the.com/vandal
Someone who improves a wall by making sure no one else enjoys it either.
means A person who deliberately destroys or defaces property that isn't theirs, for no better reason than spite or kicks.
from From the Vandals, an East Germanic people who in the 5th century swept through Gaul, Spain, and North Africa and famously sacked Rome in 455 CE. The sack was likely less wildly destructive than its reputation, but Renaissance writers — mourning lost classical art and texts — seized on the Vandals as the symbol of civilization-smashing barbarism. By the 1600s 'vandal' had become a common noun in English for anyone who wrecks beautiful or valuable things, the tribe's name outliving the tribe itself as a permanent insult.
- name origin
- Named after the Vandals, who barely sacked Rome that badly
- irony
- The tribe's actual sacking was relatively orderly, historians say
- legal twist
- Banksy's own vandalism now sells for millions legally
- motive
- Usually boredom or ego, rarely actual ideology