It seems mostly like induced demand from the equipment being cheap and readily available these days. People have always regretted their tattoos after getting older, but it was never a thing in the 90s or 2000s to just go down to a local clinic and have it done for a few hundred bucks. It was something you just heard about rich/famous people doing every now and then.
If there is anything that's a constant in life, it's that nothing is a constant. Tattoos have a permanence that is rarely matched by one's character - many people don't seem to realise that.
None of the millennials I know who got tatted during the height of the fashion wave match the character* of being tattooed. And some of them really went all out. Truly amazing what the desire to conform to our tribe will make us do to ourselves.
(*statistically a drug addict, criminal or prostitute)
Maybe I shouldn't be telling on myself like this, but I think tattoos look really cool and the only reason I'm not getting one is because how many people look down on them.
I knew a man who had been in the Navy, in the Pacific, during WW2. Not many men of his generation had tattoos, but most of the ones who did were sailors, and he was no exception. Large tattoo on his forearm: a jester, with the hat and bells, like from a deck of cards.
I knew another man of that generation with a number tattooed on his wrist. He never talked about it.
This is why I likely will never get a tattoo of any kind, other than the fact that I simply have no desire for one. Some people become themselves early in life, but I feel like I different person every year that goes by. I don't even like the kinds of clothes I used to wear not that long ago, so I know I would soon hate any tattoo I'd get.
It all depends. I got a couple of tattoos 20 years ago and I’m not that guy. But seeing those tattoos connects me to who I used to be, and even if I wouldn’t go get them now, I could never regret them.
It also helps that my tattoos are wholly original, i.e. not based on some trend, and that I chose the subject matter specifically because I didn’t think it was possible to hate it later on (a dinosaur and a 4d hypercube). Like, am I ever going to hate dinosaurs? I’ve loved them for 40ish years already.
I feel the same way about my self-inflicted scars. People who do not have one do not like to talk about it, but there can be beauty in them, in a way. It is kind of a taboo, I would say.
I kind of want a tattoo because I'd like to know what it feels like to get one. I don't think I'll ever get one though. I have a hard enough time deciding what kind of art to hang on my walls.
You can get one that's only visible under UV light, but given the topic here it might be relevant to know that these are much harder to remove and also if they age they may become visible under normal light and/or stop fluoresced under UV light.
I got a ‘meaningful’ tattoo on my 18th birthday. I don’t fully relate to it with the same passion 20 years later. I still like it though for different reasons. It’s a snapshot of who I was and what I stood for when I got it. Tbh I don’t regret it at all and mostly forget I even have the thing. I think I’m lucky to have a mindset to appreciate that permanence, a lot of people end up regretting ‘meaningful’ tattoos once they lose their meaning.
It depends on one's outlook. I know people who's attitude is both "boy that was a dumb tattoo to get at 18" and "dumb 18 year old me is still me, and I don't want to remove that tattoo any more that I want to remove that part of myself".
Obviously circumstances may change if the tattoo is offensive.
Your second perspective captures my personal take. I feel indifferent about the actual ink at this point. It’s more about a personal/symbolic mark of who I am, who I was, maybe who I’ll be - all the same person. No regrets.
Yup, that's what all my tattoos are. They're markers of things I've done, experiences had, and mistakes made.
If when I get older and those memories mean less to me, the tattoos will become markers of who I was and what was once important to me. I could see myself getting some of them removed, but I don't think it's likely.
Because of the way my brain is, it's difficult for me to stay attached to the past. Having permanent marks on my body makes the past unforgettable, inescapable. I like to think it's made an improvement on the person I've become, but of course it's impossible to know.
You know, as much as I want to agree, it feels a bit shallow to look at life that way. I've got tattoos, sometimes people ask me "What does this represent to you?" and honestly I never really know what to say because I don't overthink them. What I do remember is where I was, what I was doing, and my whole vibe back then. It's a cool reminder that nothing stays the same and that I'm a different person now. It's kind of like asking your grandpa the story behind a scar he has.
Now lately I feel like the speed on which trends are born and die, the non-stop over sharing, and that constant itch for "what's next" is really pushing us all to become these kind of formless blobs, scared to show any real "edges." For example:
- Cars all kinda look the same now and are mostly some shade of grey. Same deal with phones and pretty much all tech.
- Buying clothes with bland colors with almost no originality with the expectation that it will probably be in the bin the next season.
- The whole clean girl aesthetic on putting in a ton of effort to look like you put in zero effort.
- And don't get me started on how sad beige parenting is not a joke
You only live once, there's no scoreboard at the end. Just do what you want with your life. More often than you'd probably like to admit, nobody really cares that much anyway.
