I still get unreasonably annoyed about that damn toilet. Because even the guy who sent it in was just being that pretentious art student who has to turn it into a debate when the layperson says “that’s not art, that’s a toilet.”

Literally the guy submitted it originally to purity test the gallery curators on if they would be “anything can be art” enough for his liking.

It was a literal shit post to start drama with his colleagues and art students are still worshipping the piss he probably christened it the water fountain with decades later.

Because these people can never seem to accept that “this doesn’t move me at all, what’s eliciting an emotional response is you trying to start a fight with me over it like I’m stupid for not being moved by this.” is an entirely valid response to their art.

It’s like the baby philosophy students who will go out of their way to verbally assault you for suggesting looking for something to throw on the trolley track instead of agreeing that there is any real moral character to be teased out from the completely realistic and grounded in the real world which animates our real world moral values scenario which involves an infinitely long train track extending into a blank featureless void and a random number of civilians tied to a fork in the track by an unknown force and absolutely nothing in the scenario is present to interact with but a lever which despite all other featurelessness of the scene is somehow able to switch the direction of the fork.

You may have noticed by now that I reserve a special level of ire for wannabe intellectuals who throw a fit when their pop-smart-people references either don’t land or turn out to not hold as much intellectual water as they want it to for ego inflating purposes.

You could just go into a comic book store.

…illicits an emotional reaction from both supporters and detractors…

A bonfire would also accomplish this.