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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   32334 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Why am I (and others of an older generation) so horribly prejudiced against perfectly normal people covered head-to-toe in tattoos and piercings? Why do we cling to our outmoded beliefs that tattooing of that extent reveals low-life trashiness?

Well, cases like this, for one. Add in drugs (but of course drugs were involved) and it's a mess. Why, how can I look at the photos of this productive member of society and think to myself "that's a crazy dangerous person?"

Because he is a crazy dangerous person.

Also, while I'm at it, let me give out about the members of my own sex who hook up with crazy dangerous guys and still persuade themselves that this is the human equivalent of a velvet hippo cuddlebug pitbull who won't ever bite their own face off:

Jurors took just over four hours last month to unanimously convict Mr Scannell of the murder.

He struck Mr Baitson from behind the left knee with a sword at the Eurospar car park on Newtown Road in Cobh, Co Cork on the evening of March 15, 2024. Medical evidence revealed that such was the ferocity of the attack, the samurai sword cut through muscle, artery and bone and partially severed the leg.

... A letter from his partner, Alison Roche, was read to the court which said he was a devoted and loving father and partner.

She said her partner had battled alcohol and drug addiction issues but that everyone deserves a second chance at rehabilitation.

"Addiction is horrible," she wrote.

Mr Scannell has 11 previous convictions, one from July 2016 for assault causing harm in which he received a two year suspended sentence from Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

So let me get this straight: he's covered literally to his head in tattoos, he sells drugs, he's a drunk and a junkie, he's violent with the criminal conviction to back that up, and he just straight-up violently murdered a guy with a samurai sword over a disputed drug debt. But he's such a loving partner and father!

I honestly don't know why some women are so stupid. Yeah, loving and devoted up to the minute he swings at you with a sword, you silly girl.

Back to my main point: people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.

Head-to-toe tattoos and piercings signal massive nonconformity with social norms and a willingness to lose out on a large number of job prospects for the sake of personal expression, which naturally gets people's guards up because if someone does not conform to social norms to that extent, you have to evaluate them closely instead of just treating them as a generic person, before figuring out if they are trustworthy or not. It activates a basic "possible danger" heuristic. Massive nonconformity to social norms straddles two ends of the bell curve - it can be a sign of courage and genius, in some cases, but in probably even more cases it is a sign of things like mental illness, antisociality, narcissism, and so on. Sometimes it's both of those ends of the bell curve at the same time (I know that stretches the metaphor really far, but you know what I mean). If you meet some random person covered head-to-toe in tattoos, it is probably more likely that they are a potentially dangerous weirdo than that they are a misunderstood artist.

That said, I find some of the signalling from the right on tattoos to be very funny. Not saying that you're a right-winger, it's just that your post gives me an opportunity to mention this. About 30% of Americans have at least one tattoo. Tattoos are completely mainstream now, what isn't mainstream is full body tattoos or facial tattoos. I often see right-wingers online virtue signalling about women with tattoos. They'll see a photo of a hot woman who has tattoos and start posting stuff like "eww disgusting" or "why did she ruin her body with that". I am convinced that 99% of these guys would fuck the hot woman without any hesitation if they had a chance, tattoos or not. It's just a big virtue signalling LARP to pretend to other guys that they care more about tattoos than they actually do.

Virtue signalling on the right is an under-discussed topic, in my opinion. Highly online right-wingers virtue signal every bit as much as highly online left-wingers do.

I often see right-wingers online virtue signalling about women with tattoos. They'll see a photo of a hot woman who has tattoos and start posting stuff like "eww disgusting" or "why did she ruin her body with that". I am convinced that 99% of these guys would fuck the hot woman without any hesitation if they had a chance, tattoos or not. It's just a big virtue signalling LARP to pretend to other guys that they care more about tattoos than they actually do.

"Ugly" doesn't mean "total deal-breaker". I've been in relationships when the woman got a thing for tats. I didn't care for them, but I wasn't going to end a relationship over it. The associated decline in decision-making quality... not that was something to walk away over.

I took my daughter to a concert this weekend, and there were a ton of women with tattoos. The daughter has been expressing some interest, and I got to point out to how crappy almost all of them looked, even using the "like a toddler slapped stickers all over you" line. We had some good laughs on the way home about some of the... bold fashion choices on display.

Head-to-toe tattoos and piercings signal massive nonconformity with social norms

Not really any more. Just like beards, they used to be non-conformist now they're common enough.

Just like beards, they used to be non-conformist now they're common enough.

Hadrian has entered the chat.

Tattoos are, but head-to-toe tattoos are not. Tattoos on the neck and/or head are still very rare.

At this point tattoos signal nothing more than conformity or body dysmorphia.

Piercings are more serious, I'm not sure what they say except for 'lower social class' or maybe body dysmorphia.

I have a theory that college girls sometimes get nose rings to say 'I'm old enough now' when they're not otherwise clearly distinguished from teenagers.

This is kind of a boo outgroup post but taking it at face value:

My kid's Waldorf-inspired day care teacher has visible arm and leg tattoos. She's sweet as can be, and has two adorable kids of her own.

Plenty of people in my part of the world use tattoos to signal that they're into this archaic revival stuff (aka hippies) to prove that they're not soulless office drones. There's plenty of legitimate jobs that aren't office work, so, seems fine.

What’s funny is there’s plenty of office drones who have full sleeve tattoos now

Sure, medical professionals now as well. I assume. I haven't seen many doctors with their clothes off but I've seen a few nurses.

About those nurses, apparently they get tattoos to help manage their “trauma” which is presumably excreted from an organ somewhere within their bodies.

I know at least one doctor with full-sleeves, they were perfectly normal and worked in emergency medicine (which does have a bit of a reputation for wildcards).

I've got a single tattoo, that's usually covered up. It's really not a big deal.

I've got a single tattoo, that's usually covered up.

Was this a "transhumanist bucketlist" sort of thing?

Just wanted a tattoo because it felt cool lol. My best friend came up with a design I really liked, and on my deltoids it went. You could also consider it a getting into med school/becoming an adult gift to myself.

I notice a strong correlation between sleeve tattoos and any particularly high-octane occupation - military, police, fire, EMS, extreme sports, etc. Part macho, part masochism.

Tattoos are bad news, but not unequivocally so. In any case this guy had far more red flags than just that.

And it's not as if men don't make bad decisions about who to date pretty regularly, either.

Look at his tats, skulls, really? I'd say he looks trashy and is trying too hard but he has killed a guy, so idk. Looks like a walking trash mural to me.

people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism

The first time I encountered this term was someone making a similarly derisive comment about women who dye their hair in unnatural colours (blue, purple, pink etc.), who in my limited experience do tend to be headcases.

So let me get this straight: he's covered literally to his head in tattoos, he sells drugs, he's a drunk and a junkie, he's violent with the criminal conviction to back that up, and he just straight-up violently murdered a guy with a samurai sword over a disputed drug debt. But he's such a loving partner and father!

The contradiction is not as irresolvable as it may, at first glimpse, appear; it is far more common than one would assume that someone will be benevolent to their family or close associates, while displaying unbounded cruelty to those they have convinced themselves deserve it.

This cuts across distinctions of personal appearance; the same pattern, with substitution of variables, describes the Nazi concentration-camp guard ('he's a sub-human weakening the Aryan¹ Race'), the Soviet gulag guard ('he's a wrecker trying to derail the Revolution on behalf of the capitalists'), the United-Statesian ICE agent ('he came into our country rather than obey our command that he quietly starve or be murdered in his place of birth'), the person of hair colour and pronouns in the cancel-mob ('he's a cishet-white-male schistlord who used a term² on the naughty-no-no-word list') and the seller of disfavoured substances ('he didn't pay me the money he owed me, thus violating the Non-Aggression Principle').

