The Missing Link

I find it interesting living in the so called “digital” age where we strive for paperless transactions such as emails instead of hand written notes or scan and email instead of just faxing a paper document across the country. It seems that I’ve become so busy in the digital world that I have little time for the analog things that we face everyday. There are some things I do miss about the analog forum and that is what I’m going to reminisce about in this little short prologue. I’m keeping it short for a few reasons, one is we’re going to land soon (doesn’t it always seem that I’m flying when I type these? Maybe it’s the high-altitude creative juices or the perfect excuse for me not to have to socialize with the person next to me.) and the other reason is I’m feeling an urgent pressure of water building on the inner wall of my bladder.

It struck me today as I was sitting on a commode in a restroom at the relatively busy Washington-Dulles airport that in this digital age one analog medium of communication has gone missing – decent bathroom stall graffiti.

I travel frequently for my day job and I’ve sat in many bathroom stalls in various hotels, airports and restaurants all over the country and I have to say the graffiti content is almost non-existent. There is the occasional “F-you” or something in the nature of a “You Suck” statement which is not very assuring to read when your in one of the few positions in which confrontation is the last thing on your mind. But I will say that I remember looking forward to reading some very creative scripts on the walls of public restrooms stalls. I’m not “old” by any measure but I’ve been around for nearly 3 decades and I can say that in the last 10-15yrs there has been a dramatic decrease in the quantity and quality of bathroom graffiti. And now you’ll get read about my theory as to why that is the case.

I am guilty of living under the digital façade as much as the guy next to me on this flight. We all hide behind MP3 players, laptops, emails, voicemails, websites, chat rooms, and PDAs. It’s easy to exist in a non-existent medium such as digital and these “vent out” forums have replaced a lot of the old analog forms of communication. When was the last time you sent or received a hand written letter? It’s been a long time. The bathroom stall graffiti has been eradicated to web blogs, plan files and other digital mass reaching anonymous sites. Sort of like this site, although I’m talking about a wider range of topics than something that would be worth its salt on a wall in a bathroom stall. Kids these days are venting their frustrations and expressing themselves in different ways than I did growing up and I firmly believe the bathroom stall graffiti is another example of road kill as we all move into the second generation of the digital era (I’m fighting real hard not to use the worse techno-term ever created “information superhighway” - gasp).

So you might ask is the “so-what” in all my jabber, well there really isn’t anything we can do to change it. It’s just what it is – change. The medium of communication has changed, the scale has grown and the expectations for the level of work one does has changed. We want (as I do) as many people to hear our voices and writing it on a bathroom stall is not as zesty or appealing as ranting your thoughts on a website. I would like to end this piece with a request - if any of you have a few good sites that collect or publish decent bathroom stall graffiti, please send it my way.

Until then,

Rock on.