Average Joes vs. Powerful Corporations

I'm sure everyone has at one point used public washrooms and noticed people's writing in the stalls. They're usually expressions of love, hatred or general opinions that people want to put out there for everyone to see while remaining unidentified. Some would argue that graffiti in washrooms makes them look unsanitary and unappealing. I personally have never felt that people’s scribbles in washroom stalls made the washroom look unhygienic. I mean, it is a public washroom, so with or without scribbles, it won’t change the level of sanitary conditions. What is interesting is that only in bathroom stalls can you find a space where you will find endless opinions, and at times people communicating with one another, with no sense of who they’re talking to. There exists graffiti outside the bathroom, however it is usually created by a group or a known individual, and they’re usually not anonymous. Bathroom graffiti really do represent a form of freedom of speech. However, in recent times, I’m sure someone who holds a really important job at a really important company used a public restroom, and found himself reading people’s writings and staying much longer to find out why “sally really loves john.”
More commonly these days, instead of finding people’s thoughts and opinions in bathroom stalls, we find an ad pushing us to consume more than we already do. Actually, research shows that most public restroom users (76%) remember the ads in bathroom stalls better than ads shown on television. The advantages to corporations are that there are few distractions in bathroom stalls, ads are usually unexpected, and this is a cheaper way to reach out to consumers compared to billboards, TV commercials, bus ads, etc. Business owners also benefit, in that they receive some money from advertisers from a space that does not interrupt their operations and would otherwise remain an empty space. So everyone wins, except us. The notion of privacy and freedom of expression is slowly seized by large corporations so they can continue to construct us as passive beings. The positive thing is that we are not passive beings. We’re angry, happy, and sad. We agree and we disagree. We will not be silenced by ads telling us to go to another country or to lose weight. Let’s all take out our sharpies and let them for once listen to us!