I got my tattoo when I was about half my current age. I wasn't too worried about not liking it later -- I'd wanted the idea for a few years, and I figured that it'd be a good memory if I changed later.
I didn't change later. I had another artist expand the design about ten years ago. And while it had some meaning when I got the first round, I've realized over time that it means a whole lot more to me as I've learned more about myself.
But when someone asks me what it means, I just shrug it off. I'm not sharing that kind of thing with people.
I approach it the same way. My tattoos don't "mean" anything, and honestly I find the ones that have "meaning" to not be that great. My tattoos do remind me of where I was in my life. I also stick to American traditional style since they tend to age pretty well.
I agree with you about overthinking, but the second half of your comment is very broad-brush. If you went back in time to any era of vehicles or other artistic objects, you'd find they all had a similar feel reminiscent of the era. There are plenty of cool modern cars/clothes/etc.! For example, look at Toyota with their wacky 3 cylinder turbo AWD Gazoo Racing Corolla or Hyundai with their angular Ioniq. I will say the arms race going on re: vehicle height/size is a pox on car design, kind of like sealed beam headlight requirements and afterthought add-on 5mph bumpers were a pox on car design in their respective eras.
That's a bit of a non sequitur and assumes white/black/gray = boring isn't it?
> Do you disagree with that?
100%. It's all about the entire package, of which color is only part. Aesthetics are always subjective, but, for example, the Ioniq I mentioned definitely (subjective :P) looks best in gray.
Yeah when people ask me what my tattoos mean I give the truthful answer - owls are cool as hell, I like the horror/skull aesthtic, gas masks look badass etc.
>> It's kind of like asking your grandpa the story behind a scar he has
I'm old enough to be a grandpa for many of the people here, I've got a lot of scars, and none of those scars are from going to a scar store, getting out my wallet, and saying, "hey! give me a cool scar, scar artist!".
The scars I have on my body are from moments in my life where everything went wildly fucking wrong. If you want that in your life, something is wrong with you, same as it was for me, and I don't what to tell you other than you don't have to pay money for it. You can get scar tissue for free.
I was a member of a group at church that was populated mostly by old retired White men. And many of them were veterans of various military services. They were not the kind of guy who tooted their own horns. They often struggled with various disabilities.
One fellow I was very close with, had served in Vietnam, and had significant pieces of shrapnel/flak embedded in his skull that they couldn't pick out. He sometimes had minor memory lapses and PTSD bad enough to require sleep medication, every night.
Another fellow was doing well and had a construction job still, but noticeable scarring all along his forearms. And he never made a big deal about it or anything, until once we were all gathered for a meal, and our pastor pointed out that this fellow had run back into a burning building to rescue someone and his arms were set on fire from that incident, and he sustained significant damage to them, but in the end it was indeed an act of heroism and unselfish bravery to save another human being.
It was very humbling to be given this new perspective on guys whom I barely knew. There is definitely a story behind every scar on someone's body. Some of those stories may be quite eye-opening!
I got inked twice before I made a commitment to my third tattoo on my wrist so it would be plainly visible. I committed to never working with or for someone who refused to hire a person because of something like a tattoo. Sometimes the commitment goes beyond the ink on the skin.
I think for some people, at least myself, tattoos are a narrative, it's such a bizarre process, half art and half science, that each session, wether it was in a punk house with no electricity or an upscale art gallery on the other side of the world gets ingrained a little deeper. They're like little time machines, I can remember who I was, where I was, who I was with. And I'm guessing I'm in the minority here, but I can't stand the look of a fresh clean tattoo, the stick and poke in a dorm room, the 20 year old one done in a studio that wasn't too concerned with checking ids, the one that was done way too deep, in the dark, and healed into a puff sticker like scar consistency, that's what I love. I've considered a few times going in and getting some of my more visible ones removed, and the occasional must wear long sleeved shirt wins every time, no matter what I gain or lose, I like my garbage art time machines
I don't have tattoos because I could never commit to having any specific image permanent on my skin. I have considered getting a public key tattooed though.
The idea that your character is able to be quantized to a moment in time instead of the history of your life is bizarre to me.
For the vast majority of people who haven’t suffered some kind of brain damage, life is append only and the current state is completely dependent on the history. You have markers of your past good and bad decisions all over you.
It seems like the market has filled up with body art that fits someplace between permanent tattoos and the little toy temporary tattoos that are basically stickers. Stuff that lasts for weeks, months, or years before fading away. Encouraging people to try those out first before committing to something permanent would be wise.
