Are tattoos stupid?

[ertyu]

Haven't updated the counts, but tbh I am kind of surprised how negative the overall attitude is. I was left with the impression most people here lean libertarian-ish; or if not, that the chief value of this community was to find a way to lead your best life outside of "the matrix" - common assumptions that tell people how to structure their lives so they're good cogs in the machine.

Another reason why I am surprised is, around me, it is very common, very normal and a non-issue to have tattoos. Some colleagues have visible tattoos, and we're all client-facing at least some of the time. I expected the "against" arguments to be along the lines of, "cool if it sparks joy for you, but i wouldn't put my money into it because ABCD" not this prejudice and negativity. Let's hope this is an attitude that's on the way out, we've got enough BS limiting our lives, the expression of our selves, and our authentic happiness without this crap

[Ego]

Seeming vs being.

Tattoos involve appearances. They allow people to seem outside of the matrix. True outsiders have no need to seem at all. They just are.

[ertyu]

Yeah but we don't aim to be outside of the matrix just to be able to call ourselves "true outsiders," that's some "lone wolf" bs that's just as immature. We want to be outside of the matrix because we have determined that our most fulfilled life cannot happen in the matrix - that being outside it is a better way. An, ultimately, what's your most fulfilled life - the ability to live according to your values, including the ability to purue aesthetics, inside or outside, that you find resonate with you. What @horsewoman said: it can be a pretty picture that sparks joy, and if you'd like this kind of joy in your life, then more power to you. If you think people get tattooed in order to seem you're projecting.

[Bankai]

Yes, they are. They cost money, expose to health risks, you're likely not to like them after some time, removing costs money again and is not 100%, signalling, they close some doors (albeit probably also open some other doors). I don't see any rational reason to get one. And I don't see how they have anything to do with living outside matrix. It's like saying that dying your hair is leaving matrix. Most tattooed people live 'standard' lives and possibly some hate their lives and get tattoos to make themselves feel better. It's no different than watching TV to forget about work tomorrow. Better deal with root cause.

[Jason]

I was left with the impression most people here lean libertarian-ish; or if not, that the chief value of this community was to find a way to lead your best life outside of "the matrix" - common assumptions that tell people how to structure their lives so they're good cogs in the machine.

Nobody lives outside the matrix. Libertarianism is just a belief system of how the matrix should be structured. The first rule of freedom is that it is not free. The more freedom you demand or desire, the more obligations you hoist upon yourself. In that regard, I only see a tattoo as being a potential liability. On the contrary, if very little was demanded of you, either by virtue of the freedom you desired for yourself, or the freedom that was offered to you by the society in which you live, the negative potential consequences of getting a tattoo would be lessened.

[horsewoman]

In the end this whole discussion is pretty pointless, isn't it? You like tattoos - great, go get em! You don't? Equally fine.

I think I know where you might be coming from with this question @ertyu. 15-20 years ago I felt some kind of "kinship" with other heavily tattooed people. Back then the social and professional drawbacks were severe, so only a certain kind of person would willingly face them in order to get tattoos. Being heavily tattooed WAS a deliberate statement. It was more or less given that I could connect on some level with such a person.

Here in Germany the general attitude has changed pretty drastically in regard to tattoos in the last 10 years. Everyone has them, and in very visible places - even the shop and doctors assistants in our sleepy rural environment. There are literally no drawbacks to getting some, besides some snippy comments from your grandma at Christmas. I don't know anyone who has got rid of their tattoo, worst case is a cover-up of a "youthful folly" with a more sophisticated tattoo (my dad did that! ;). Since they are everywhere they pretty much lost their signal function. You often can tell by the quality how much a person was willing to spend on the tattoo, which gives you some clues about disposable income and if the person thinks further than "instant gratification", but that's about it.

IDK know where you are hailing from @ertyu, and how tattoos viewed there. So maybe that feeling of kinship was what you were looking for? I don't think this is the right place for that...

[ertyu]

Nah, wasn't looking for kinship. I guess I expected opinions to be more balanced and less prejudiced. Which, I posted in the "eternal diagreements' section so what did I expect lol. And I agree with you that tattoos are a personal aesthetic choice. I was taken aback by how judgmental people were. But again: "eternal disagreements" - I guess that's what you get.

