As interesting as this 1983 study on bathroom graffiti is, I’m not quite convinced scatological scripting is “worthy of its own entire category,” when classifying the various types of public scrawl. But, if there was ever an argument for why there should be, this one by The Atlantic is it:
What makes toilet graffiti special, and worthy of its own entire category, is the uniqueness of the space in which people are writing. Public bathrooms are weird places. There’s a tension to doing private activities in a public space, with only the flimsiest of boundaries hiding some of our culture’s biggest taboos—genitals and bodily functions. Hence all the scatological and sexual prose that latrinalia often consists of: People are just deriving inspiration from their surroundings.
To put it simply, poop inspires.
(Photo: *Bitch Cakes*)