It turns out that those ephemeral tattoos did not fade out in time and are extremely problematic when trying to laser remove them. The company that originally started that tech is gone, and the "ephemeral" tattoos they created are still around.
It used to be that tattoos were a marker of some combination of lower class, military, sports, etc. But you'd pretty much never see them in general on most middle/upper-class professionals. That changed with developers etc. over the past couple decades. Not shocking that might reverse. Not personal commentary but just an observation.
Yea, their objective is to optimize labor costs and increase profit margins. It is an objective that is diametrically opposed to our well being in the long run.
Don't confuse a state of affairs where the capitalists are having difficulty replacing us (thus reducing pressure on us) with a general beneficence, their relationship to us is purely transactional and we are disposable. Have solidarity with your class.
I think society's attitude towards people with tattoos ebbs and flows over time too. I think with the recent political happenings we might be in a bit of an ebb.
There's probably a lot of intersection. Don't really disagree. Though counter-culture folks I went to school with in engineering/etc. still didn't tend to have tattoos.
I think a majority, perhaps nearly all, of my daughter's friends have tattoos (early 20s). Not huge ones... a little flower on the ankle, etc. This is in the Pacific Northwest, though. They really got big here, to the point I agree it's a little rebellious of a young person to not get a tattoo.
Watch An Officer and a Gentleman sometime. (Pretty decent movie.) There's a scene where the Richard Gere character shows up to training (I guess) and he has a tattoo covered up. As I recall the drill sergeant rips the bandage off and basically mocks him for it with the implication being that officers don't have tattoos.
I really like my tattoos but this is why I've chosen to have them in easily covered areas.
Tattoos say different things to different people in different times. Right now tattoos are fine in most white collar settings but this won't always be the case.
more people have tattoos that, given other social indicators, would probably not have gotten (as many) tattoos as they might have in the past. it's definitely been something of a fad over the last decade or so that seems to be ebbing a bit (at least according to friends of mine who tattoo - bad for them, but that's life).
we saw the same thing over a shorter period with stretched ears - a lot of people did it at the height of its popularity but have since let their piercings close (or resorted to surgery if they were past that point).
tbh, i don't really care if "squares/normies"
get tattoos or weird piercings (or get them removed), but i do kinda welcome the return to "otherness" that it used to confer. i like having tattoos and piercings for their own sake. even though 99% of my tattoos are extremely stupid and i wouldn't get them today, i'm happy to keep them as a reminder of where i was in life when i got them.
> tbh, i don't really care if "squares/normies" get tattoos or weird piercings (or get them removed)
EDIT: I think I misinterpreted your statement, but I'll leave my response anyway just because. I thought you meant "get" in the sense of understanding them.
I appreciate you saying this offhand for some reason, even though I don't think you were trying to give credit to others.
Naturally, I am both liberal and perhaps libertarian in the sense that I think people have a right to get tattoos and I don't have a problem with people having them.
What has long bugged me though are the numerous people who clearly get body modifications in order to attract validation from others. If one isn't in their unspoken club, they become super defensive and accusatory.
For example, as much as I have no interest in getting tattoos, I will compliment people on their tattoos that I appreciate. When inevitably asked in response why I don't have any tattoos, I tell the other person that I simply have no desire for one. When that answer isn't accepted, I sometimes (mistkenly) admit that I don't like them in general. This triggers a lot of tattoo people, even though my choice of words doesn't actually suggest that I hate all tattoos or their tattoos.
On an even more intense level, it's verboten in my society, as a man, to openly state a preference for women without tattoos. I never bring it up unless prompted, yet I often get so much blowback for this. The word "judgmental" always gets slung my way. It's pretty clear that something else is going on here when people get this defensive over something that is fairly trivial.
Could be that they're understanding your preference as a normative statement. You're probably not the first person to mention how they would look better without tattoos, even if that's not exactly what you meant.
Some people like to show off their new tattoos and ask my opinion, or I will just compliment someone on a tattoo they have that caught my notice. And sometimes that leads to "You got any tattoos?" or "You ever gonna get a tattoo?"
As far as the woman thing goes, guys have a tendency to talk about women, and sometimes the topic of tattoo'd women comes up. I've been on this planet for nearly 40 years, so while this isn't really a common conversation, I've encountered it enough times to notice recurring themes.
The article touches on this only briefly at the end, but I wonder whether the popularity of tattoos is beginning to wane. After more than a decade of a cultural embrace of tattoos, we could be starting to see the fashionability of tattoos decline (and then I'm sure it'll be back in a couple decades).