Focus less on "Which personal aesthetics mean that this person is or isn't safe to associate with?" (cf. Goodhart) and more on the Parable of the Good Samaritan³, as interpreted by Fred Clark. (Patheos, April 2017)

¹...despite him being of Romani origin, and thus more Aryan than the Germans.

²...which was actually the preferred nomenclature five years ago.

³If Jesus were telling the story today, would it be the Good Palestinian?

I think guys like this one aren't particularly benevolent to their families, they just haven't turned on them yet.

The allegation is that he and the victim were friends, and that's likely; the victim was buying drugs off him, after all. But when your friend is your dealer, he's not your friend anymore.

This is also dragging in another one of my hobbyhorses: "whaaat's the haaarm in a few druuuugs, bitta fun, should be legaaaal". Well, maybe legal drugs in this instance would indeed have kept the man from getting killed by the paranoid, possibly high, 'friend' who was claiming he owed a huge drug debt.

But the problem is the 'friend'. A junkie who was doing some minor dealing, probably dipping into his own supply, probably being leaned on by his suppliers (who are not nice people who think drugs are wonderful and everyone should have free access to them so we'll supply them) for the missing money, getting paranoid and trying in turn to lean on his customers with claims that they owed more money than they did. This was not somebody doing 'few druuuugs, bitta fuuuuun'. Drugs and guys like this don't mix well (neither does alcohol, I'll freely admit that). The drugs legalisers seem to push the idea that drugs are just harmless party fun and if legal nobody would ever have any bad outcomes.

Yeah, I don't think so.

Quite apart from the fact that this guy is plainly psycho enough/stupid enough that he can't figure out "don't walk into court on a serious charge grinning like it's a day out at the beach" in all the photos taken of him.

This is also dragging in another one of my hobbyhorses: "whaaat's the haaarm in a few druuuugs, bitta fun, should be legaaaal". Well, maybe legal drugs in this instance would indeed have kept the man from getting killed by the paranoid, possibly high, 'friend' who was claiming he owed a huge drug debt.

But the problem is the 'friend'. A junkie who was doing some minor dealing, probably dipping into his own supply, probably being leaned on by his suppliers (who are not nice people who think drugs are wonderful and everyone should have free access to them so we'll supply them) for the missing money, getting paranoid and trying in turn to lean on his customers with claims that they owed more money than they did. This was not somebody doing 'few druuuugs, bitta fuuuuun'. Drugs and guys like this don't mix well (neither does alcohol, I'll freely admit that). The drugs legalisers seem to push the idea that drugs are just harmless party fun and if legal nobody would ever have any bad outcomes.

This is just not the right case to be making this claim. If drugs were legal, this guy would probably not be a drug dealer (because pharma companies have standards) and wouldn't be being leaned on by his suppliers to such an extent (because pharma companies that threaten to kill people stop being legal in a hurry).

The cases that actually do still arise from legal drugs are "addict (i.e. end-user) runs out of money and becomes a career criminal to get his fix" and "stimulant-induced mania/psychosis". These are cases which are unambiguously "this is not due to prohibition; this is just due to drugs being available at all". This is why I'm against legalising meth, for instance, despite being generally in favour of legalisation, because it's fucking notorious for doing the latter (the former is somewhat more tractable in other ways). But this case is not actually one of them, and you do your position a disservice by trying to cram it into that mould.

It's the attitude that drugs do no harm, the only harm is them being illegal. Similar to the push about the harm that adults having sex with kids isn't from the sex, it's from the social stigma around it which teaches the child to be ashamed and that they were harmed.

The people who push that attitude want to fuck kids without consequences. The people who want to push that "it's the illegal status that does the harm" around drugs also want no consequences from what they want to do.

But there will always be consequences. Being a druggie didn't make the 'friend' a chill, kind, guy. It made him paranoid and violent (on top of whatever crazy he has going on).

Similar to the push about the harm that adults having sex with kids isn't from the sex, it's from the social stigma around it which teaches the child to be ashamed and that they were harmed.

The people who push that attitude want to fuck kids without consequences.

No, I don't. One does not have to be personally benefitted by a hypothesis to believe it.

The cases that actually do still arise from legal drugs are "addict (i.e. end-user) runs out of money and becomes a career criminal to get his fix" and "stimulant-induced mania/psychosis". These are cases which are unambiguously "this is not due to prohibition; this is just due to drugs being available at all".

Both of these are made worse by prohibition -- the former by making the drugs more expensive, the latter because prohibition results in badly controlled doses leading to faster escalation towards mania-inducing doses.

There's also "drug user loses interest in anything but drugs, becomes criminal/welfare case" which I associate with pot. It's somewhat confounded by the fact that a lot of the people who ended up there would have been losers anyway, but I suspect that's not the only effect.

I mean, I knew about the first of those three, but the latter two are decent points. Thanks.

Even if that weren’t true, you still have the knock on social effects— street crime, obviously violence between dealers, property damage, neglect of children and wife, probably can’t keep a job so we’re paying for his survival (and paying more now that he’s in jail), so it’s nothing but negative outcomes and I think even marijuana is a but suspect in this. I can’t think f any drugs (even alcohol) that make things better.

Alcoholism forces the lowest social classes to hold a job and then die when they get to be too old to work anymore, which is broadly what society wants from them. Alcohol is an important social lubricant in not-rigorously structured societies like the west.

In moderation, alcohol can create social cohesion. The moderation is the key bit.

On the other hand: if you aren't an asshole, then why are you wearing their uniform?

All of the groups you mention do "wear uniforms". Whether they are literal uniforms such as e.g. the Nazi would wear, or whether they are other visual markers such as the drug dealer tattoos, the principle is the same. Their appearance marks them as part of a certain group, which is why they adopted that appearance in the first place.

So it seems perfectly reasonable to me to judge people by it.

Didn't we just have this conversation the other day about beards?

Beards can be shaved off, so they aren't indicators of low time preference like tattoos are.

You mean high time preference, surely.

It may be more relevant than I thought! Guy with scraggly beard and hair like a bird's nest versus guy who at least trims his beard and washes his hair: who looks like trouble you'd want to avoid and who looks at least semi-respectable?

One tattoo on its own is not an indicator of trashiness, but the thing is: some people can stop at one tattoo. Some people, on the other hand, seem to go "just one more. One more. One more" until they're covered in them. This guy is described as a tattoo artist which may be the excuse he gives for 'what do you do for a living?' or it may just be a self-description: "ah yeah, I make my money from doing tattoos for people, not from drug dealing".

I have to come out and admit I'm prejudiced. Not just because I think a lot of tattoos looks trashy, but also because a partner of a family member was something I moved from being neutral about, to disliking, to writing them off as a manipulative shit head. And funnily enough, they got a tattoo later in life, then went the "just one more" route, then shaved their head, then moved on to full-blown "being a manipulative shit head". So my priors on people with tattoos may well be contaminated 😁

I would never get a tattoo and have judgements about tattoos but this doesn't really indicate that tattoos are a red flag. I mean, they are. But this goes well beyond that. There's a big difference between a tattoo of a bird on your arm, and what this person has which is the equivalent of having "I am an insane and dangerous person" tattooed across your forehead.

