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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26123 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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I had an argument (I'd guess this is what spurs many top level comments) about tattoos, and how much you're allowed to judge people for them.

My argument was that I think tattoos are a sign of distasteful character and went something like

  • First and foremost, they're ugly and I don't like them
  • They indicate a higher level of criminality proportional to how many visible tattoos they have, along with other negative associations like substance abuse, domestic violence, and general "roughness"
  • Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way
  • Tattoos are expensive and painful to get and permanent
  • They betray a significant deviation from my values (likes tattoos vs dislikes tattoos) and thus give me an "other" signifier for that person

These, I think, give me plenty of room to be wary of strangers with tattoos, especially where I am located in a pretty methed up rural area. The beautiful thing is that it's not a protected characteristic, so you can actually judge it as much as you like!

The other party's argument was

  • It's just a superficial fashion choice that doesn't mean anything so it's wrong to judge people for it

I actually don't think I could agree with that, ever! While it is more true the more "normal" people get tattoos, it is still a fact that pretty much any mugshot I see of any likely violent incarcerated individual is going to have a ton of them. They are also something you have to go out of your way to get, and thus, they make a decent indicator that you shouldn't trust someone if they're in the Venn diagram of "has tattoos".

But now I'm curious what is acceptable to judge people about. Let's say you're walking to your workplace or your university class or your school and you see, purposely avoiding anything like a bumper sticker or T-shirt that makes any more clearly identifiable statement or symbol:

  • A man or woman with dyed blue hair
  • A man or woman with a mohawk
  • A man or woman with a septum piercing
  • A man wearing suspenders
  • A man wearing no suspenders, no belt, and wearing tight pants (this was me in high school)
  • A woman wearing suspenders
  • A man wearing sagging pants that show his underwear
  • A man with golden teeth
  • A white man or woman with dreadlocks
  • A man chewing tobacco
  • A woman chewing tobacco

Or perhaps we could change the context of how you're seeing this person. Let's say you work at a gas station or other commonly-visited public-facing third-place and you see people

  • Walking a significant distance to and from the location
  • Walking with bad posture
  • Visiting the location multiple times in one night
  • Visiting the location alone
  • Visiting the location with their wife and all 7 of their kids
  • Buying lots
  • Buying little
  • Talking a lot
  • Talking very little
  • Making good eye contact
  • Making little eye contact
  • Slurring their words
  • Having proper diction
  • Talking to other coincidental visitors (strangers to you) at the location

The stance of the refuses-to-judge-on-tattoos individual is a little perplexing to me. I'm certain that I am similarly perplexing to him. But for me, pretty much all of these, plus other considerations like height, sex, and age add up to an impression of the character and of the threat level of said individual. Personally, I think everyone has this kind of unconscious thinking, even if they don't know it or if they have suppressed it significantly. My guess is that people left of center tend to be uncomfortable with associating behaviors like that with anything negative, even though they are not protected characteristics, and even though they almost certainly do it themselves for various things, like word choice (do you say gay people or do you say queer people?), vehicle choice (drives a truck...), or sex and likely choice of gender.

How much should you judge people? On what should you judge them by? Is there something you think it's wrong to judge people for?

It's just a superficial fashion choice that doesn't mean anything so it's wrong to judge people for it

What? This is a non-argument. People judge each other all the time on everything that exists.

One line disproof of your friend's argument: go to an away sports game wearing the opposing team's shirt in the bleachers. Depending on the sport and country, that can get you mauled. You, as an individual, don't get to assign meaning for the larger population - only to yourself.

I was raised with a hardcore anti-tattoo worldview (both about getting them and about people who have them). My parents are both secular former hippies with liberal views on sex, abortion, modesty, whatever. I suspect it might be a Jewish thing, although my family is very secular, and I know other secular Jewish parents their age who don’t seem to care.

I judge anti tattoo posts online more harshly then actual tattoos IRL. My initial snap emotional judgement is that online anti tattoo stigma is the province of, "timid men“. I feel like there's a reason here and reddit both hate tattoos and sometimes look down drinking. It's the original virgin chad meme where Chad is comfortable and chill and the virgin is uncomfortable in his own skin. IRL most people under 50 that I know with these opinions on tattoos tend to be coming from a position of fear and inability to hang with the boyz rather than solid judgment. Online I can't help but feel this is more so, when I see an anti-tattoo post here or on reddit my strong initial snap judgement is it's written by a timid man who is uncomfortable with masculinity.