But this is also why face tattoos are more popular. Face tattoos are still considered “hardcore” of whatever. Before just having a tattoo anywhere made you an outsider. But then emo happened and everything that was cool was commoditized and now the modern world is the way it is. Or something. I don’t know how you feel but I think we should blame the world on emo.
Mike Tyson's is very clean, but personally I just don't like "tribal" tattoos unless you're Maori or part of a cultural that does them. They seem more cohesive somehow.
I will wait to get tattoos until the state of the art advances to a point where you can regular change them out without much hassle, and they look just like the real thing.
I got a tattoo to cover a birth mark a while ago. I used to be nervous about people seeing the mark before, now I enjoy people looking at my tattoo instead.
I think tattoos are cool because it's art where your body is the canvas. Pure human evolution really. I'll be getting more tattoos soon.
Flat birthmarks are fine. I was told you can’t tattoo over raised ones, although I suspect this might be more about detecting skin cancer than anything else.
Yea my tattoo artist told me that some skin surfaces can't be tattooed but mine was just a weird looking pattern. Could be about skin cancer or macrophages that feed on the ink.
I've seen a video of one person doing birth mark tattoos with pigment that matches their skin color to effectively disappear them. I'm sure if you got a tan or something they would look like a color negative of the originals but for casual appearance that might be something worth looking into.
I got it covered but I thought about getting a more elaborate design at some point. I wanted something minimalist as my first tattoo to see how it does. Now that I like tattoos I'm gonna experiment more in the future.
It's definitely doable and could be a boost in confidence for some people, like it was for me.
During the height of my adolescence, I had pretty bad acne and jokingly wanted to get a constellation tattoo connecting the pock marks to distract from it.
You get a tramp stamp because your drunk friends decided it was a good idea. You get a sleeve when you've thought about it for a while, and budgeted for a $1500+ expenditure. I think it's a different mindset.
The only people I know who got a sleeve lazered off did it because they wanted to replace it, not because they wanted to be ink free.
And I only recently got my first tattoo around 40. Not sure this article makes it clear what is driving this trend? Tattoos come and go out of style even in my own life (when i was young to young adult, it was bad, then it was good, now seemingly bad again). If I don’t like my tattoo in 20 years I really don’t care, you can always replace it with more work if it fades. Probably will get more. It isn’t very expensive. It’s a form of expression I can’t really get anywhere else - I like looking at my tattoo and dont particularly care what anyone thinks of it.
I'm 40 now, and have always wanted a tattoo but could never decide what I should get. I was thinking something linux or maybe vmware related because I love both of those things. Very glad I didn't get anything vmware related now!
A tattoo of proprietary software or really any company seems kind of sad and dystopian to me. Nothing against vmware in particular. I recall an old meme collage of a bunch of people with Apple tattoos that was not putting them in a favorable light.
Maybe a Sun logo could be an exception, they're not around anymore, so it feels more like nostalgia or grieving instead of "this company owns me". I wasn't around/aware when Sun was, also, so they feel more like a mythical thing from a story to me than an old company.
Same here, I want a tattoo, but can't decide what is something I care about enough to get on my skin forever.
I've kinda sorta decided on a hex/honeycomb pattern so I can fill each hex with e different thing. That would keep it consistent (can't stand the style of tattoos where they're just slapped haphazardly everywhere) but still variable enough.
This, back in the days having a tatoo was a symbol of rebellion against a norm. Now that everyone and his mother is law has one, it has become a symbol of submission to the norm and establishment.
A friend of mine tattoos in my city and we were talking about this a few weekends ago. He mentioned three related things that contribute to removals he’s aware of.
Tattooing got immensely popular and a lot of people who shouldn’t not have taken on apprentices took on apprentices. The quality of apprenticeships dropped and artists were getting put on skin way before they were ready. Many artists never learned proper technique or placement.
Styles changed so people were getting their first tattoos in visible places. When he started tattooing, artists wouldn’t do a first tattoo somewhere visible unless the client had a very very good reason. It always took dialogue. Now you can walk into a shop, point to flash and get it out on your neck or hand.
And finally, realism hit tattoos.
So in his opinion. You take a lot of artists who shouldn’t have been putting ink into grapefruits not skin. Put them to them to work on highly visible realistic looking art on people who don’t know enough about tattoo to know whether they’re making a mistake. And you end up with a lot of people staring at visible art that didn’t heal properly, with blown out lines and poor placement.
I didn’t get tattooed until after another good friend had finished his apprenticeship- I’m very glad I waited because I love my art and will slowly keep getting more. But I feel bad for people who fell into that trap of getting an unqualified artist to put bad art on their bodies.
> Not sure this article makes it clear what is driving this trend?
