Fuck the vandals, I loath them and their self righteousness. The idea that because a place is a business it's fair game for destruction to prove a political or ethical position is ludicrous. I've scraped off enough stickers and applied enough industrial goo gone to graphitti to spend plenty of time meditating on their ways. It's always the bathrooms, where they do their work, cowards, away from prying eyes, far from the difficulty and challenges that actually trying to change peoples minds with intelligent discourse entails. My work has big chalk boards, that when vandals haven't destroyed the chalk holder or thrown the chalk in the toilet or ground the chalk to dust, are there for anyone to put up their screed, original art, hate for me, hate for my place of business, loves, hopes or desire to leave this world. Still some asshole feels the need to slap an ELF sticker right in the middle of the public canvas, or worse yet spray paint and permanent pen. I'd hate it if I wasn't the guy peeling that fucking sticker off the chalk board. I hate the people who ate raw salmon and projectile vomited in places where the toilet isn't more than the vandals. I hate the people who's sprayed shit covers the bottom of the toilet seat in a manner that testifies to the fact that they never should have been drinking if they were in that kind of shape even more but fuck the vandals. Am I corporate shill because part of my job is to put the place into decent order at the end of the night? Am I degraded by my boss (who is mild, kind and forgives most my sins but the most egregious ones) when I'm scraping Occupy stickers off the wall at 2:30AM when I just want to go home or by the fucking kid who thinks his issue enables any antisocial behavior to make his already obvious point.
Do you think that your "vigilantism" causes/may cause a similar reaction?
no, i am just picking on you a little bit. i think it's funny to give distasteful gifts. i don't attribute any 'cool'ness to vandalism itself, i see it as a political tactic with benefits and detriments that may be appropriate for some contexts but inappropriate for others. i do appreciate graffiti or 'street art' if it's done well, but that's different.
I don't mind getting picked on a bit. I like street art as well, especially when It's good and meaningfull. I don't always clean up vandalism at work, some times It's cleaver and meaningful enough that the boss can take care of it himself if he cares to.