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[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

There are plenty of links you can draw if you have a mind to do so. The actual meaning behind graffiti is so highly distorted, on purpose, that it makes me wonder what a lot of it actually stands for. Bathroom stall messages tend to be a little more straightfoward I find it interesting where you don't see bathroom stall engravings though. You'd think airport bathrooms, where all of humanity takes a seat, would have them everywhere. But they don't at most airports. Maybe because they're rigorously maintained. Or because people traveling don't have the time to be expressive. Or because there's simply too many people around for being mischievous. Or maybe because bathroom graffiti is largely done by people who use the same bathroom often. (As is the case with Truck Stops and Bars.)

Ironically I remember a bathroom at this one bar in Germany that was covered, wall to wall every surface except the toilets and sinks, in graffiti. Just to bring this post full circle.

What were the airport stall walls made of? Were they made of Aluminum? Wood? Ceramic tile? Plaster?

[Solifuge]

I studied anthro as a major for a time, and though I've never made a formal study of bathroom graffiti, I've photographed and documented some particularly cool stuff sometimes, and found it interesting to think about it as a platform for studying human nature and looking into recent history and world-views.

Bathroom Graffiti is often used as a medium to vent, be witty, be lewd, or make art; the Comments Section of day-to-day life, from the days before the internet. In High School and College you had a static population of the same tweens, teens, and young adults, and those bathrooms saw a lot more peeps sassing on this or that person by posting their phone number as a sexual solicitation, or venting a breakup by sharing dirty laundry on their ex. Then there's the stuff frequented by a more-or-less static population of adults like in bars in the city (same goes for an inner-city recording studio I went to), where I've seen people have long-form non-sequential discussions among the wall-scribbling equivalent of drunk texting. In Truck Stops and at Fast Food places, it's often a mix of the above since the visitors come from a lot of age brackets, and thus different traditions of Bathroom Graffiti.

^{_{EDIT: Somehow I typed Neonates instead of Tweens. That is weird, brain. Stop doing that.}}

[nenjin]

Pretty sure they're painted aluminum for the most part. I've seen bathroom graffiti in airports before, just not that often. I imagine most people try to use pen or marker since you can't well scrape into that material and not be heard with 10 to 30 people coming through there every 5 minutes. And the material is probably designed so a strong cleanser can take off most anything people would try to use.

[Avis-Mergulus]

One of the best examples is HALFDAN WAS HERE, carved into the rock of the Hagia Sophia by some centuries-dead varangian guardsman.  It is immortality of a sort.

It might be interesting to note that carving prayers and even legal documents on church walls was a widespread practice in the Kievan Rus', and probably Byzantium as well. A lot of old churches in Istanbul have carvings approximating to "The pilgrims $name1 and $name2 were here, asking for blessing from $church_patron_saint". The Sophia of Kiev even has a whole document detailing the sale of land by a boyar to a princess with a list of witnesses (the local priesthood) - the idea here is that the deal is made in the house of God, and ergo there is no bullshitting going on whatsoever.

So it is entirely possible that Halfdan was a Christian who wanted in on that sweet sweet divine blessing gig rather than just a bored dude scrawling on random walls.

E: crap, failed to look at the last post date before necroing a random thread.

[Teneb]

Nah, it's okay. At least the necro was pretty interesting.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I am the thread author, and I don't object to necromancy.

[BFEL]

You introduced me to this thread, and this kinda thing is something I had wondered since before I saw the obligatory xkcd so the necro is fine. Totally unbiased on that, me

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti

Will post field study soon.

[TheBiggerFish]

Hmh.

Has anyone ever seen the obxkcd in the wild?