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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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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