Back to my main point: people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.

Does anyone who isn't a full on progressive zealot disagree with you that a person tatted up that that guy is probably bad news? I really doubt it. And the progressive zealots actually agree with you too, they know that person is bad news, they just see protecting and creating people who are bad news as a core goal.

I honestly don't know why some women are so stupid. Yeah, loving and devoted up to the minute he swings at you with a sword, you silly girl.

They're not stupid. They know that they are flirting with genuine danger. That's the appeal.

Does anyone who isn't a full on progressive zealot disagree with you that a person tatted up that that guy is probably bad news?

Tattoos, and lots of tattoos, and prominently visible tattoos, are now socially acceptable in more and more milieus. You can even do social psychology about the prejudice!

people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.

In some cases and otherwise to some degree, yeah. Tattoos signal any of the following:

  • Stupidity
  • Short-sightedness
  • Addiction
  • Insecurity
  • Bad taste
  • A desire to fit in
  • A good sense of what is currently fashionable

Nobody will ever convince me that the one-billionth "tribal" tattoo or chinese lettering down the spine of a non-chinese-speaker is meaningful or artistically valuable.

Most people look like either a toddler slapped stickers on them, or like a derelict wall in a shit part of down.

as @Iconochasm said. Hits the nail on the head.

chinese lettering down the spine of a non-chinese-speaker

Which probably says "Translation server failed".

When my two buddies and I were doing a film podcast, I told them that when we get to 50 episodes I’ll get a tattoo of our pod. Well about near ep 70 I was like, well shucks, guess I should keep at my word.

Now I have a lovely film themed podcast tattoo on my right upper leg.

It’s fucking cool - reminds me of my hanging with my buds - and of the 200 or so hours of content I made (that maybe seven people - including us - ever listened to).

Most tattoos I shrug at. Some are really cool. Most are meaningless - but most often then not the meaningless ones are nicer, cooler, doper, neater than the meaningful ones.

Most people look like shit anyway - from their features to their clothes … I’m not sure how much effort into caring (or hating, from the thread vibes) I’m supposed to give.

Only one tattoo? How big? How tasteless?

It's not all tattoos, it's the "covered head to toe in badly drawn, stereotypical crap" tattoos.

And now I realise I've wandered into the minefield of deporting immigrants based on tattoos: no, that's not a gang symbol or a drug symbol, he just, er, likes nature which is why he has plant leaves tattooed on his hand! 😁

The tattoo that was in the news was plausibly a drug symbol, but it was specifically being identified as a gang symbol based on arguments that were a real stretch.

If we are talking about the “Maryland Dad” then yeah the guy just coincidentally hung out with MS-13 gangbangers and the tat just looked like an MS-13 tat by happenstance.

But the thing is, it didn't look like an MS-13 tattoo. It was made of symbols and in a fit of pareidolia people made the symbols match MS-13.

If it actually was a MS-13 tattoo I'd expect we'd have heard of other gang members using it.

Yeah that's probably the best description I've heard of the tattoo fiasco. Trump's take on it was outright embarrassing.

I still think the guy's probably up to no good, though.

He killed the guy simply by hacking his leg? That's unexpected. Guessing he just wanted to horribly mutilate him but he took too much of the leg off and help took too long to arrive?

Shocking that he had the nerve to call the guy his friend in his court statement. Naturally he was sorry and regretful but not enough to kill himself. Couldn't even take the samurai larp all of the way and disembowel himself.

He killed the guy simply by hacking his leg? That's unexpected.

Just a few days ago I read a court opinion where somebody died from being slashed in the face. He didn't bleed out; rather, an air bubble got into his blood vessels and he died of a heart attack. <del>(I unfortunately don't have the link on hand.)</del><ins>Link</ins>

Not just hacking, hacking hard enough to nearly sever the leg completely:

The medical evidence was that such was the ferocity of the attack that the sword cut through muscle, artery and bone. Mr Baitson was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. However, he died four days later.

...Evidence was also given at the trial by Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster.

She said that a postmortem examination indicated Mr Baitson had died of haemorrhage and shock complicated by brain damage due to lack of blood supply from an injury caused by sharp force.

What she described as a single blow from a sharp weapon like a samurai sword caused a fracture to the knee bone and sliced through the two bones below the knee, the tibia and fibula.

He was paranoid, probably high himself, and just a thug.

The leg has massive arteries to power those big running muscles. Despite what various war and action movies might tell you, you slice one of those and you bleed out fast. That’s also why the arguments that police should be shooting to wound are laughable.

Bystanders desperately tried to assist the injured man as emergency services raced to the scene.

Mr Baitson was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

However, he died four days later.

Stranger things have happened, but dying four days after a leg wound is certainly up there IMO. I'd think you would either die in a few minutes or get enough help to recover, but maybe there's a middle ground.

This is often not the case and is counterintuitive for many.

I recall when I was a student, an ICU consultant asked us to guess whether most people who go to ICU die from the initial resuscitation or escalation of intensive treatment; the time during of intensive treatment; or the time when we try to step down patients from intensive care; he was impressed at the few of us who guessed the last. Turns out we’re quite good at maintaining signs of life with technology, even as we are helpless to fix an otherwise nonviable body — at least if you’re stable enough to get into ICU and didn’t have your chest caved in by a bus.

This probably makes more sense once you try to guess about how often ICU doctors have to have difficult family meetings with patients’ families about withdrawing life support, versus patients dying while on life support.

A common pathway for something like this is:

-you nearly bleed out

-medical attention arrives

-in the meantime multiple organs are not getting enough blood and therefor oxygen

-this may include the brain

-you are taken to the hospital which keeps you alive

-but you are already dead OR

-while in the hospital swelling, tissue death, infection from all of the damaged areas causes problems leading to formal death later

tons of stuff like this can happen.

The middle ground is modern medicine is good enough to save people who 10 years ago would have been pronounced dead almost immediately upon arriving at the hospital, but even fully replacing a humans blood capacity several times over can't save them from brain death.

Can stabilize somebody at a point that's essentially at death's door but ultimately not be able to achieve sufficient resuscitation

An important ingredient here is that the overwhelming majority of tattoos are just hideous. Aesthetic harm. Visual downgrade. I know of a grand total of one person whose tattoos actually look good, and I think the secret sauce is that he has only a few, and they're perfectly sized to be clearly visible and framed on his body as you would normally look at them. Most people look like either a toddler slapped stickers on them, or like a derelict wall in a shit part of down.

I'm going to go a step further, for controversy's sake, and say that close to zero tattoos truly look good in practice.

Human skin is just not a great medium for artistic expression. The ones that are hyperdetailed kind of look okay if you look from the right angle, but get up too close and they tend to betray imperfections and from further away they all look like jumbles of random shapes and generally don't look like intentional art pieces.

The ones I might grant as appealing tend to be simple designs or patterns that emphasize the underlying physical features. But most people don't have good taste, and someone willing to permanently mark their body is probably even less likely to have good taste about it.

And time ticks by a few years, colors fade, clean lines get washed out, skin deforms and wrinkles and whatever trendy design you had falls from popularity (mileage may vary by how you care for them).

I make some exceptions for tattoos that genuinely symbolize something meaningful or important in the person's life. It is actually interesting to see a unique tattoo, ask about it, and get an actual story about its significance! That serves a 'useful' social purpose. But then, the signalling value is not in the aesthetics of the tattoo itself!

My late grandmothers position on tattoos was that the only respectable people who had them were concentration camp survivors.

Now tell us her thoughts on the gays and coloreds!