As for tattoos themselves in the Portland area it matters a lot what kind of tattoos you have. I am not saying I don't judge tattoos but a hipster girl with arty tattoos is entirely different than a girls with a tattoo of her baby daddies name or Jesus saves. There are tattoos and tattoos but trying to exclude all tattoos in Portland is gonna make you go insane. In Western culture tattoos are totally mainstream these days.

But now I'm curious what is acceptable to judge people about. Let's say you're walking to your workplace or your university class or your school and you see...

Yes to your entire list. It's acceptable to judge people based on their fashion choices, including clothes, hair, piercings, tattoos, or other body mods. Note that "choices" excludes medical devices like braces, and accepts external constraints like dress codes, weather/dirt/hazard resilience, etc.

I typically don't care about most of that, but me choosing to judge them neutrally doesn't mean that you should be forced to share my opinion.

Tattoos are identity signallers more than anything else. If that identity is "basic bitch" good for them for declaring it openly, just as much as "tacky manchild" is an identity. When identity has a barrier to in-group signalling, then it becomes a useful gauge. Shitty gangbanger cosplay tattoos signify generic douchbagginess, a young man with a high and tight haircut and an eagle globe anchor is a boot high on USMC propaganda.

But the real diff is that context matters. In anodyne polite PMC society a brony tattoo is a skin decoration just like a labubu handbag tag. Its when you go INTO the context of where a tattoo holds meaning that the posers true power level is revealed. A Russian with a full chest of tattoos going to a banya better know what the fuck he's doing or he'll be set upon harder than a Mystique cosplayer at comic con.

Related question to others: why cosplayers, when playing as character with tattoos add temporary paintings but not vice-versa: cosplayers with tattoos proudly display their tattoos even if the character is in setting where tattoos are frowned upon (e.g. Japan). It's interesting if a character and a cosplayer have a tattoo in same place, which takes priority?

They indicate a higher level of criminality proportional to how many visible tattoos they have, along with other negative associations like substance abuse, domestic violence, and general "roughness"

Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way

Are you writing this post from within a time machine, beaming this message out to us from the 1950's? Tattoos as such haven't been signifiers of criminal association in literal decades - certain types of tattoos on certain parts of the body, sure, but just having a depiction etched onto your skin in ink doesn't say anything about your relationship to the rule of law in 2025.

Go to virtually any young, upper middle class, urban environment with connections to the arts or music, and a clear majority of women will have tattoos (as well as a plurality of the men). You can associate tattoos with a more liberal lifestyle (although soldiers and sailors might disagree with that), sure, but some 21 year old girl from a good suburban family studying at Vassar isn't suddenly a dangerous individual because she has a 1 inch wide rose motif tattooed on her forearm.

I think tattoos are trashy because the human body is a beautiful thing in its pure, unmodified state, and because I greatly appreciate our Greco-Roman heritage largely rejecting body modifications - which spared us (in Europe) from the horrors of circumcision, female genital mutilation, neck elongations, lip plates, foot bindings, head stretchings, and all the other grotesqueries the rest of the World routinely commits against their own bodies. It still doesn't mean I have to pretend tattoos mean something they simply no longer do in our current social spheres.

some 21 year old girl from a good suburban family studying at Vassar isn't suddenly a dangerous individual because she has a 1 inch wide rose motif tattooed on her forearm.

Why do you think the forerunners of this were called "tramp stamps"? Why would a harmless (if tasteless) little tattoo on the lower back indicate "ahoy, trollop ahead"?

Because it did. Because Ms. Vassar is not going to stop at the forearm tat, next is the hair dye and septum piercing and more tattoos and then shrill critical/queer/feminist/trans theory lecturing.

It did in the past, yes.

Today, it's just what young people do because it's cool, and because it outrages the Olds. No, not everyone who gets a tattoo turns into a septum-pierced shrieking woke harpy. I would guess that almost every septum-pierced shrieking woke harpy has a tattoo (probably many), but the converse is not true.

I don't like tattoos. But I'm an Old. If you're railing against tattoos, sorry, you're just yelling at the kids to get off your lawn.

as well as a plurality of the men

wat

What exactly does "plurality" mean in that sentence?

Clearly, some men have tattoos, some don't, and some belong to the secret third category. There are more men in the first category than either the second or third, but not more than both combined.

Or the women have A) tattoos, and B) a plurality of the men. The remainder are unattached or with other men.

Or it was a mistaken use of the word.

For tattoos in particular: it entirely depends on context. On a ski trip back during Covid, we had a mixed gender group, and all the girls had tattoos of various sorts, and none of the men did. That led to some teasing: all the men are squares etc. But the idea that they indicate some latent violent criminality in the women is laughable: all of us were well-educated and had highly paid corporate jobs, and I would be surprised if any of us had gotten into a violent altercation in our lives. It functions more as a piece of jewelry or clothing to show off how cool and stylish you are, which women care about and men don't.

