Devil Horns, Spider Eyes, and Other Wonders of the Sub-Natural World

A failed investigation

By Kylie Heider

How do you track something that doesn’t have a trail? That is the question I asked myself as I began my search for the message behind the street tags that has been popping up everywhere. They have been spotted at bus stops, under overpasses, bridges, and on the sides of buildings. They vary between black, white, red, and blue, and they look like something different to almost every person you ask. Some say the strange symbols resemble devil horns, while others say bull horns. Some see eyes of Spiderman, or perhaps just an interpretive typeface of two capital “D”s, one facing backward. Some are accompanied by a small “restricted” copyright symbol in the corner, and some are not. Some are large and some small. Tasked with finding a meaning in these tags, I wondered where to start. I debated stalking out a location that the tags were commonly found at, for example, under the 10th Avenue Bridge. However, this was potentially dangerous. I wondered about driving around the city and mapping the tags where I saw them, or where I remembered seeing them, just to get an idea of the scope of the tag. This seemed heavily time consuming and unattainable with my no-car lifestyle and nonexistent knowledge of driving. I resigned to a more homebound sleuthing state: the internet. I was hopeful; these things were all over the place, right? Surely someone would have figured something out. Unfortunately, this too proved to be futile. I searched Instagram, looking up hashtags like “#devilhorns” and “#spidereyes” and “#spidermaneyes,” searching various locations around Minneapolis. Bone dry. I decided to go to the place where mysteries are solved: Reddit. Here, the sole instance of the tag appearing on the internet occured. On the University of Minnesota subreddit, user KingCricket98 published a post that read, along with a picture of the tag, “I’ve seen these on campus and around Minneapolis, any idea what they are?” No one did. The meager comments only took note of how often they are seen around UMN campus and debated the depiction of the tag. 

So that’s where my search ended. The only thing I can theorize with confidence is that, based on reports of the tags in and around the U of MN campus area, it is not unlikely that the culprit is a student. Perhaps they are reading this now. In truth, my search was not extensive by any stretch of the imagination. I had never even thought of trying to track down the meaning or origin of graffiti, and I didn’t know where to start. I honestly didn’t know if I should really start anywhere. I wondered about the ethics of it. Was it invasive to try to insert myself in a space where I don’t belong? To try to expose someone who could potentially be prosecuted for doing something illegal like vandalism? While it is not a culture or experience I am privy to, I don’t think the purpose of tagging is for everyone to know who you are. In this instance in particular, the appeal of these symbols seems to come from the tension of its mystery and its commonality. If the average person walking on the street knew the meaning behind these tags, they would  probably lose most of their power. This particular tag, and most graffiti for that matter, functions as the disruption of public space. To unravel the intention behind it also unravels this disruption. The tag asks the viewer to reconsider the norms and values that they hold for the physical world as they move through it. It is an expression that relies on slyness and an ironic anonymity, a signature without a body to go with it, the phantom of a person. It transcends other forms of art in that it does not beg for meaning. If you know, you know. So maybe it's better not to search.