Time moves - values shift.

No need to go too far in either direction.

i.e. people who got them unwillingly.

I'd say soldiers and sailors who were putting their life on the line and thus could never really be sure if they'd make it back to respectable society would also get a pass, although that also kind of falls in my "symbolic of something meaningful" exception.

Oh, and its worth mentioning how it seems like now full sleeves are kind of the default for Cops, Soldiers, even firemen these days. Like its functionally part of the 'uniform'!

Sailors' tattoos were also earned e.g. a swallow meant you'd sailed 5000 miles. It wasn't all just covering yourself in random pictures.

Yeah I'm not against a tattoo for a valid lifelong commitment of great personal importance but even then execution is key to make it look good. Covering yourself in random pop culture references is the act of a lunatic with no long-term consideration

I mean, the Yakuza tats are a pretty serious commitment/ status signal.

But they definitely indicate a person who is bad news.

I mean, tbh if I were a japanese women I'd probably be into Yakuza dudes, you get this guy that has power and influence and respect. I can imagine why they like em so much.

Atleast that person stands for something and has a sense of gravity about the occasion, though.

I might not want to hang out with a Yakuza but I respect their commitment to their lifestyle more than I do 'oh I've got Milhouse smoking weed'

More comments

Honestly, I used to be able to discriminate against anyone with visible tattoos, and you just...can't anymore.

I couldn't really hire contractors in some fields if I refused guys with tattoos, though I did once lose the number of an HVAC guy because he had swastika tattoos on his hands. That was a bit much. I can't really rock climb or do BJJ or crossfit comps without interacting with people with tons of tattoos. I can't get a decent cup of coffee without trusting someone with tons of tattoos. It's just not possible for me to run my life while avoiding people with tattoos, and most of them are pretty normal. So, you know, exposure therapy.

But to @ABigGuy4U 's point, there was a time when the same was said of a man without a hat.

There was a time when a wall street wealth manager could say "I'll never invest in a company if I haven't seen the head of the corporation at the Astor's ball or at the opera." And that was a pretty good, or at least a fine enough, investment strategy: only people in that sphere ran companies worth investing in, so following that social prejudice worked as a barometer of a worthwhile company. Then that time ran out, as less socially suave men ran great companies, and a manager who hung on to old social prejudices lost out.

There was a time not long ago when a wall street wealth manager could say "I'll never invest in a company if the CEO doesn't wear a tie." And that worked pretty well for a long time! Then the tech boom happens, and if you followed that social prejudice as your rule of thumb, you would have fallen way behind your competitors.

Tattoos are just another example. I used to be able to avoid anyone with tattoos. Now I can avoid people with "job-stopper" tattoos, or particularly offensive ones. But I imagine for people a step below the social ladder from me, it's tough to even avoid those people, and it becomes normalized.

I think that once something becomes socially tolerated, you get more of it.

Then (for the example of the police) standards get lowered since you can't get enough recruits the conventional way, so you relax some of the conditions: "okay, now tattoos are fine".

Then it becomes a job where only or mostly "guys with tattoos" do it. So you don't get the guys without tattoos applying anymore, and this just reinforces "yeah this is lower-status now than it was before, so guys with few other options are the workforce here".

Absolutely.

A big part of it is also that to obtain the same net rebelliousness requires more and more and more tattoos. A Wild One era greaser with a motorcycle maxed out his rebellious/scary/intimidating points with an upper arm tattoo of a heart reading "Mother."

Now a normal upper arm tattoo doesn't even register, so a guy with the same tendencies gets fifteen tattoos on his hands and neck to get the same impact.

Company I was at made the mistake of hiring a fat woman with tattoos. She gave me a bunch of work but didn't get her side of things done and they fired her after a few months.

While it may be hard to avoid tradesmen with tattoos it's still a bad sign IMO. Tradesmen are notorious for not showing up on time. Or with Hegseth, ideally you want some kind of efficient manager in that role, not a Fox News presenter. Trump seems to be loyalty-maxxing which is understandable but not ideal for efficiency.

I agree with you on both counts, though for other traits, not the tattoos, though arguably related.

Being fat is equally an indication of poor character as having bad tattoos. If I could, I would avoid working with or hiring fat people.

And while I have all the sympathy in the world for alcoholics, there but for the grace of God, I would never want to put one in a high pressure highly responsible position. It's just not a good fit.

But of course, the lack of qualifications is exactly what leads to loyalty in Trump world. His underlings can't rebel against him, or allow rebellion against him, because under no other regime would their kind be where they are.

I honestly don't know why some women are so stupid. Yeah, loving and devoted up to the minute he swings at you with a sword, you silly girl.

Because up until that point, they think it's hot that he could attack other people with a samurai sword, but he could never do that to them because he just loves them that much / they alone have the power to tame him / he's so emotionally dependent on them that his world would collapse without them / insert-their-preferred-framing-here.

So the hotness can win out over prudence and risk aversion.

I'm a woman myself, I don't understand it, but I've seen enough of women who do hang out with these kinds of guys and shack up with them and have kids by them.

I don't know if it's because they've grown up where all the men around are like this, or what.

Without doxxing myself too much, a friend of mine recently witnessed a hostage situation in his building, with a particular lowlife slashing his girlfriend across the face and threatening to kill her baby.

The kicker, this guy was the baby's father, and the third child the mother had had with him.

Admittedly, this was an underclass woman, so not exactly the heiress and Jeremy Meeks.

My explanation is just that same women are hybristophiles, just like some guys are into feet or whatever.

Oh, yeah. "He's not like that with me" up to the minute he is like that.

I don't get it, I genuinely don't. "Love" must be one hell of a drug, to hollow your brain out like that.

Also, in a lot of these situations and that class, the guy doesn't give a damn about if the woman gets knocked up or what. If she wants babies, fine. If she doesn't want babies, fine. It's her job to ensure she doesn't get pregnant. So it's perfectly plausible he'd threaten to kill the baby because it isn't his baby to him in any meaningful way. (The only use of "my client is a father of three children" to the likes of those scumbags is so their lawyers can plead them off in court).

I suspect there's a common thread of fatherlessness.

Speaking of heiresses and hybristophilia, The case of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon was concluded yesterday. I was reading through the newspaper report of the history of the pair and thinking about yours and @Crowstep's comments and how maybe she disproves my fatherless hypothesis given that she's an aristocrat, surely she had a more stable family structure than most, and then there it was:

She was also deeply affected at the age of nine when her father suddenly walked out on the family.

Voice of @Sloot: "Every time"

And a similar story applies to Gordon.

The youngest of five children, he never knew his father, who refused to meet him or support him financially.

From reading various offhand comments around the internet I get the impression that people without fathers seem to build them up in their minds as infallible role models who are tirelessly dedicated to mentoring their children in learning the skills of how to do every single thing that a real man should be able to do, whether it's something utterly mundane like learning to shave all the way through to how to build a diesel locomotive and expertly butcher a beef carcass with a chainsaw at the same time. And in the absence of this ubermensch role model they seek out substitutes who appear to fulfill some aspect of the superhuman sized hole they've conjured ("if only I'd had a father he would have [done the impossible] for me"). The boring reality is that most average dads are justifiably too busy working to pay the bills and support the family to do too much more than telling their kids to clean their room, do their homework and pull their weight around the house, which in turn provides much more sensible standards for what a normal man should be.

