Santiago, Chile — On Mar. 23, a Finnish tourist decided to visit one of Easter Island’s famous mystical statues (called Moais) and break off a souvenir. The tourist, Marko Kulju, climbed up one of the massive and ancient Moais, chopped a piece of an ear off — allegedly with a chisel — and ran. He was later caught because the island is a small place, and a local woman who saw the crime recognized his numerous tattoos.

By the time I arrived three days later, the island was abuzz with rumors about Kulju. Was he drunk? Was it planned? Did he actually have a chisel? To put it mildly, Finland’s reputation took a beating at the hands of locals, who already have a love/hate relationship with tourists. The mayor even suggested Kulju should lose his ear in retribution. Under Chilean law, Kulju faces up to seven years in prison, but it seems likely he will get off with only a heavy fine.

I am sick of idiots like Kulju screwing things up for all the tourists who actually plan to sightsee without doing any pillaging. In the past, tourists have carved initials into other Moais and petroglyphs in Easter Island. At almost any tourist destination around the world, vandalism is omnipresent. In Egypt, tourists are no longer able to walk freely through the Giza pyramids because of all the stealing and carving. In Italy, Florence’s famous Duomo di Santa Maria del Fiore is plastered with recently etched initials.

What’s more, the vandalism is not limited to blockbuster tourist spots. In my first week in Chile, I hiked to a glacial lake several miles from the nearest small town. Despite the isolation and the natural setting, someone had decided to strive for immortality by spray painting lovey-dovey initials onto a large rock close to the lake. In Santiago, I climbed to the top of an old fort in a park that overlooks the city and again, initials were everywhere.

It’s one thing to try and take a piece of your trip home with you. Though still unforgivable, it makes sense at a basic level: people like to own things. But I just don’t understand the popularity of carving or painting or otherwise inscribing initials. Okay, maybe at your desk in high school or your cubicle in Green Library, you got really bored. And maybe you read The Giving Tree and wanted to carve something somewhere to profess undying devotion. But really, an irreplaceable piece of history? A national park? A pyramid?

When the gesture is one of love, the initials are in a neat pair like SD + EF, sometimes inside a heart. How romantic. “This is how much I love you,” the guy carving says to his girlfriend. “Look, I’ll destroy something just to show the depth of my caring. I’ll make sure that everyone who sees this famous object/place from now on knows about SD + EF. They won’t know who we are, and they might be a little upset, but I love you so much I’ll do it anyway, and that way our love will be immortal.”

Given the macho underpinnings to this logic, I assume males are doing most of the carving, but it wouldn’t keep happening if it wasn’t working. “Aww, how sweet,” the response must go from the girlfriend. “You’d cut into a priceless artifact for me?” Sweet indeed.

When there is only one set of initials carved into something, the psychological declaration is a bit sadder. “I’m important!” it screams. “I may not have done anything else, but this one time I toured [fill in a destination] and carved my name there. Here’s the proof. Look I even carved the year next to my name. Now if they ever write a Wikipedia article about me, it will have something to say!”

There are better ways to find souvenirs, express love and escape anonymity. And of course, vandalism is not only the sphere of tourists and historical locations. But still, every time a tourist does something stupid it has a doubly negative impact for those of us who are to follow. If the damage was serious, we are forced to view the tarnished version of whatever we traveled to see, and we face the suspicion created by the last idiot who carved his initials.

As much as it sucks to have areas cordoned off, to have park rangers or museum employees watch with an extra careful eye, to be immediately stereotyped as all the bad things previous tourists have been, I’m starting to identify with the concern. Better that than initials everywhere.

MJW is studying in Santiago, Chile this quarter. Contact him at Wilkerson "at" stanford.edu.