It's a silly fad (and I'm sure some will regret getting one when the fad dies), but whatever tattoos might have once indicated about a person (besides wanting to be perceived as cool) is gone since they've been normalized. At least for most tattoos: face tattoos still provide a useful signal.

whatever tattoos might have once indicated about a person (besides wanting to be perceived as cool) is gone since they've been normalized

Context is exactly that. Did any of the tattoo girls look like this? If an individual looking like this were in the vicinity, would you guys have invited him to hang out, or would you have avoided him? Would your group have finger-wagged at anyone wanting to avoid this person due to the tattoos since "tattoos are now normalised" and they don't tell you anything about latent criminality?

I'm betting your group would not. Because the tattoos in that case would indeed be a signal, one that even "cool stylish fashion piece" tattoo girl would ignore at her peril. (Quite literally, as this "tattoo artist" is a convicted murderer).

Yes I agree 100%. But in this aspect tattoos are like clothes. It's not tattoos in themselves that are bad news in terms of social signaling but the type of tattoos.

Of course, for women, tattoos do not show anything of the violent crime kind. It just likely shows more mental instability, more neuroticism, more "easiness", more chance that she's a single mom... More dysfunction. Can I prove that? No, but it's an indicator for me. They understand it too, if they're mocking you for being squares for not having them.

Yeah. The tattooed women are not (necessarily) violent themselves, they just associate with and get into relationships with the tattooed guys who are drug addicts, small-time drug dealers, petty criminals, drunks, and violent.

Still, one only need to go to a criminal courtroom to observe that tattoos on females are indicative of criminality. A while back I was in court and a woman had been arrested on a fairly old warrant. It wasn't violence per se, but she made a stupid video of herself shooting a gun into the air. The kicker is it had one of those cheap auto-switch adjustments so it is technically an automatic per statute. She was, of course, 4 months pregnant and engaged. But she also had tattoos, the same ones from the video. So what do you do with a 22 year old who is clearly more mature than the 19 year old who was a reckless idiot, and also eligible for a very long prison sentence.

Offer a suspended sentence where the whole thing is forgiven if she completes probation. Or knock it down to the charge for shooting a gun in the air(illegal with good reason)/handgun while underage(in the US handguns require 21). There's lots of solutions and she might well get screwed by an uncaring system.

I'm a bit surprised by how visceral the anti-tattoo sentiment is in the comments. I wonder if it's a product of the average age being higher than I thought (maybe early to mid 40s?) and less interaction with the working class, specifically people younger than them.

I agree that in the past tattoos could be a valid barometer for anti-social traits, but nowadays they're so ubiquitous among young people that I don't think there's a strong correlation at all. The nature of tattoos is different as well. My impression is that they tend to be smaller than they were in the past and thus people, especially women, are more likely to have more than one. Interestingly, I've noticed that a lot of younger police officers have tattoos, usually in the forearm area. I tend to view police officers fairly positively, and so I don't have nearly as negative of an association.

Tattoos used to signify insiders/outsiders of one variety or another. Now they more often signify people who adopt the latent aesthetic of that signal. They want to be appear special, and different, but not so different that they have to suffer the social costs (unless it's triggering the "squares" which is exactly the crypto benefit they're seeking).

The ticking time bomb is that as time passes tattoos become associated more with middle aged squares than they do live-fast-die-young devil-may-care rebels. Gen Alpha's immediate source of cultural exposure to tattoos is going to be via their mums and their primary school teachers.

nowadays they're so ubiquitous among young people that I don't think there's a strong correlation at all.

I don't have the disgust reaction that a lot of people here seem to have. I do, however, tend to think that for the cost of a full sleeve you could do something that gets you a fun story and some interesting scars.

I wonder if it's a product of the average age being higher than I thought.

“BOOMERS could be here, he thought. I’ve never been to this message board before, there could be BOOMERS anywhere...”

I fucking love this meme so much

But also see any discussion on: abortion, pre-maritial sex, Christianity. The gang may not be actual boomers (also mid 40s is young Gen X) but they're spiritually boomer for sure

Speaking of the meme, I wrote this a while ago to make fun of Doug Ford

"Bike lanes could be here," he muttered, scanning the unfamiliar suburb. "I've never driven through this part of town. They could've painted bike lanes anywhere." The cool wind felt good against his bare chest. "I HATE bike lanes," he thought. Nickelback thumped through the truck's old stereo, making it pulsate even as the Canadian club circulated through his powerful thick veins and washed away his (merited) fear of urban planning committees. "With a truck, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

Tattoos are expensive and painful to get and permanent

Having children is expensive and painful and permanent. Does that mean that you consider having children to be antisocial/unaesthetic, by the same token?