True, but having both parents around is different to "and then dad shook us off like we were dirt on the soles of his shoes and set out for a new fun life with a new fun family". That has got to hurt. Even a distant, neglectful father has to be better than one who made the choice to reject you in favour of someone else (someone better).

Were you into horses, or have you ever empathised with girls who were? The sentiments always struck me as similar, and seemed to be at least slightly correlated.

Because up until that point, they think it's hot that he could attack other people with a samurai sword, but he could never do that to them because he just loves them that much / they alone have the power to tame him / he's so emotionally dependent on them that his world would collapse without them / insert-their-preferred-framing-here.

You and most other posters on this thread seem to think that women are only interested in dangerous men being dangerous to other people and are obviously in denial about the possibility that dangerous men are dangerous to them. I don't see any reason to assume that. Why can't women (well some women, I'm not a believer in the redpill position that all women. are the same) be actively attracted to men that are dangerous to themselves. I don't really think that the women that feel a strong attraction of total lunatics like this (as opposed to the normal attraction to bad-ish boys) are deluded about the fact that they may themselves be harmed by them, in fact that may add to appeal. Plenty of men and women like to jump out of planes or free climb, I don't see why these women have to be lying to themselves about danger to involve themselves with dangerous men.

You and most other posters on this thread seem to think that women are only interested in dangerous men being dangerous to other people and are obviously in denial about the possibility that dangerous men are dangerous to them.

Oh no, I don't think that at all! In fact I thought about including a line about that in my post - "she could simply have a masochistic streak, she could enjoy the palpable sense of danger" - but I decided not to, because I find that comments are generally more persuasive and attention-grabbing when you only include one bizarre claim instead of multiple.

I do think the "I'm a highly distinguished person to him" aspect of it is probably stronger in the majority of cases than the "I like being in danger myself" aspect, simply because even the most masochistic and self-destructive people still show an aversion to acute physical danger. Although, funny enough I just linked someone downthread to Freud's essay on the death instinct, where he explores how a primordial instinct for self-destruction could coexist alongside an apparently overriding concern for self-preservation. That could certainly be relevant in cases like this.

I don't see why these women have to be lying to themselves about danger to involve themselves with dangerous men.

Typical mindedness fallacy, we don't see the appeal in a dangerous partner, but some women fucking love that shit. They fawn over the only group of men not completely crushed/subservient to our modern "safety" society. They like them prcisely because they are dangerous/murderous/thieving etc..

we don't see the appeal in a dangerous partner

It's actually not a fantasy structure that's exclusive to women! It's just more common in women because, obviously, men are the more violent and aggressive ones.

Do you know how many audio files there are for guys with titles like "serial killer yandere ties you up in her basement because she wants to be with you forever ASMR"? A lot more than you might expect!

Or just the number of men who enter and remain in mutually self destructive relationships with insane bpd chicks.

You’re correct of course, but surely there is a difference between fantasising about something and getting dangerously close to the reality?

Mind you, I’ve heard of some guys who find the extreme jealousy of some RL Japanese girls hot in a ‘look how much she cares about me’ way so maybe not.

Yes, but drill it in a little deeper, the demonstrated ability to wreak havoc on your enemies is catnip for women since in the ancestral environment that was a major signal for genetic fitness, that you would produce strong children and could protect them to adulthood.

That's why I don't quite think that its a failure of risk-aversion (I mean, after the first time he hits her, sure), since on an evolutionary level, there'd be a larger risk to pairing with a guy who was physically incapable of defending you.

But it is bonkers that once they feel attraction the prefrontal cortex isn't able to project the longer term consequences of pursuing the guy. Not just that he might beat her, but that he's got no real prospects for building wealth or raising a family in a stable environment. This is so fucking primal that you see fashion Heiresses getting knocked up by sexy felons and a literal Rothschild leaving her husband to date a rapper.

And yeah, there are counter stories about wealthy men blowing up their lives and leaving faithful women to pursue or marry a stripper or even literal prostitute. No doubt. But far as I can tell that's never socially celebrated or sanctioned or really excused.

I think about this video constantly ever since I first saw it.

The stated admission (that I do not think is a joke!) that even a literal villain who slaughtered her people can instantly win her over by... pointing a sword at her throat.

I think about this video constantly ever since I first saw it.

The stated admission (that I do not think is a joke!) that even a literal villain who slaughtered her people can instantly win her over by... pointing a sword at her throat.

From the comments of "Please don’t vote because democracy is a local optimum":

Downloading a girly cartoon romance at random, labelled as a romance and intended for a female audience, and skimming it: Princess is much younger than the prince, and has been given to the prince to seal a peace treaty: The deal was that she was supposed to marry the King, but the King took one look at her and unilaterally changed the deal, giving her to the Prince instead. Prince treats her like the small brat that she in fact is. Prince is a leader of men, commander of the army, and has slaughtered various people in princess’ immediate family. The deal is that her land conditionally surrenders to the prince’s King as a result of military defeat, but the prince has to marry her so that her people get representation and her royal lineage does not totally disappear. Story is that, like the King, he does not want to marry her, because she is a small brat and much hotter chicks keep trying to get his attention, and she homicidally hates him because he has with his own sword killed one of her beloved relatives, and his army under his direct command has killed most of her other relatives (hence the marriage)

Skipping over a zillion frames of the prince in manly poses experiencing deep emotions, thinking about deep emotions, and talking about deep emotions, to the end, they start to like each other just in time for the scheduled wedding,. Final scene is that he goes off to war again and realizes he misses her. He wears the sword with which he killed her beloved relatives in every frame except for a frame when they go to bed, including the frame where he realizes he misses her.

Well I did not check every frame, but every frame that I checked he is wearing that sword, except when they were in bed. As far as I could tell in my somewhat superficial reading, he never regrets or apologizes for killing off much of her family, and treats her as an idiot for making a fuss about it until she stops making a fuss about it.

My account of the story is probably not completely accurate, (aagh, I am drowning in estrogen) but it is close enough. Prince, Princess, sword, arranged marriage, and sword.

So, I would say that the intended readers of that romance rather like patriarchy, and I would not believe anything they said to the contrary.

And:

Well, duh. Having high status people fall in love with you is an obvious sort of wish fulfillment plot.

Yet in films targeted largely at males, for example James Bond, the sex interest girls are generally low status. High status girls is not a major male wish fulfillment fantasy, whereas in romance, high status guys are as uniform as moaning in porn.. Even when the sex interest girl is a badass action girl with batman like athletic abilities, for example Yuffie the thief, she gets in trouble for stealing stuff, making her low status.

Further I doubt that there are what males would call action scenes in twilight because if there had been, males would have willingly watched it. What you are calling action scenes were probably status scenes involving violence and cruelty. I assume this because many, possibly most, romances have status scenes involving violence and cruelty. Love interest cruelty in romance is as predictable and repetitious as the girl moaning in porn. The point is not action, but to prove the love interest is potentially capable of cruelty and violence.

In an action scene, James Bond is in grave danger. In a romance cruelty scene, the love interest hurts someone really badly without the audience ever feeling the love interest to be in danger. The heroine is never in danger from the love interest, but the main point of the scene is that she could be. He is dangerous and badass. Hence the propensity of the prince to knock off relatives of the princess with that prominent and lovingly depicted sword.

In contrast, the main point of an action scene is that the hero is in danger. For example the henchman Jaws in “the spy who loved me” is way more badass than James Bond, so that the audience believes James Bond is in danger. No one is ever more badass than the romance love interest.

This is so fucking primal that you see fashion Heiresses getting knocked up by sexy felons and a literal Rothschild leaving her husband to date a rapper.

