A few months ago Chad O'Connell, an art director at a New York advertising firm, saw the NYC subway's new courtesy campaign and decided he could do better.
"They address some of the weird stuff people do on the subway," O'Connell told BuzzFeed News, "but they didn't even get close to how weird it can actually be."
@MTA #CourtesyCampaign targets nail clippers & subway dancers
O'Connell, a resident of Brooklyn, spent days researching the strangest and most horrible subway stories he could find, and made his own "Crucial Courtesies" campaign for his favorite seven.
He posted the results on a Tumblr.
O'Connell considered putting his pieces alongside the official MTA ones, but decided against vandalism.
"Instead I've been trying to get people to tweet these ideas and their own at the MTA with the hashtag #CrucialCourtesies," O'Connell said. "It would be so cool if the MTA started adding these crazier stories."
Some are not quite SFW.
He also illustrated the more common – but no less shocking – subway occurrences.
And also the grossest.
O'Connell is considering adding to the Crucial Courtesies series with stories people have told him online. "A person responded to my series saying they saw a man eat a whole wheel of cheese on the train," O'Connell said. "That would make a great one."
