[germinator]

They're very cool until it's your apartment or commercial building, and you have to clean it up - because let's face it, for every clever graffiti, there are fifty that are just tags, swear words, or worse.

And your framing is odd - can you only dislike one of these things? Graffiti or ads? There are successful movements to rid cities and scenic areas of ads, or to tone them down.

[wahnfrieden]

in toronto it's embraced to the extent that in areas where it's common, there's funding by businesses and even residences or local gov commission it or permit it and nice work by local artists is less likely to get tagged or covered. there's at least some upside to cooperating when there's a culture to it (to some extent)

[aeyes]

I solved this problem by contracting an artist to put a painting on the wall of my house. Sprayers are artists, they won't paint over it.

[GrayShade]

I've seen a lot of tags put on top of pretty nice-looking murals, many sprayers won't care.

[petre]

Tags always looks better on an empty wall.

[taskforcegemini]

but not better than the empty wall

[petre]

Of course. As opposed to over other grafittis I mean.

[Doctor_Fegg]

If only. The murals under canal bridges in Worcester (UK) have been defaced beyond recognition with tags.

[wiseowise]

Fifty? More like fifty thousands.