Looked both up as the links were a few years old:
Chloe Green does have a son with Jeremy Meeks, but they soon separated. She now has a second child with a successful businessman who is not as tall, is white, without tattoos and has a dad body. And Kate Rothschild has a baby with a (lot younger than her) soyboy environmental activist.

The hot criminal seems to do ok. He doesn’t have a superstar career, instead a bit of modeling and acting in cheap D-Movies, but a quick search doesn’t find any scandals or unhinged drug stories. I found a recent interview where he sounded normal and self-reflected.

The rapper Jay Electronica was for a time a mysterious wunderkind star, but he never delivered (people waited a decade for his first lackluster album). He made the news a few years ago for this banger verse:
"I bet you a Rothschild I get a bang for my dollar, the synogogue of Satan want me to hang by my collar"

Many men are just as stupid, or worse. OK, obviously this guy's lady friend is a moron, but at least she's emotionally invested in the circumstance and is unable to recognize what absolute garbage this individual is. What excuse does anyone else have? Why would anyone's reaction be anything other than advocating a swift and clean execution?

The longer I'm alive, the more straight up antipathy I feel towards addicts. Some people seem to develop more empathy for them over time, but I am pretty well fresh out of it. Guys like this will predictably make life worse for everyone around them, they're much worse than simply worthless, and it's absurd that they just keep getting to make the world around them worse every day.

I get unreasonably angry that our justice system doesn't have exponential escalators such that by the time one is convicted of a 10th criminal charge over distinct incidents they arent sent to the gallows or an effective lifw sentence. No one needs an 11th chance, you've told us who you are by then.

Yeah, I'm coming around to "by the time you rack up your tenth conviction for a violent crime or you have a proven track record of being a professional shop lifter, no more 'second chances' or out on bail early, you go to jail and do your full time".

There's just too many "and the guy who raped/murdered/did bad thing was found to be on early release/out on bail for a previous charge of rape/murder/doing bad thing" instances. Maybe that's because those are the ones who get reported so it's a Chinese Robber Fallacy, but you know what? I don't care if it's a fallacy. This pitbull mauled fifteen other dogs before, I'm pretty sure it's going to maul a sixteenth if given the chance.

We do have three strikes in some states. But admittedly that's for drug dealers.

Yeah, that's a good start! I just get tired of seeing crime committed by someone with a conviction history that reaches multiple pages even if they're all fairly minor crimes.

Honestly, women tend to do that because they generally are protected from those kinds of situations. It’s true of anyone so sheltered, without the lived experience of “drug dealers are violent and crazy” you don’t develop the sort of mental habit of saying “people who are like that are crazy and to be avoided.” Add in the social virtue of being “nice, forgiving, and open-minded” and you get a toxic mix that results in toxic empathy.

Scott’s cultural barber pole. When you were growing up tattoos were only worn by sailors, gang-bangers and punks. Then upper class youth started doing it and it filtered down to the respectable middle class. You still remember back when tattoos were mostly the domain of scumbags so unfortunately you end up being the old man yelling about President Kennedy’s disrespectful Brylcreamed hair. I personally don’t mind tattoos but the Zoomer broccoli haircut has me convinced that Sitting Bull Did Nothing Wrong.

the Zoomer broccoli haircut

Is that the same one as the undercut hairstyle? Because I can't stand that, especially when partnered with the hair dye. It screams "I am a Special Snowflake, dare not to impugn my Queerness!"

It’s an undercut where the longer hair on the top is also permed. It’s not so much the haircut itself that annoys me as the insane conformity of it. Every zoomer male I have ever seen has had the exact same haircut. There have been trendy youth haircuts in the past but not like this.

I keep forgetting the Zoomers are now old enough to be making dubious fashion choices of their own. And Alpha are the upcoming new generation!

No, it's the one where they do a curly perm on top. Not the Millennial "yes chad" undercut.

I don't think the 'true' upper class ever really started wearing tattoos, is the thing.

Celebrities, athletes, maybe some actors, but rarely anyone with real 'power.'

I would defy you to find any tattoo worn by an actual human being that actually signals "I am a higher class than you."

I just did a cursory google search and I can tentatively say that ZERO billionaire business magnates have a single tattoo. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, Dorsey, not even Palmer Luckey. Wait, Jensen Huang apparently has one, but I can only find the one photo and he clearly states he won't get another.

Not even Steve Jobs back in the day had one.

And these are guys that could hire the literal best artists alive to create absolute masterworks for them. And, goes without saying, couldn't easily be fired for getting one.

Where does the urge come from to engage in rhetorical no-TRUE-Scotsman games to deny that a cultural norm has changed, rather than to lament that it has?

This thread is full of people saying that tattoos aren't attractive. I may agree, but every study has found tattoos correlate with an increased number of sexual partners in men, so clearly it isn't a widely shared belief.

This thread is full of people claiming that people with tattoos aren't really tough, yet every cop and every Navy SEAL and every BJJ champ and every boxer I know has at least one tattoo visible in short sleeves.

You claim that billionaires don't have tattoos, but googling "billionaire tattoos" returns results like this hilarious thing by VC Mike Novogratz, and Mark Bertolini CEO of Aetna. Plus you have high government officials like Trudeau and Hegseth. Personally, though I can't sit and name names, many high level corporate litigators, judges, and surgeons I know are inked.

Face it, man. We lost this one.

This thread is full of people saying that tattoos aren't attractive.

Not quite.

Its more that they're correlated with low social status in the larger scheme. This doesn't mean they isn't a local maxima where they make someone more attractive than they would otherwise be, even if it also makes them vastly less attractive to a certain segment of the population.

In fact, I've said it straight up that the 'cheat code' to getting more women interested in you is get tattoos, get subversive piercings and buy a motorcycle. This can lead to other negative effects, but the tradeoffs may be worth it! At least in the short term.

There's a dearth of people who hold positions of true wealth/power who have tattoos, though. Thus, they remain a reliable class signifier.

When something is largely a lower-class phenomenon, just like enjoying MMA or light beer, the fact that a few upper class folks indulge doesn't really prove otherwise.

yet every cop and every Navy SEAL and every BJJ champ and every boxer I know has at least one tattoo visible in short sleeves.

Yes, which might explain why people who AREN'T tough want to mimic a signal that makes them seem tough, whether they are or are not. That's common enough in nature.

And if they do so, that degrades the strength of the signal. And makes counter-signalling more viable. If all the cops, SEALs and BJJ guys have tattoos, what might you surmise about the ones that have resisted the trend and don't have any?

I dunno, it reads like a social trend like any other. I lived through the era of tramp stamps, and those faded from popularity. I've seen dozens of fashion trends come and go. The only trick with tattoos is they're more costly to alter or remove.

Also, add in that there is research indicating they can lead to health issues.

You've got the point, Tattoos are nothing but a fashion trend. Nothing more, but also nothing less. So

If all the cops, SEALs and BJJ guys have tattoos, what might you surmise about the ones that have resisted the trend and don't have any?

That they don't like tattoos. That's it. We're not morally superior beings.

Anything else is cope. Like most of the stories told about fashion trends.

Except, of course, for the ones I tell about why boat shoes and OCBDs are the proper way for an American man to dress.

Man I don't think there's much moral judgment going on.

Aesthetic, yes. Maybe a bit of psychological, but unless you're Jewish I doubt there's much inherent moral judgment towards people making minor changes to their own bodies.

I kinda just wish it wasn't as popular among otherwise attractive single women as it apparently is.