[horsewoman]

I think you posted your question in a way that encouraged people to be negative, I suppose. "Are tattoos stupid?" - well of course they are on a purely rational level. It did not surprise me that the ERE crowd is not a heavily tattooed bunch, to be honest. I don't think people are necessarily prejudiced here, only very very rational. Which I hope I'm as well, but after reading here for a while I suppose it's a spectrum

[7Wannabe5]

I considered getting a tiny cabbage tattooed on rise of butt cheek, but I am afraid I would be allergic to the inks. I am also too cheap. I am also too uniformly pale to get away with wearing any bright colors, and too benign looking to ever evoke coolness. I mean, what sort of vibe would you get from a Cabbage Patch Doll with a sleeve of tattoos? I think only some rough combination of confusion and laughter.

[Jason]

I was taken aback by how judgmental people were.

You start a thread asking an open ended question about a topic. But apparently you just want some confirmation bias because when you don't get the response you want, you accuse people of being judgmental.

At least you fit the profile of someone who would ask a message board on whether they should get a tattoo instead of just getting one.

[jacob]

I have no tattoos.

I once semi-seriously considered getting two equal log-scales tattooed onto my respective index fingers (to serve as built in slide rule ) and various other measurements like length and angle references. Then I learned that body lengths aren't necessarily conserved over time and it would be rather stupid if those references were increasingly off as I grew older---especially the log scales, I'd be a walking joke.

I don't judge others for their tattoos unless the tattoos represent something that I do judge, like a swastika. There's a risk in getting a tattoo that others may judge adversely because you can't hide it. Both now, in the future, or in other places. This may be the case for the tattoo itself regardless of what it is. Or even the kind of tattoo. Consider the tramp stamp which was great 20 years ago but less cool now. I consider the having a tattoo risk to be higher than being judged for not having a tattoo. Various cultures have used and abused irrevocable body modifications in the past to persecute various people. Circumcision comes to mind. I prefer to retain optionality.

Tattoos might pass the most-minimalist bar, but they don't pass the most-ERE bar. For starters, they can not be sold again, so depreciation is immediate even if amortization is for life. Art on wall beats art on body. In terms of multidimensional capitals, I can think of better vectors than tattoos. However, we/ERE respect indulgences as long as they done deliberately.

[George the original one]

However, we/ERE respect indulgences as long as they done deliberately.

Exactly!

[Peanut]

Some tattoos are definitely stupid, like the Chinese or kanji character ones that were popular for a while on people who had absolutely no other connections to Asian culture. But some are definitely not. In fact I think if someone is hot they are often hotter with tattoos if they are meaningful and artistic. One can easily have too many tattoos though. And too many disparate ones. Best to map it all out ahead of time from an aesthetic perspective to create a coherent work of art.

These days I think there is very little downside in the professional and social world to tattoos and more upside if anything.

[Sclass]

Haven't updated the counts, but tbh I am kind of surprised how negative the overall attitude is. I was left with the impression most people here lean libertarian-ish; or if not, that the chief value of this community was to find a way to lead your best life outside of "the matrix" - common assumptions that tell people how to structure their lives so they're good cogs in the machine.

Right. Well part of escaping the matrix is fitting in and taking what you can get from it. How I behaved when I was in bondage is very different from how I act today. If you’re in prison and you act like a guy planning a break you will be searched relentlessly and moved to a higher security wing. You ever see what angels show up at parole hearings? What I think and what I present to my management differ. While you are in accumulating phase in ACME Corp you are not living your best life outside of the matrix. Your now a part of it.

I’m actually a little stunned by the dismissal of prejudice here. As if, well people just don’t care about that. Or, “hey that just doesn’t exist anymore after civil rights.” Sadly my experience behind closed doors it is very alive and well. Gender, race, sexual orientation, age and even tattoos can get you rejected from time to time. Sad but real.

There are some awful people out there and unfortunately we can get ahead faster by being accepted by them and joining their team. It’s kinda gross when you realize you have to look the same as them to gain admittance.

[Toska2]

"Aesthetics"

I am trying to be fit. With this motto I can put for effort every day. Being very fit has a high barrier to entry with time and effort needed.

Tattoo is a one and done, a picture someone else did in exchange for money. Low barrier to entry.

I do not wear my emotions on my sleeve nor do I let emotions control me. A tattoo is the antithesis to my being and will not get one. I do not mind tattoos until its on the hands or above the collar bone. Its just a different mindset when people get those.

