6.1: Legal Graffiti

With the recent introduction of applications to Facebook, there has been a boom in number of the people who use these new features; as well as a massive increase in the general number of people who use Facebook. One of the most popular applications is simply called “Graffiti”: it is a program that allows users to draw small pictures in a designated area in another user’s profile.

The existing norm, according to my experience, has been to keep the drawings “clean” i.e. inoffensive and not vulgar. Maybe this is me being too cautious or neurotic, but when I first encountered the application, I expected lewd images (similar in nature to real, physical graffiti) to start popping up everywhere on shiny and wholesome Facebook profiles. However, this is not the case—and the standard seems to be in favor of upholding Facebook as the online social network to “bring home to your mother”. In this situation the Leviathan is a combination of the Graffiti application developers and the Facebook moderators who passively monitor the network for offensive content. But despite this Leviathan’s widespread presence, it enforces the norm in an extremely loose manner. The sole statement of restriction is the simple message “Keep it clean, please”, which appears below the current graffiti drawing that the user is working on.

But I believe that even if this message did not exist, people would still conform to respectful standards. The reasons for this, in my opinion, are tied to the lack of anonymity and evanescence in graffiti art. The graffiti posting is displayed in such a manner where it says “John Smith drew…” right above the artwork, with the profile picture of the artist adjacent to the image. Even though this encourages salience of individuality, the presentation of the name causes the artist aware and responsible for their own actions and the profile picture possibly probes a certain degree of humanity and reminds the user of human courtesy. Would you commit a crime if your picture would be left behind at the scene of the illegal action? Also, as Wallace states on page 70, people are realizing that “our contributions to the net are not as fleeting, nor as difficult to trace, as many had supposed”. If a user draws a derogatory caricature or some other lewd image—the image will stay on the profile for a long time. Facebook Graffiti artists generally conform to the conventions of human decency, something their physical counterparts tend not to do.

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