There's lots of people who make moral judgements of tattooing. Older women do so quite regularly.

I may agree, but every study has found tattoos correlate with an increased number of sexual partners in men, so clearly it isn't a widely shared belief.

Is this due to tattoos being attractive or is this due to tattoos strongly correlating with the combination of aggression, independent-mindedness, unrestrained mores, etc that is probably more determinant of an individual man's number of sexual partners?

Who knows?

It also probably correlates with sleeping with sluttier women, against religiosity, and with a lot of other things.

But it seems like the best way to assess a metric by revealed preference vs survey design.

I may agree, but every study has found tattoos correlate with an increased number of sexual partners in men, so clearly it isn't a widely shared belief.

Despite the emphasis that tends to be paid to it in media and discussions, surveys indicate that casual sex is only practiced by a fairly small minority. The norm is serial monogamy, under which "more sexual partners" just means more failed relationships than the guy who had the same girlfriend the whole time. Now, it's possible men with tattoos are also more likely to have a romantic/sexual partner at all (after all both "getting a tattoo" and "asking out a woman" might be considered a form of risk-taking), but number of sexual partners isn't the right metric to determine that.

I'm open to using a different metric, it's certainly not perfect. If for no other reason than bagging a 9 at age 20 and marrying her is a better "sexual success" metric which requires a higher degree of net attractiveness than would having one night stands with twenty 4s over twenty years.

But that's the statistic we have that doesn't get caught up in other problems like survey design.

I may agree, but every study has found tattoos correlate with an increased number of sexual partners in men, so clearly it isn't a widely shared belief.

It takes a deal of decisive confidence to permanently paint some cliched bullshit on your own body where everyone will see it. Also, violence is attractive in men, and as you said, the categories most likely to have personal experience with violence all have tattoos. In a way, the upper class Brooklyn hipster with a sleeve is almost doing Stolen Valor.

Stolen valor available for a couple Benjamins at any strip mall is pretty much the story of tattoos.

Jensen Huang

He gets a pass, for the kind of tatto it is. I would find it hilarious if Bill Gates actually looked like this

I think Tony Hsieh of Zappos (barely) broke into the billionaires club, and he had a tattoo and threw tattoo parties for employees.

Not sure if that's a strong recommendation.

Back to my main point: people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.

It depends a lot on the coverage and the gender and stature of the person in question, I would say.

But for a big dude who gives off danger vibes, tattoos seem to serve to enhance that vibe -- especially clearly visible tattoos, like on hands or head, which signal I do not have or plan to ever have a job where looking respectable is required.

Depending on the local culture, I suppose that investing in that level of signaling might reek a bit of desperation. The ex special forces guy probably will not get a face tattoo so the locals take him serious, while a youth with aspirations towards becoming a violent criminal might. Of course, as a non-fighter, I recognize that I am much more likely to be stabbed by some fuckwit youth who is playing the tough guy than by an experienced fighter who has managed to avoid a life sentence so far.

The extremely dangerous men of special forces military units have no desire to signal their extreme dangerousness to the general public when they're out for some drinks with the boys. If anything, these guys are less likely to get into stupid fights for no real reason than the average guy because of their ability to easily keep their cool in stressful situations.

One might think that but the guys that go in for special forces are amongst the most violent and aggressive. Fort Bragg has crazy high death rate because of the drug use and violence.

While I am confident US special forces are trained differently to Spetsnaz one can see a little of the 'operator mindset' here: https://x.com/XiaoVilin99/status/1937922190005178389

I have no idea what you guys are on about, every operator type guy I ever met had tons of bad tattoos on the forearms and legs that were visible in normal casual clothing. They don't get face, hand, or neck tattoos because of military regulations, not because they are squeamish about showing off.

If anything, these guys are less likely to get into stupid fights for no real reason than the average guy because of their ability to easily keep their cool in stressful situations.

I just read American Sniper and like a good 10% of the book is dedicated to describing in great detail the bar fights that Kyle and his SEAL colleagues got into. There's an extended story about a townie bar in, I want to say Arizona?, where SEAL teams kept going for training and getting into wars with the yokels. Actually right next to the part where he talks about getting tats after his deployment.

Which again pretty much matches my real life experiences with such guys.

In fairness, SEALs have something of a reputation of being the idiot frat boys of the special forces world. Pretty much every negative story I've heard about US special forces was about the SEALs.

Probably comes from them being able to walk in off the street and sign up, rather than the more usual system of only allowing applicants that are already in the military.

After reading about BUDS a few times, I have a personal theory that SEALs are a little extra retarded, because their failure scenario is so different from their success scenario.

If you join the Army with the goal of becoming a Ranger, but don't make it, you will probably still be an infantryman. You'll still get to do like 80% of what you would have done anyway, the combat and personal violence and the shooting and the toys, just without the rarified status and the special missions.

If you join the Navy with the goal of becoming a SEAL and fail to make the team, you're going to be doing something completely different, on a ship or on a base. A totally unrelated job.

You have to be kind of stupid to go in for that bet.

Huh, that’s interesting, I totally would have thought that the Marines would be the way more natural fallback but apparently not.

No, Marines have their own special forces and the fallback for that is usually 'normal getting shot at' jobs like machine gunner and infantry grunt. IIRC the most usual path into force recon is to try to transfer from normal light infantry anyways.

It would be, but to try out for the SEALs you've already enlisted in the Navy so that's pretty much the way it goes for many people who turn out to be only 99th percentile athletes rather that 99.9th percentile.

Yeah, I don't know, chalk it up to small sample size I guess. I only know a couple of these guys and they're both pretty relaxed and have no tattoos at all. I'm obviously aware that plenty of soldiers have tattoos, but I get a completely different impression than I do from the face and knuckle tattoo guys on that front as well.

I'd certainly agree that I bet the average guy with knuckle tattoos is more likely to get into a fight than an average SEAL, and that a SEAL is unlikely to get into a fight he doesn't want to get into.

But I think they're much much much more likely to want to get into a fight than the true average man.

Yeah, I think that's correct as well.

don't know why some women are so stupid

Society shelters them too much. Women are raised as 'sweet princesses'. Men are dropped into the deep end and expected to figure it out. This has always been true, but now women can vote. With great power comes great responsibility.

It's not just women. It's a rift between idealists and pragmatists. Let idealists wield soft power. Men of the arts & academia. Idealists shape culture. John Lennon imagines. But hard power should be left to the pragmatists.

Men date plenty of women who ruin their lives- just usually not through violence, because women are less violent than men. Strippers are definitionally attractive to men.

Yeah, but a lot of these women grew up in shitty conditions of broken families, single mothers, drugs and petty crime in the environment. They should know better. They seem not to, and I can't figure it out.

I see the same in reporting of abuse cases, where the current girlfriend gives a character reference to the guy accused of stalking/beating his ex. I do not understand the mindset. "Oh yeah, he beat her up but he'll never do the same to me!"

Then again, there are women out there in affairs with married men convinced that any day now he'll get that divorce and marry them, or they are weeping over how he's been lying to them. Yeah, imagine that: a guy who has demonstrated he will cheerfully lie to his wife about what he's doing and is willing to cheat on her then turned around and lied to you/cheated to you, his adulterous affair partner. Whoever could have seen that coming?

Yeah, but a lot of these women grew up in shitty conditions of broken families, single mothers, drugs and petty crime in the environment. They should know better. They seem not to, and I can't figure it out.