If kids were tattoos, sure! Instead, parents are generally viewed well by everyone except antinatalists, and responsibly having kids in a healthy marriage has got to be a good indicator of lack of criminality or impulsiveness. They also do a lot more than sit on you making a statement. People become parents by accident or they become parents for reasons other than signaling something. This provides pretty good cover for the people who are signaling something.

Getting more than one costly, expensive, loud, and permanent signal directly on your body, on the other hand, seems to correlate a lot with low impulse control and many other problems. Most of my arguments would not apply (as much) to a small, invisible tattoo, or a singular large one. I still would dislike them, though.

I agree with the general sentiment, yet I'm not sure how much room for nuance your argument with the other party had, since you haven't mentioned it.

Are all tattoos the same? Is a full body tattoo equivalent to a tiny flower on a wrist you could barely see? Perhaps you would consider all tattoos to be negative, but surely there would be varying levels of how much of a negative impact a tattoo could have on your perception of a person based on what that tattoo is and/or how large it is.

I find both sides taken to the extreme a bit absurd. If one were to think all tattoos are bad and/or reflect poorly on the person and all tattoos are superficial fashion choices - I would think someone defending either position would have to start granting exceptions or resorting to logical fallacies to maintain their position. It's possible neither side actually has this black and white position, but the post certainly gives off that impression.

Perhaps in your personal experience, every person you met with tattoos gives off the quality of the type of individual you don't want to associate with. While on the other hand, the person you were arguing with might have a lot of friends that have tattoos (or even have tattoos themselves), so they don't associate negativity with tattoos as much, if at all.

Personally, I think both sides of the argument you presented are pretty weak.

First and foremost, they're ugly and I don't like them

This does technically support your position of you personally finding tattoos distasteful but will do nothing to convince others of why they should find tattoos distasteful. Also, beauty is subjective. Is there not a single tattoo you could find any artistic quality in? If someone drew something that wasn't ugly on a piece of paper, what is it that makes it ugly once it's put on the human skin? You need to expand on this point.

Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way

It's likely many younger people with tattoos aren't even considering that. Tattoos are becoming more common in the United States. This Pew survey from 2023 found 32% of Americans have a tattoo. That's 1/3 of Americans. 41% of people aged 18-29 and 46% of people aged 30-49 have at least one tattoo. That's a lot of people, and I highly doubt most of them are making the conscious decision that they are associating themselves with criminals or other undesirable groups. While there is still a social stigma with tattoos, it's largely gone now, at least amongst the newer generation.

Tattoos are expensive and painful to get and permanent

This doesn't seem to really support your argument in any way. Also, you can pay money to get tattoos removed. It's going to cost money and time but tattoos aren't as "permanent" as they used to be. You need to expand on this point more.

To me, it seems only your first two points seem to support why you dislike tattoos and only the 2nd point seems to support why tattoos should be considered distasteful.

Meanwhile, assuming you have summarized your opponent's position accurately and fairly, it does not address your points at all and takes on an easily disproven absurd position. Superficial fashion statement? As you pointed out, tattoos are expensive and time-consuming to get. Referring back to the Pew study from before, 69% of people who have a tattoo stated its purpose was to remember or honor someone or something and 47% to make a statement about something they believe in. That doesn't seem like superficial to me. Only 32% of people stated their tattoo was to improve their personal appearance, which would qualify as a superficial fashion statement. At best, your opponent's position would need to be mended to "some tattoos are superficial fashion statements."

Also, even if I did grant your opponent's position that tattoos are superficial fashion statements, there aren't any reasons provided to argue why it's wrong to judge people for superficial fashion statements. People make judgments based on superficial fashion statements all the time. Of course, your opponent isn't here and would likely be able to provide some reasons as to why that is wrong, but considering you didn't flesh out their argument, I'm just going to assume your conversation with them didn't progress much further.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to make on the spot judgments based on characteristics because you can't perform any actions without judgments, otherwise you're no different from a random number generating machine. At the same time, acknowledging that your judgments could be wrong, or being open to the possibility that your judgments are based on falsehoods, will make you a better person. I tend to find the "you can never judge someone based on x factor" crowd to usually be hypocrites that want to feel morally superior, but it doesn't mean their points are always without merit either.

What you should judge people by are the factors that are relevant for what you are judging them for.

If someone drew something that wasn't ugly on a piece of paper, what is it that makes it ugly once it's put on the human skin? You need to expand on this point.

