THE K IN MY NAME STANDS FOR KING GOOD GUY BORIS GRAFFITI ARTWORK

The Name, The Face, and The Ego Trip (And How Intention Changes Everything)

KIND REGRETS | Episode 2: The Name: Identity, Ego Trip & Graffiti as a Game

Listen Episode 2 on Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts

Read Time: 8 min.

Welcome back to Kind Regrets.

In the first episode, we established the core philosophy of this space: looking back not to live in shame, but to extract lessons. That’s why I chose the name - it’s a reflective play between “Kind Regards” and “No Regrets” acknowledging the past while moving forward.

In this second episode, I am going straight into the heart of graffiti identity: The Name - The most powerful tool a writer possesses. It's at the beginning, the middle, and too often, at the end of the journey. I am going to deconstruct it, defining it not as a romantic artistic signature, but as a strategically constructed Avatar in a psychological game of dominance.

Graffiti: The Video Game Theory

(Avatar and Rules)

To understand the psychology of graffiti, you must first reframe it entirely. It is not merely an art form - it is a meticulously crafted, self-imposed Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).The moment you choose a name, you are creating an alter ego, an avatar for a second life. This second life operates under its own rules, its own physics, and its own metrics of success.

“The Name is the Face”

Why is this avatar necessary? Because the essence of traditional graffiti is anonymity. We hide the face (not me, but most of the writers). We separate it from the regular personal life. As a result, “The name is the face.”

In other celebrity cultures, you see the character's face, you hear their voice, you get to know their personality. In graffiti, the letters themselves are the physical representation of the persona. You see throw-ups, pieces, and characters, but never the person behind them. The tag becomes the visible icon of a hidden, separate personality.

"The name is the physical representation of this persona... You see letters, you see pieces, you see throw-ups... The name is the icon, the visual of the personality.”

This identity is powerful precisely because it is untethered from the consequences of the real world (at least in the writer’s mind). It is a persona you can turn on and off, a mask that allows for behavior the real-world self would never contemplate.

The Constant and The Contract

The name is the one constant. Styles may change, crews may change, techniques evolve, but the name is your anchor. This name is so fundamental to the experience that it often “bleeds” into real life - friends may call you by your tag, cementing the identities crossover.

The "Game" is addictive because it provides a clear-cut metric for success: omnipresence. The goal is to dominate the visual landscape, to achieve an unavoidable level of saturation. The better you are at spamming your name, the more successful you are in the game. This brings us to the core issue: the motivation.

The Festival of Narcissism

If we analyze the intention behind the act of writing in the streets, it becomes clear that graffiti is fundamentally a competitive sport. It is, quite literally, the "Olympics of Egomaniacs."

The impulse is rarely purely artistic. It’s a primal desire for recognition, for dominance, and for visibility. It is a festival of the narcissism where every single person is convinced they are the most important player on the server.

The Hip-Hop’s Ego Trip

This competitive spirit is not unique to graffiti. It is baked into the very DNA of Hip Hop culture. If we consider graffiti as an element of this culture (debate incoming). Look at the other elements: rap battles, breakdancing circles, DJ clashes. All are rooted in a confrontational, high-ego desire to prove one's superiority.

"Hip-hop is measuring each other's ding-dongs.”

This ego-driven competition dictates that success is often measured not by skill or aesthetic quality, but by sheer quantity, or as we define it here, spam.

Street Spam: Graffiti is Unsolicited Branding

We need to call it what it is: a writer’s primary activity is not art - it is unsolicited branding. An uncomissioned advertising. The public didn't ask for your message. They didn't sign up for your mailing list. Yet, we bomb their commute, their infrastructure, and their landscape with our personal logo. The act is one of forcing your personal brand upon the collective, driven by the psychological reward of visibility. The moment you achieve saturation, you feel an immense hit of adrenaline and power. You are temporarily omnipresent.

Reputation over Skill

Whether you enter graffiti with competitive intentions or not, you eventually realize the truth: this is a competitive sport. In this game, reputation functions like experience points in an RPG - You are building a name's reputation. And I've observed that in the graffiti world, people often consider more your reputation than your style or accomplishments. Reputation encompasses everything - your style contributes to it, but so does your character and attitude.

Is this writer loyal? A snitch? Someone who goes over other people's work? Someone who steals or betrays friends? Is this writer helpful, supportive of the culture, trustworthy? When graffiti writers discuss someone, they immediately attach labels based on reputation.