It's the same effect as doctor and lawyer dynasties, but in reverse. If your mom is a single mom with serial deadbeat boyfriends, your aunt is a single mom with serial deadbeat boyfriends, you have to learn to look at people that are not like you and say, "I am going to learn how to be like them and not like everyone else around me". This is a high bar to clear.

Some of this is mental illness from childhood trauma, often combined with main character syndrome. I once knew a woman who was sobbing because her boyfriend's family didn't like her- ok, reasonable enough, except the family in this case was his wife and teenaged daughter that she'd insisted on meeting. Poor theory of mind, narcissism, some garden variety mental illness...

But also, uh, they're looking for guys like their dads, who probably acted like that, because that's their model for how men are. She's probably never gotten to know an upstanding family man. She may not know they exist. I admit to having a poor theory of mind for why underclass women don't just avoid men(goodness knows they don't get much out of it). But empirically the instinct to stick close to a man is stronger.

Reminds me of the Katie Cohen saga. Summary:

Katie was married to person 1. They either had an open relationship or were poly or something similar, and Katie was also dating person 2, who is married to person 3. Katie and person 2 agreed that if their birth control failed, Katie would abort. Katie got pregnant, decided not to abort. Person 2 cut off contact with Katie, Katie’s marriage to person 1 disintegrated for multiple reasons, and that divorce removed Katie’s primary source of financial support.

Katie then proceeded to portray herself as the victim in her tumblr, with lines such as:

Sometimes I wonder if Will ever thinks about how deeply he’s hurt Andromeda by rejecting her as his daughter. Or if his wife ever thinks about how much enduring pain she created, when she drew her defensive lines against me and my child, rather than let her husband be close to us. How one day Andromeda might be 40 years old, recounting that pain.

Huh, that was 9 years ago; how time flies. Andromeda must be 10, by now; I wonder how she turned out.

I once knew a woman who was sobbing because her boyfriend's family didn't like her- ok, reasonable enough, except the family in this case was his wife and teenaged daughter that she'd insisted on meeting.

:laughingcrying_emoji:

Classic coffee moment and common W for female mate choice copying.

But also, uh, they're looking for guys like their dads, who probably acted like that, because that's their model for how men are. She's probably never gotten to know an upstanding family man. She may not know they exist.

Alternate, but compatible/complementary hypothesis: Single, upstanding men are invisible to her, because they don’t give her the tingles.

Sounds like it could be a Norm McDonald joke: “Women love dating family-oriented men. Sometimes, some of those men even aren’t already married.”

You should invite her here to do one of those user viewpoint series.

You should invite her here to do one of those user viewpoint series

I'm not still in touch with her. But @netstack how's your user viewpoint focus coming along?

Ha. Right.

I’ve got a text document open. I’ve had it open for the last week. The actual contents are still…well, nonexistent. It’s always, always easier to browse the thread or clear out the mod queue than to actually draft the thing.

Let’s see if I can get it together for Monday. If not, I’ll officially relinquish my spot in shame. Sound good?

Ok.

Please tell me it was at least (1) his ex wife and (2) this bint wasn't the reason the marriage broke down. Because otherwise, if frying pans were meeting crania, I would not blame the (ex) missus one iota for the idiocy of both (ex) husband and new squeeze.

No, this was his currently married wife. I don't know if she divorced him or not(I'm happier not being further involved in this woman's life), but the mistress insisted on meeting his family.

It did not go well and he broke up with her. This is the ending of the story as far as I know, and I'm pretty happy with that. I don't know if the wife knew about his cheating but was OK with it being discreet(these women exist), or if she was blindsided. But the mistress was clearly crazy.

Oookay. I don't know what the hell the mistress thought was going to happen, and I don't know why the hell the guy agreed to introduce his mistress to his wife. Clearly he was not thinking with his brain there.

I’m guessing nobody in this story was thinking with the brain.

I feel like the social filtering of casual violence also means that to get the 'woah badboy' experience and vibes you've got to go to people who almost totally reject the social contract since the current legal and professional moment makes it hard to be only partway rebellious

Back to my main point: people covered in tattoos and/or piercings are the human equivalent of aposematism, change my mind.

As a middle-aged curmudgeon with zero tattoos or piercings, I agree completely.

I had wondered how these two knew each other:

[the defendant] had previously sent [the victim] a text where he threatened to chop off his fingers because of a drug debt which he at one point claimed amount to E2500.
[the victim] had texted him back insisting that he only owed him a couple of hundred euro

A horrible tragedy, yet there may be a lesson present about engaging in drug transactions with someone covered in face/neck/head tattoos.

yet there may be a lesson present about engaging in drug transactions with someone covered in face/neck/head tattoos.

I'm pretty sure that the number of drug dealers without tattoos rounds to 0.

Yeah, the victim isn't 100% blameless either, he was an unmarried father-of-two (it's unclear if he was living with his partner or separated from her) and he was buying drugs from his 'friend'. But he might have been going to change his life around (he was working as a chef), it's hard to know because of course the family will always say the victim was a great guy.

He wasn't covered in tattoos and crazy looking like his drug-dealing friend, though.

There is a crazy amount of stupid on both the victim's and the murderer's part.

First off, why would anyone buy drugs in the physical world when darknet marketplaces exist.

Then, what kind of moron decides to buy drugs on credit, or extend credit to their druggie customers. If you want to play loan shark, perhaps don't start with a transaction which will put you in prison if discovered.

And if you have to use violence to collect debts, then recognize that while it is advantageous for you if your customers/victims see you as a violent madman, there is an art to playing that role (I suppose). You might get away with breaking a few fingers here and there (especially if your victims are reluctant to go to the police), but the amount of murder you can get away with is very likely zero.

A lot of drug dealers are fronted their supply because they don’t have the cash to buy it directly. They pay for it when they get their next re-up. This is how businesses in basically every other category work, so it shouldn’t be surprising. Street peddlers in their third world also borrow their merchandise. Retail stores borrow to buy merchandise. It would be weird if drugs was the one line of business where no one used debt financing. It’s just a more competitive economic structure so it will outcompete people buying up front.

Think about it from the perspective of a cartel boss. You have 1000 kilos of coke to move. You could either distribute 5 kilos at a time to the 5 guys who can afford to pay up front and take forever to move your stuff, or you could front the product to dozens, and move it way quicker. The second obviously makes more money quicker. The fact that you’ll have to break some legs from time to time is just some overhead.

I agree that fronting the supply to drug dealers is logical.

I was working from the assumption that the victim was a mere consumer though, and extending credit to drug consumers seems extremely bad business. The reason I assumed that the reporting mentioned a claim of a debt of only 2.5kEuro. While I do not know what margin a street dealer operates on (probably more than 10% and less than 50%), 2500 Euro does not sound like a lot of supply for a dealer.

My best estimate is that the murderer was a street level drug dealer, and the victim convinced him to spot him a few 100 Euros worth of drugs which he was totally going to sell to his friends (but instead used up himself) and the claim of 2500 Euro include a loan shark level interest rate.

Loaning money to the underclass/drug users is almost always a bad decision on the individual level, but there's plenty of legitimate businesses which make it their business model- payday loans, online gambling, etc. That's basically what's fueling doordash. It's probably a net advantage for a drug dealer.

"don't party on your own supply, and never front on a front" is common knowledge -- sounds like this guy was doing both.

The average hard (cocaine or worse) drug consumer generally doesn't have the patience to wait a few weeks for an order to ship. They likely also lack the IQ, agency, or tech ability to figure out how to use the dark net market and crypto.

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