The 2010 set of Street Paper photos dwindles to just three heavily packed images. All from the gallery district in Chelsea. Since it’s the new SoHo, it seems one of the hotspots for graffiti in recent years.

I have discussed in past posts that this is probably an attempt to gain an audience. Last night I was watching a reality show where the challenge was based on expressing your brand. Here we have people falling over themselves to get their branding on.

Some pieces are repeats that I love. That weird face with the triangle fangs makes multiple appearances. Its goofiness a delight. The family by the bedside. And even the Army of One Bride of Frankenstein is a fun piece.

But then come the Che pieces with no real twist. Or the graffiti on paper piece that someone has written Crap in paint on. There is a little too much slickness and you are starting to see the slouch.

Speaking of writing or destroying other’s work. Last night while writing these a friend on Facebook lamented that someone had torn down her paper piece. She hash tagged it with #onlylosershate. It made my mind ache.

I can’t believe a hip hop term like haters has become an ethos. It’s twisted the nature of hip hop which grew up concurrently with punk. Then hip hop was all about hating and talking smack about someone you thought you were better than.

Now they just try to silence anyone who disagrees by calling them a hater. Constantly coming up with new and horribly stupid words like hateration and phrases like ‘Don’t drink the haterade.’ To quote Public Image Ltd., “Anger is an energy.”

Back to defacing graffiti. If you wanted to keep your stuff safe, keep it at home. It’s still not safe but it’s not out for public destruction. More importantly don’t whine about people vandalizing your vandalizations. Not sure if that last word is a word. It may be the new hateration.