The reputation you build becomes inseparable from the name.

The Paradox of the Name and the Delusion of Immortality

One of the psychological fuel for the graffiti game is the pursuit of immortality. Writers believe that by tagging their name in concrete and steel, they are defying death and ensuring their legacy. This is a powerful, yet ultimately fragile, illusion.

The name is a paradox: it is the vehicle for destructive behaviour, but also the catalyst for profound human connection.

The Roots vs. The Fruit

The roots of the game might look often ugly to an outsider: destructive intent, rebellion, and a misplaced desire to be against to the system. But the fruit can be beautiful - it gives you long lasting friendship and companionship, community, travel, and an open-minded perspective.

The name is what facilitates the tribe, but the tribe can distract you from the true meaning of your actions.

When a Tag Becomes a Memory

To understand the real meaning of a tag, one must look beyond the writer's ego. Because graffiti does provides the sense of immortality. When you paint, you believe or hope that something will remain after you're gone. You invest paint, time, effort, creating pieces with the intention they'll outlast you.

I experienced the power of permanence in a profound way while working with a French director in Paris on a documentary. We interviewed a mother whose son had died young in an accident - a devastating story. But what struck me most powerfully was when she held her son's sketches and said, "Now when I walk the city and see his tags, I see a memory. I'm so happy some of them remain."

For her, graffiti's meaning transformed completely.

For me too. I joke with people sometimes: "Yeah, when you see my name somewhere in the middle of nowhere, remember me. When I'm dead, it's there for you to remember." It's simultaneously a delusion and something beautiful - something you can hold onto.

The tag’s meaning shifts the moment it leaves your hand. For the writer, it’s an ego trip. For others, it can be a source of discomfort, a symbol of crime, or, in rare cases, a beautiful moment of memory. The goal is to evolve your intention so that the act is less about ego and more about leaving a message of value.

The Pivot to Accountability (Killing the Ego)

How do you win a game fueled by ego? You don't. You transcend it.

For me, staying locked in the anonymity of the tag was a dead end. I made the conscious decision to kill the ego and start using my real name: Boris.

This was not a re-branding exercise - it was an act of radical accountability.

The Legal Liability

There's a pragmatic side: the name becomes a legal liability. When your alias is constantly associated with crimes in police files, you are almost trapped. Each tag inflates the total cost of the penalty. The police are waiting for you to make a mistake.

But the philosophical reason is far more important. By taking off the mask and standing behind my actions with my real name, I forced myself to be responsible for the consequences. I could no longer hide behind the avatar and indulge in the destructive impulse.

"The basic logic for me was to stop using a pseudonym, to take off the mask, to take responsibility, and to stop doing pointless vandalism.”

I decided to embrace the name my parents gave me. I reasoned that what I was doing wasn't wrong. I could stand behind it as a man taking responsibility for his actions. I wouldn't hide behind a mask. And critically, I wanted to focus more on the message than the name.

This decision had practical dimensions too. I was in Paris, where authorities tried and failed miserably to make your graffiti name function like a passport, a legal identity. If your name was Boris, they'd try to charge you for every piece of graffiti with that name on it.

This transition marked the moment when graffiti stopped being a game to win and become a language to use.

Final Word: Intention and Mentorship

The ultimate free bad advice is simple: Focus on intention.

Do not chase the high of fame or the delusion of immortality. The energy you spend on building your reputation or spamming spots should be redirected toward asking: Why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve?

Graffiti might be structurally narcissistic. It might be an ego Olympics at its core. But your intentions determine whether it becomes a toxic competition or something that builds community, creates lasting bonds, and provides purpose.

The structure doesn't have to define the outcome. Good intentions yield good fruits. That's been true in my life, and I believe it's true for this culture as a whole.

The question isn't whether graffiti is an ego trip. It is. The question is: what will you do with that energy? Will you let it consume you, or will you transform it into something meaningful?

Your name is your face in this game. Make sure what that face represents is something you can stand behind.

The game only changes when the players’ intentions shift from ego to growth.

Thanks for reading. See you in the next episode.

Kind regrets,

Boris

This article was synthesised from Episode 2 of Kind Regrets podcast by Good Guy Boris, exploring the intersection of graffiti culture, ethics, and effort.