Technology improvements leading to better removal quality, reduced removal times, less post-procedure pain, and better word-of-mouth response is a suggestion.
Up until the 2010's the range of Quality(Q)-switched lasers was the main tool available. They produce pulse widths in the nanosecond range and can remove multiple colors. Big improvements over the Argon and CO2 laser systems from pre-80's / 90's with less scarring. However, often still had long, painful recoveries between sessions (depending on the tattoo).
In the 2010's, the various picosecond pulse-width laser systems came out, and they usually require less sessions than the Q-switched procedures people are used to, and the reports tend be of less pain and discomfort after the removal procedure (described like getting a bad sunburn). Probably both have resulted in better word of mouth, and larger numbers recommending getting removal.
I find it pretty damning that AI Art will not put tattoos on beautiful people(unless specifically instructed).
I think everyone knew this to be true, but we are polite to people who have tattoos.
On the flip side, there are people who claim 'I don't care what they think'. And this is just an anti-social attitude in disguise of rebellion. It genuinely doesnt matter, people make split second judgements that DO affect you, even if you claim you don't care.
I've been at busy events and decided to talk to a decently dressed person over the person wearing raggy clothing. We notice patterns, often subconsciously.
I don't have any tattoos but I'd rather be judged for something surface level than for having a belief like "let's all aspire to be the default Stable Diffusion idea of a person."
how is it anti-social to not to engage with someone whose overly judging you? seems like a pretty universal response. sure everyone has first level impressions, but I’m not going to put my energy into someone who never outgrew the child level thinking of leading head first into surface level impressions
>I’m not going to put my energy into someone who never outgrew the child level thinking of leading head first into surface level impressions
Less opportunities for you because you are (intentionally) ignorant of human nature.
As mentioned, people make split second judgements. It doesnt matter if you are the top 5 smartest people in the world, people do not have the resources to 'vet' everyone. We look at patterns and realize that people with Face tattoos are less likely to be excellent.
This is textbook idealism. That is the way the world Ought to be. That isnt how the world Is. We are shaped by experiences.
There is something a bit reinforcing on this topic. The people deliberately violating social norms claim they 'don't care'. I imagine the smartest people are aware this stuff does matter, so they don't violate social norms.
The darker the ink the more it hurts, however if you apply the expensive recommended creams beforehand it is very bareable, anyone can endure a 20 minute removal session.
Pretty much if you could do the tattoo you can get it removed, first times hurt a bit but I have vague memories that it hurt like hell when I got it done black-out drunk in Aiya Napa, Cyprus as an 18 year old as well.
If you're thinking about removing a tattoo pain should be really low on your list of considerations, I genuinely mean it (both because sessions are short and it doesn't hurt much)
> "Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
> Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.
Great article, thanks for sharing. Though what I liked about it has nothing to do with tattoos.
Towards the end he talks about how people trusted blogs and online content more because mainstream media was fake and biased.
The final paragraph:
> PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.
This is where we are now. It's even worse, I guess. Publishing online is essentially free, so they don't really have to try hard. And we are left with the work of separating the wheat out of this tsunami of chaff. The future of the Internet looks bleak TBH.
I am thinking what all that stuff written and drawn on people should tell me?
I cant even talk to them while commuting, they only stare in their phones.
What is it my business when the litte daughter was born or a half readable scribbling above the boobs is there?
I dont get many tatoos, some of them you see around the world in the same manner.
Some are complete bullshit.
But well, as long as people have money for getting and then removing them, all is fine.
My grandma used to have a copy of "The Sneetches" by Dr. Suess I read as a kid. A guy rolls into town and convinces all the sneetches critters that they ought to have a star put on their stomach to be special with a machine he built. Then when everyone gets one they don't feel special so he offers a machine to remove them. Chaos ensues.
This is one of my favorite stories, because you realize later how many things in life this applies to. Once the 'others' start doing something, the originals don't do it anymore! You see it in everything from food menus, to devices, to clothes, etc.
It's just having the maturity to realize that you don't have to stop having fun just because you're getting older
It's also important to have the maturity to realize that there is a time and place for embracing your inner child
I have a tattoo of a sword buried in molten rock on my bicep. It was kind of inspired by the bonfire from Dark Souls. I don't tend to go around showing it off at work events or whatever.
I absolutely do not regret it even though it is admittedly kind of a childish tattoo. I think it's cool. I show it off to people that I think will also think it's cool
I tried to not make an all inclusive statement, thus formulating it as "Tattoos as fashion", as I do recognize there are people happy with their tattoos, thus not subject to regret.