[Toska2]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27023992

The more beards there are, the less attractive they become - giving clean-shaven men a competitive advantage, say scientists in Sydney, Australia.

When "peak beard" frequency is reached, the pendulum swings back toward lesser-bristled chins - a trend we may be witnessing now, the scientists say.

Their study has been published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

In the experiment, women and men were asked to rate different faces with "four standard levels of beardedness".

Both beards and clean-shaven faces became more appealing when they were rare.

The pattern mirrors an evolutionary phenomenon - "negative frequency-dependent sexual selection", or to put it more simply "an advantage to rare traits".


The same could be said for tattoos. Right now its fashionable later it might be confined to sailors and bikers.

[enigmaT120]

I just have scars, from bicycling and trail running crashes.

I have seen people with tattoos that I found beautiful but it wasn't because of the tattoos. I guess I don't mind them but don't want any myself.

[horsewoman]

I’m actually a little stunned by the dismissal of prejudice here. As if, well people just don’t care about that. Or, “hey that just doesn’t exist anymore after civil rights.” Sadly my experience behind closed doors it is very alive and well. Gender, race, sexual orientation, age and even tattoos can get you rejected from time to time. Sad but real.

There are some awful people out there and unfortunately we can get ahead faster by being accepted by them and joining their team. It’s kinda gross when you realize you have to look the same as them to gain admittance.

I think all that matrix talk is way over board. I got my tattoos pretty young at a time where there were possible repercussions. So did my husband. You put them somewhere where a basic t-shirt hid them, if you had any qualms about employers or irate parents. End of story. If you were not smart enough to think that far ahead you were probably either not smart enough to get a good job anyway or you really did not care. No big loss then.

To this day I was never disadvantaged or discriminated against for having a really large tattoo. I got every job I wanted, every guy I wanted and while my grandma was not happy about it, she did not like me less for it. Probably because I'm a decent human being, tattoos or not.

I really don't know how the atmosphere is in the US regarding ink but here in Germany it is the most normal thing. I met my dentist at the pool last year and guess what, he has large tattoos hidden beneath his lab coat. My brother in law is a PhD student, he has large tattoos. So does a shop assistant in our small town grocery story, on her arms and neck. Plus purple hair and dramatic makeup. Other family members are in leading positions in an industrial environment, with tattoos hidden beneath their suits. It goes through all layers of society, so I suppose repercussions can not be all that bad.

So while I totally understand that not everyone wants a tattoo, not getting one for fear of possible negative ramifications is in this day and age pretty pointless.

[Jason]

The question of the thread was not if tattoos are socially acceptable and if not, to what degree or in what circumstances. It was whether tattoos are stupid. I am one who does indeed think tattoos are stupid. I associate them with people who throw lit cigarettes out of cars, the GE repairman with the ponytail who came to my house and stole a can of our tuna, and well, strippers. I also think asking the question whether tattoos are stupid is stupid. I also think calling people judgmental when they answer in the affirmative to the question of whether tattoos are stupid is stupid. I don't fucking care if Albert Einstein had a tattoo of E=MC2 on his right butt cheek. I think tattoos are stupid. It wouldn't stop me from believing in gravity or calling him a certifiable scientific genius but it would make me wonder why someone who had the ability to come up with that type of shit would be so stupid as to get a tattoo.

[EdithKeeler]

I’m more of a jewelry girl myself. Buy gold, wear it, get tired of it or fashions change, sell it and get something else.

I’ve seen some amazing tattoos, but I can’t say I “like” them. But to each his own—others probably don’t like my jewelry.

I do think tats are “stupid” to the extent others can judge them and that can impact your livelihood potentially. I work in a VERY conservative field and if someone interviews for a customer facing position and has hand tattoos and such that aren’t easily covered, that’s going to impact my hiring decision. Also call me a fuddy-duddy, but there are 2 nursing assistants in my mom’s nursing home with not-beautiful neck tats. Rough looking. Every time I see them I can’t help but wonder how many times they were passed around by the Hell’s Angels, how much meth they did, and if they are now clean. It’s part of the whole picture, I guess, but a beautiful artistic tat on a wholesome and fit guy or gal is much different from a poor tattoo on a rough looking woman or man.