A sign that perhaps things have gone too far

I've been moderately interested in graffiti for several years now. My casual interest in what people choose to write on an available surface in moments of boredom or as an attempt at leaving a lasting presence only deepened when, in college, I attended a lecture on ancient Greek marketplaces and learned that the same types of graffiti that are most common now -- think "So-and-so was here" and phallic drawings -- were also common then, when one had to actually carve into a rock surface to leave a message.

Today, however, I encountered something entirely out of the realm of what I'm used to. What I thought was just regular bathroom-stall scrawling quickly proved to be out of the ordinary: practically every message written in this particular stall was an opinion of some guy named Edward.

Some vampire, as it turns out. (Perhaps it is relevant information that this all occurred at a Borders store.)

There were many messages to the effect of "Edward is hot" and "Edward sucks," with corresponding responses and occasional cross-outs. But there was one message that went beyond: "Edward isn't real, but he represents the ideal man."

I kid you not.

On the one hand, maybe it's good that girls are graffiti-ing about a creepo chastity club vampire. It means they're reading, right?

On the other hand, it means they're reading that drivel. And then applying it directly to their lives and ideas about ideal men.

And people say my love of Jane Austen novels is bad.