Quote:
Originally Posted by pspeid
I've personally never been impressed by the simple squiggles, but I can't speak to the motivation of the tagger.
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I think a lot of it is basically a status race among graffiti writers. In the early days of graffiti certain writers would gain "fame" (among a narrow circle of other graffiti writers) for being "kings" (being up more than everyone else) or "all-city" (covering more of the city with your tags than others).
So, "pieces" -- the big complex colourful murals -- are about showing off that you have more skill, style, etc.
But the tags are almost like a competition, so hitting places that are visible and hard to get to and unlikely to be written over gives you "fame".
A very costly/destructive dick-measuring contest, basically