have started their own version of Post Secret. I'd say it's more along the lines of a support group than malicious-natured graffiti.

[Ramses IV]

I like to read the little poems all over the place. One time I even found C.S. Lewis's entire speech about childhood:

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."


-C.S. Lewis on being grown up

[aleflamedyud]

I like to read the little poems all over the place. One time I even found C.S. Lewis's entire speech about childhood:

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."


-C.S. Lewis on being grown up

If he hadn't been a pedophile I would totally love that speech.

My hobby: scrawling "The cake is a lie." on the walls of bathroom stalls.

If you want to get really intellectual, try writing the definition of the Y-Combinator on a bathroom-stall wall.

[Ramses IV]

If he hadn't been a pedophile I would totally love that speech.

...I wasn't aware of that, and a simple Google search reveals nothing. What are you talking about? Perhaps a joke?

[podbaydoor]

I hope that's a joke. Maybe he's confusing C.S. Lewis with Lewis Carroll?

[Ramses IV]

I hope that's a joke. Maybe he's confusing C.S. Lewis with Lewis Carroll?

I think he might have.

[alphacenturi]

heh. someone in my school, in the one clean place in one of the stalls wrote "merry christmas to all our readers"


it was quite neat and boxed in all nice...

[aleflamedyud]

I hope that's a joke. Maybe he's confusing C.S. Lewis with Lewis Carroll?

You got me there. My bad.

OK, so that speech is made of awesome, then.

[mountaingoat]

Whenever I see "fuck you" written I wonder if it's just someone being dumb or a Cather in the Rye reference.

[diotimajsh]

I dare you.

>.>
<.<
I may or may not have just written a Zen Buddhist koan in a bathroom a few days ago. (It was in pencil! That makes it less wrong, right?)

[Jadestone]

So, by my house, there's a road, right? And underneath it not to far from my house is an old cow pass (basically, a cement tunnel going under the road supposedly so farmers wouldn't have to take their cows across it or something, but I would think the road was built long after and farmers were left... and it's much, much to big to be a drainage pipe, around like 7 feet tall and a lot wider). No one ever goes down there that I know of, I only know it's thee because one of my friends showed it to me way back in 6th grade or so. Unless she's shown other people who have taken an interest in it, which I kind of doubt as it's not really her "thing" anymore that I'm aware (we grew apart... : / ), I don't think many others would know about it either, much less bother to go in it.

Now I'm guessing you all can guess what I want to do as I'm on this thread, but I want to take a sharpie down there and just copy out a long poem. I was thinking "The Garden of Proserpine" by Algernon Charles Swineburn (I like him), I don't want to do something really well-known (liek "The Raven") but I do want something interesting. I don't know if anyone would ever read it, but someone might, and maybe they'd like it. Any other suggestions?

Still need to check for hobos/escaped convicts though.

EDIT: Wow I could have sworn this was the general index. To make the post more on-topic:

I haven't ever seen anything truely insitghtful int eh school bathrooms, but the ones I mainly go in are the out-of-the-way-for-everyone-but-band/choir/music theroy-kids and new, so there may be. There was a poem once... I think I remember it, or some of it...

"[wordwordwordthatrhymeswith'name']
A soul of stone
A sould by name
A soul alone

Though time dissolves
Our flesh and bone
A soul is all
And all alone."


As said, not too profound/great, but it's good for my schools standards.

[alphacenturi]

So, by my house, there's a road, right? And underneath it not to far from my house is an old cow pass....

(poem) alone."


As said, not too profound/great, but it's good for my schools standards.

lol i've been there (i was reading your post and i was thinking "wait a minute... this sounds familiar)

and when was that poem there?

[Windmill]

My best friend used to write the quadratic formula in the bathrooms at school.
Once I heard some girls talking about it and wondering who wrote it. Great stuff.

Strangely enough, the graffiti this year has really cut down. I really can't imagine why, but this thread has reinspired me to write something good on a wall.

[Jadestone]

So, by my house, there's a road, right? And underneath it not to far from my house is an old cow pass....

(poem) alone."


As said, not too profound/great, but it's good for my schools standards.

lol i've been there (i was reading your post and i was thinking "wait a minute... this sounds familiar)

and when was that poem there?

(hello Want to help me with it?)
It was in the bathroom last year near V-hop's old room.

A week or so ago there was a whole deal at our school because there was something apparently written on a bathroom wall about something happening on April 29th. We had a lockdown for a period and a half (lights out and sitting at least nearish to the corner) and police and everything. There are some seriously stupid people here.

[spaceinvader]

I saw something along the lines of this whilst in London once:

Code: Select all

<?
    echo "I'm drunk!";
?>


[alphacenturi]

spaceinvader: interesting... and probably true. lol.

[Lanth]

Lots of people at my school at an obsession with graffitiing a picture of a penis, followed by "tation", to mean "dictation".

One of the less intellectual things people have done.


I do like the idea of Portal quote graffiti. My personal favourite:

Not in cruelty
Not in wrath
The Reaper came today
An Angel visited this grey path
And took my cube away.

(Unfortunately, "wrath" and "path" don't rhyme with an Australian accent )

[zaqwithaq]

not bathroom graffiti but in my geometry class (he also teaches basic arithmetic for seniors so uhh...yeah...)
there were at least 7 "I *heart* name"'s scratched in to the desk
so i wrote in: I greatly appreciate the close friendship of Bayli who is my close friend. I thought it was funny...

[ikantspell4]

I'm going to try posting homework problems in the bathroom in our schools physics department. Perhaps someone will get bored and solve 'em for me.

[Dromaeosaurid]

I wrote on a bus seat:

"ln(e) is the loneliest number that there ever was."

[SpitValve]

The classics building used to have "memento mori" (or whatever the correct spelling is) - "Remember that you will die".

I've seen some pretty clever graffiti in general at universities, with plenty of discussions and arguments following.

[makaveli]

I'm going to try posting homework problems in the bathroom in our schools physics department. Perhaps someone will get bored and solve 'em for me.

I've been doing something similar. In the men's stall I post "weekly integrals", I scribble down an utterly impossible integral and wait for someone to solve it. They never do, but it doesn't keep them from scribbling an obviously wrong answer. (the last one was a triple integral with limits and exponents and everything-someone answered 8 ).

[Rowadanr]

I was once insanely bored in a maths lesson, so in the corner of my desk i scribbled the entirety of "Ozymandias" in futhark to see if anyone reacted

[alphacenturi]

ocassionally in 8th grade i'd have a conversation on the desk with the person who had my desk during the periods before... it was amusing. i never found out who they were though.