What I tried to get at, but wasn't clear about, is that tattoos serve a functional purpose (in your case it seems to partly be an identifier).
Then, specifically, tattoos with the function of fashion, is what likely leads to regret by the general laws of fashion. To quote "Project Runaway": "one day you're in, the next day you're out."
If those tattoo's had meaningful sentiment for the owner, and you knew that sentiment, would you view that person different than a "fashionista tattoo seeker" ?
edit : I have a few tattoo's my first at 18, my best friend killed himself, so I took his scratch he made on his guitar and make a tattoo. it's not astetic by any means but now I build a collection of memories of the people important to me who are around and meld them all together.
I like this, means the most to me. Can look horrible to others. But tattoos are not all born equal.
You are right and my answer is yes. (I elaborated my thought in another reply under my parent comment; the essence being that tattoos with the function of fashion likely lead to regret, while other tattoos don't.)
I got my entire arm blacked out like 20 years ago, back before it became a subtrend. Back when I did it I think I had only ever seen it one other place and that was some guy featured in BME. Whenever people ask me about it I tell them the truth, which is when I did it I was obsessed with taking things to their logical extreme, and blackout to me at the time was the logical extreme of tattoo, which is covering your skin in ink. I've since had my other arm done with an extremely colourful trippy design. The contrast is immediate but the story for me is one of life stages, and not just any life stages but my life stages. I don't care what the current fashion is, they're staying.
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I knew another man of that generation with a number tattooed on his wrist. He never talked about it.
It also helps that my tattoos are wholly original, i.e. not based on some trend, and that I chose the subject matter specifically because I didn’t think it was possible to hate it later on (a dinosaur and a 4d hypercube). Like, am I ever going to hate dinosaurs? I’ve loved them for 40ish years already.
It hurts a ton. It bleeds a lot
It wasn't intolerable pain, but it's not "not that bad" either
Obviously circumstances may change if the tattoo is offensive.
If when I get older and those memories mean less to me, the tattoos will become markers of who I was and what was once important to me. I could see myself getting some of them removed, but I don't think it's likely.
Because of the way my brain is, it's difficult for me to stay attached to the past. Having permanent marks on my body makes the past unforgettable, inescapable. I like to think it's made an improvement on the person I've become, but of course it's impossible to know.
Now lately I feel like the speed on which trends are born and die, the non-stop over sharing, and that constant itch for "what's next" is really pushing us all to become these kind of formless blobs, scared to show any real "edges." For example:
- Cars all kinda look the same now and are mostly some shade of grey. Same deal with phones and pretty much all tech.
- Buying clothes with bland colors with almost no originality with the expectation that it will probably be in the bin the next season.
- The whole clean girl aesthetic on putting in a ton of effort to look like you put in zero effort.
- And don't get me started on how sad beige parenting is not a joke
You only live once, there's no scoreboard at the end. Just do what you want with your life. More often than you'd probably like to admit, nobody really cares that much anyway.
I didn't change later. I had another artist expand the design about ten years ago. And while it had some meaning when I got the first round, I've realized over time that it means a whole lot more to me as I've learned more about myself.
But when someone asks me what it means, I just shrug it off. I'm not sharing that kind of thing with people.
> Do you disagree with that?
100%. It's all about the entire package, of which color is only part. Aesthetics are always subjective, but, for example, the Ioniq I mentioned definitely (subjective :P) looks best in gray.
Not everything needs a deep meaning.
I'm old enough to be a grandpa for many of the people here, I've got a lot of scars, and none of those scars are from going to a scar store, getting out my wallet, and saying, "hey! give me a cool scar, scar artist!".
The scars I have on my body are from moments in my life where everything went wildly fucking wrong. If you want that in your life, something is wrong with you, same as it was for me, and I don't what to tell you other than you don't have to pay money for it. You can get scar tissue for free.
One fellow I was very close with, had served in Vietnam, and had significant pieces of shrapnel/flak embedded in his skull that they couldn't pick out. He sometimes had minor memory lapses and PTSD bad enough to require sleep medication, every night.
Another fellow was doing well and had a construction job still, but noticeable scarring all along his forearms. And he never made a big deal about it or anything, until once we were all gathered for a meal, and our pastor pointed out that this fellow had run back into a burning building to rescue someone and his arms were set on fire from that incident, and he sustained significant damage to them, but in the end it was indeed an act of heroism and unselfish bravery to save another human being.
It was very humbling to be given this new perspective on guys whom I barely knew. There is definitely a story behind every scar on someone's body. Some of those stories may be quite eye-opening!
The Monkey's Paw: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4S8rtxPmHTA&si=v607QuxDK11...
