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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.
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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