Short attention span
The graffiti I see are usually just people's "tags" repeated endlessly. It is rare to see an attempt at something else - and even then it is often a simplified phallus.
Young artists are putting down their spray cans for smartphones, and causing graffiti art to die off as a result. This according to researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University in England, who said that as Instagram and YouTube have become more popular methods to share art, fewer young people are taking to the streets to …
Not here, we have also lots of art-like graffiti, some of it quite good -- but the best ones tend to be legal (at least AFAICT). It probably helps if you can take more time and don't have to prepared to run away all the time...
I wish social media somehow killed the idiots that scratch windows in trams and buses though.
Language mutates. Today, there is a difference between "graffiti" and "tagging". The first is a form of art, the second is vandalism. Many (most?) largish cities (in the US, at least) have legal outlets for folks wishing to indulge in street art. But that takes effort on the part of the artist. I'm quite happy to see most of them take the easy way out and display their "art" online where only their fan will observe it.
Come down to "the Smoke" and have a wander around Brick Lane on a sunny Sunday, take in the market with its great food and admire the stunning works of art that are all around the streets of Brick Lane and Hoxton. I often head out once a fortnight and collect snaps of the latest works of art. Some are just absolutely stunning and they're often only on display for a couple of weeks before they're either tagged or someone else paints over them.
The best one I've ever seen was a memorial to the late, great Terry Pratchett painted just off Brick Lane. It was 7 feet tall by about 35 yards long and it had all the major Discworld characters and themes in it with a huge painting of Pratchetts beaming face right at the end. It took me 15 shots to capture it and them pano-merge the images to capture it properly.
Sometimes, you even get a phallus on "proper" art
Yes, Dobbin loved his master very much indeed, but he's not so excited now.
"In this way the rich kids of Instagram have killed the graffiti writer."
Somehow, I don't think this can be bettered, but if anyone can shoe horn graffiti themed lyrics into this tune, there's no one better than Trevor Horn to do it.
On the A1, just south of Alnwick in Northumberland, there's a village called Shilbottle. Since time immemorial, local kids have been adding a small horizontal bar to the first 'l' on the sign pointing towards it, so that the sign reads "Shitbottle".
A year or two back the comedian Stuart Lee used this as a barometer of how much timekids were spending on the Internet. In the past, whenever he passed that sign going to/from Edinburgh, he saw the defacement. However, in recent years, the presence of the added mark was less of a given. When you're a teenager with a smartphone, the Internet and a world of online pornography, adding some paint to a sign to make it look a bit rude suddenly doesn't seem so attractive.
"as the move to social media is largely being carried out by wealthy and middle-class kids who can afford the equipment."
What equipment? I can't think of much that is significantly more expensive than buying spray paint. The hardware is cheap, the software is cheap and can be pirated if you're an edgy teenager with no cash.
So what are they on about?
@herman
Places like these
Were made for the ease
Of every good-fellow in common,
But the man who writes
On the wall as he shites
Has a pleasure far greater than woman.
For he's eased in his body
And pleased in his mind
When he leaves both a turd
And some verses behind.
Anonymous, London, 1721