People are simply less unique nowadays, full stop.
They symbolize a past life to me basically, and that brings meaning and unique introspection to me in a way.
For the vast majority of people who haven’t suffered some kind of brain damage, life is append only and the current state is completely dependent on the history. You have markers of your past good and bad decisions all over you.
They're pretty great for vacations and events.
It's a lengthy, expensive, and often painful process. Getting shoddy work covered might be a better deal in some cases.
Don't confuse a state of affairs where the capitalists are having difficulty replacing us (thus reducing pressure on us) with a general beneficence, their relationship to us is purely transactional and we are disposable. Have solidarity with your class.
I think I'd put "counter culture" rather than lower class.
Now it’s “counter culture” to not have a tattoo. They are so common. They have become a sign of conformity.
38% of women vs 27% of men. The number would be higher for young women.
(Also, my mom and dad both have masters degrees).
Tattoos say different things to different people in different times. Right now tattoos are fine in most white collar settings but this won't always be the case.
Fashion goes in cycles and all that.
we saw the same thing over a shorter period with stretched ears - a lot of people did it at the height of its popularity but have since let their piercings close (or resorted to surgery if they were past that point).
tbh, i don't really care if "squares/normies" get tattoos or weird piercings (or get them removed), but i do kinda welcome the return to "otherness" that it used to confer. i like having tattoos and piercings for their own sake. even though 99% of my tattoos are extremely stupid and i wouldn't get them today, i'm happy to keep them as a reminder of where i was in life when i got them.
EDIT: I think I misinterpreted your statement, but I'll leave my response anyway just because. I thought you meant "get" in the sense of understanding them.
I appreciate you saying this offhand for some reason, even though I don't think you were trying to give credit to others.
Naturally, I am both liberal and perhaps libertarian in the sense that I think people have a right to get tattoos and I don't have a problem with people having them.
What has long bugged me though are the numerous people who clearly get body modifications in order to attract validation from others. If one isn't in their unspoken club, they become super defensive and accusatory.
For example, as much as I have no interest in getting tattoos, I will compliment people on their tattoos that I appreciate. When inevitably asked in response why I don't have any tattoos, I tell the other person that I simply have no desire for one. When that answer isn't accepted, I sometimes (mistkenly) admit that I don't like them in general. This triggers a lot of tattoo people, even though my choice of words doesn't actually suggest that I hate all tattoos or their tattoos.
On an even more intense level, it's verboten in my society, as a man, to openly state a preference for women without tattoos. I never bring it up unless prompted, yet I often get so much blowback for this. The word "judgmental" always gets slung my way. It's pretty clear that something else is going on here when people get this defensive over something that is fairly trivial.
As far as the woman thing goes, guys have a tendency to talk about women, and sometimes the topic of tattoo'd women comes up. I've been on this planet for nearly 40 years, so while this isn't really a common conversation, I've encountered it enough times to notice recurring themes.
Head tattoos are quite cool too. This Youtuber's (https://www.youtube.com/@Gratitude.Driven) tattoos are pure art for example.
Ok, I do like her head tattoos.
I think tattoos are cool because it's art where your body is the canvas. Pure human evolution really. I'll be getting more tattoos soon.
It's definitely doable and could be a boost in confidence for some people, like it was for me.
i see more aging hipsters than ever with sleeves and they seem to keep adding, so i wonder if this is "genre" specific.
The only people I know who got a sleeve lazered off did it because they wanted to replace it, not because they wanted to be ink free.
Maybe a Sun logo could be an exception, they're not around anymore, so it feels more like nostalgia or grieving instead of "this company owns me". I wasn't around/aware when Sun was, also, so they feel more like a mythical thing from a story to me than an old company.
I've kinda sorta decided on a hex/honeycomb pattern so I can fill each hex with e different thing. That would keep it consistent (can't stand the style of tattoos where they're just slapped haphazardly everywhere) but still variable enough.
Those large gauge ear plugs didn’t age well AT ALL.
Tattooing got immensely popular and a lot of people who shouldn’t not have taken on apprentices took on apprentices. The quality of apprenticeships dropped and artists were getting put on skin way before they were ready. Many artists never learned proper technique or placement.
Styles changed so people were getting their first tattoos in visible places. When he started tattooing, artists wouldn’t do a first tattoo somewhere visible unless the client had a very very good reason. It always took dialogue. Now you can walk into a shop, point to flash and get it out on your neck or hand.
And finally, realism hit tattoos.
