Digital Young

Behind anonymity, students feel free to write everything they want. and more specific where they want Here’s a microstudy of what students from Faculty of Letters write on the doors and on the walls of toilets. These messages have a content that’s influenced by two important facts: the students from the Faculty of Letters are mostly girls and the space of toilet. This last element is strikingly important as it reveals provocative attitudes. The language is filled with sexuality: both content and form are touched by this purpose of communication.

Even if you can’t see very well, the structure of a message on a toilet door or toilet wall is pretty much the same. It is always a dialogue; the provocateur is usually a guy who declares his availability for sex and he also puts conditions: “I am looking for a blond girl …” A girl always answers to him, insulting him: she calls him a pig or a pervert etc. After that, there can be a chain of reactions towards the guy’s proposal or  the girl’s reaction.

In this picture, the chain of messages ends with a cell phone number. Usually fictive, this number reinforces guy’s availability.

In the next message, the reaction towards the first person who started the chain is very aggressive: “Don’t write on the walls any more! Repent yourself !”, wrote probably a very religious person.

This last one touches another “saint” figure: “Silence, Eminescu is dead”, and the answer comes immediately: “F…k off christians!”.

Some characteristics of toilet writings:

1. are anonymous;

2. have a licensed content / connotation;

3. the first message always has an answer, which is a critique or an insult towards the first provocative message;

4. the pattern of chain messages: any message requires an answer / a reaction; usually, the person who answers to a specific message draws a line or an arrow towards the message that he answers to;

What do yout think / do you see in all these writings / texts / messages? Is there something to see or it’s just something futile? I wouldn’t say it’s something futile because they are for a long time there, messages are different in time. So, why this need to write, to provoke, to make all this game? I have an idea, but I will really develop it in a different post.

1. Politics

Political symbols in a really original reappropriation.

“You make the system”. From the same category.

Political figures / characters.

“Everything comes from you”. A more general message, but the essence is the same.

2. Irony & critique of civic attitudes.

“New! You can buy it also in installments! Happiness…”

“Necessary protection against stupidity”

Open interpretation. ))

3. Advertising stencils. Viral communication.

Another project that I have started for about 2-3 weeks: in the hall of Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, I put two bags with used books: universal & Romanian literature, literature critique. The point was book sharing. I also wrote a message: Grab a book but put one in place! The first two days, students were looking really curious but they weren’t looking into the bags to see what books were there. After that, they started to look deep into the bags and really look over them. Later, they started to do the crossing thing. But only a percentage of 40% really put a book in place, the rest only taking them and … stealing them? I will wait to see if they are stealing them or they are just reading & bringing them back.

What does this mean for me? I don’t know yet, but I will draw some conclusions out of this after more time. Now it would be too premature.