So in his opinion. You take a lot of artists who shouldn’t have been putting ink into grapefruits not skin. Put them to them to work on highly visible realistic looking art on people who don’t know enough about tattoo to know whether they’re making a mistake. And you end up with a lot of people staring at visible art that didn’t heal properly, with blown out lines and poor placement.
I didn’t get tattooed until after another good friend had finished his apprenticeship- I’m very glad I waited because I love my art and will slowly keep getting more. But I feel bad for people who fell into that trap of getting an unqualified artist to put bad art on their bodies.
People who got inked in the 90s tattoo boom are now wearing blurry smudges unless they were careful to minimize the fine detail.
Technology improvements leading to better removal quality, reduced removal times, less post-procedure pain, and better word-of-mouth response is a suggestion.
Up until the 2010's the range of Quality(Q)-switched lasers was the main tool available. They produce pulse widths in the nanosecond range and can remove multiple colors. Big improvements over the Argon and CO2 laser systems from pre-80's / 90's with less scarring. However, often still had long, painful recoveries between sessions (depending on the tattoo).
In the 2010's, the various picosecond pulse-width laser systems came out, and they usually require less sessions than the Q-switched procedures people are used to, and the reports tend be of less pain and discomfort after the removal procedure (described like getting a bad sunburn). Probably both have resulted in better word of mouth, and larger numbers recommending getting removal.
I think everyone knew this to be true, but we are polite to people who have tattoos.
On the flip side, there are people who claim 'I don't care what they think'. And this is just an anti-social attitude in disguise of rebellion. It genuinely doesnt matter, people make split second judgements that DO affect you, even if you claim you don't care.
I've been at busy events and decided to talk to a decently dressed person over the person wearing raggy clothing. We notice patterns, often subconsciously.
Just say what you believe instead of trying to launder your opinion as generally accepted truth.
You prefer to be less beautiful and judged negatively on surface level appearances?
Yeah sureeee. I prefer to make less money, have less friends, and have less influence too /s
They don't get approached at a social event, yet they attended to meet people.
They can say as many times "Its a filter", but the filter only hurt them. Not the other way around. Its a 'Grapes are sour anyway" situation.
Less opportunities for you because you are (intentionally) ignorant of human nature.
As mentioned, people make split second judgements. It doesnt matter if you are the top 5 smartest people in the world, people do not have the resources to 'vet' everyone. We look at patterns and realize that people with Face tattoos are less likely to be excellent.
This is textbook idealism. That is the way the world Ought to be. That isnt how the world Is. We are shaped by experiences.
There is something a bit reinforcing on this topic. The people deliberately violating social norms claim they 'don't care'. I imagine the smartest people are aware this stuff does matter, so they don't violate social norms.
The first removal 5 years ago would leave me bleeding and require bandage changes for a week.
The new tattoo removal lasers leave you feeling like a sun burn for two days. No blood, no bandages.
It will become way more common.
Pretty much if you could do the tattoo you can get it removed, first times hurt a bit but I have vague memories that it hurt like hell when I got it done black-out drunk in Aiya Napa, Cyprus as an 18 year old as well.
If you're thinking about removing a tattoo pain should be really low on your list of considerations, I genuinely mean it (both because sessions are short and it doesn't hurt much)
> Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.
https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html (April 02005)
Towards the end he talks about how people trusted blogs and online content more because mainstream media was fake and biased.
The final paragraph:
> PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.
This is where we are now. It's even worse, I guess. Publishing online is essentially free, so they don't really have to try hard. And we are left with the work of separating the wheat out of this tsunami of chaff. The future of the Internet looks bleak TBH.
You just pick something really cool when you're 20, and then you resist turning into a boring person who hates what you used to like when you're 40
It's just having the maturity to realize that you don't have to stop having fun just because you're getting older
It's also important to have the maturity to realize that there is a time and place for embracing your inner child
I have a tattoo of a sword buried in molten rock on my bicep. It was kind of inspired by the bonfire from Dark Souls. I don't tend to go around showing it off at work events or whatever.
I absolutely do not regret it even though it is admittedly kind of a childish tattoo. I think it's cool. I show it off to people that I think will also think it's cool
What I tried to get at, but wasn't clear about, is that tattoos serve a functional purpose (in your case it seems to partly be an identifier).
Then, specifically, tattoos with the function of fashion, is what likely leads to regret by the general laws of fashion. To quote "Project Runaway": "one day you're in, the next day you're out."
edit : I have a few tattoo's my first at 18, my best friend killed himself, so I took his scratch he made on his guitar and make a tattoo. it's not astetic by any means but now I build a collection of memories of the people important to me who are around and meld them all together.
I like this, means the most to me. Can look horrible to others. But tattoos are not all born equal.