Paper is the medium for drawing and it's flat. So picture looks as intended. On a human skin which is non-flat, picture pattern-matches as dirt first (especially if it's faded) or deformity and only later recognized as picture.

69% of people who have a tattoo stated its purpose was to remember or honor someone or something and 47% to make a statement about something they believe in [...] 32% of people stated their tattoo was to improve their personal appearance

I think those reasons are post hoc because they can be achieved by much simpler and more effective means. I'm sceptical that they set out with the idea of honouring someone, making a statement, or improving their appearance and then arrived at a tattoo as the best solution. I suspect they set out to get a tattoo because there's something about the idea of people who get tattoos that they admire and want to be associated with. Maybe it's about being visibly committed to something. I'm not sure what that says about them.

If someone drew something that wasn't ugly on a piece of paper, what is it that makes it ugly once it's put on the human skin?

For me the human form and even a small part of it is beautiful in a very special way. I have seen many tattoos that were very well crafted or artistically composed or both, but I've never seen a single one that looked nicer than the skin it was drawn onto. Almost any sketch (even a bad one) looks nicer to me than a blank piece of paper. I fully admit that I am probably way out from the median in appreciation of human forms. So it's not that transferring the design makes it ugly (although sometimes it can too) it's more that transferring the design is a massive downgrade from what existed there previously.

Probably the only tattoo I could appreciate would be really well done permanent make up where the goal is really to emphasize or enhance the wearers physical form.

"Do not judge" (as stated)/"judge only deniably, or based on a narrow set of acceptable criteria (socks with sandals etc.)" (as implemented) is an American cultural value. You could argue that it serves some purpose on a societal level, in a Chestertonian way, but many societies without it mostly work fine, which puts an upper bound on how important it can be.

To maximise personal advantage, it is rational to always update/"judge" on everything that you can extract a meaningful evidential signal from, which surely includes all of your examples. It seems like a pretty complex question which criteria should be kept to maximise the elusive societal advantage (i.e. what set of judgement taboos maximises social welfare?) - the most obvious advantage of any such taboos is that they facilitate coexistence between different groups with divergent aesthetic values, and thereby also encourage such groups to form to begin with, enabling distributed experimentation on value systems. For example, if it turns out pro-tattoo values actually carry some unexpected advantage (aliens invade and kill everyone without?), the societies which did not suppress pro-tattoo aesthetics because they had a taboo against judging based on tattoos would come out ahead.

they facilitate coexistence between different groups with divergent aesthetic values

Beyond just different groups, even just between individuals. Most people have a few preferences that are weird or non-conforming, even if they're otherwise very similar. It's just nicer to not sweat the little things in general, and I'd argue the vast majority of tattoos are in that category.

My wife on a couple different occasions expressed the desire to get a tattoo. Each time I'm like "No. No tattoos. I don't want you to get a tattoo." Naturally she asks me why, and I'm at a loss for words. You just...you don't do that! That's your skin! It's not a piece of paper! Do you want to look like the kind of person who gets tattoos?!

I guess you either grew up in a family with standards* or you didn't.

*My younger brother got a small tattoo, of a line of scripture. Getting a Bible verse tattooed on a discreet part of your body seems like the most innocuous kind of tattoo you could get, but he still hid it from us for years and only admitted it with a lot of sheepishness when he came across a situation where we were bound to see it. This is right and correct.

You just...you don't do that! That's your skin! It's not a piece of paper!

Those aren't actual reasons.

Do you want to look like the kind of person who gets tattoos?!

This very much depends on what kind of people around you have tattoos, and what kind of tattoos they are.

Getting a Bible verse tattooed on a discreet part of your body seems like the most innocuous kind of tattoo you could get,

Only if everyone around you is Christian. In my circles having a tattoo is whatever, but a religious tattoo is trashy

The tough-guy/hot chick tattoos of yesteryear are mostly finished in the wild. Some 40 year-olds who didn't get the memo still get them, but most of the tattoos I see nowadays are just crappy line doodles of flowers or mountains or whatever on the floppy, under-toned triceps of 20 year old girls. These don't communicate criminality or BPD or sluttiness like they did in the old days- they signal (intentionally or not) total conformity to Latest Thing. They look stupid, but I wouldn't even say they look ugly- they just look like she got pen on her arm, like an accident. Tattoos as threat- or sexual availability-signals I could at least understand, but I don't understand these new ones at all.

I guess this is just flyover country being behind on the trends, but my impression is that tattoos, especially lots of them, still do signal criminality or BPD or sluttiness, or at least an attempt to look cool.

They're also just a lot less common here, so maybe they're still a reliable signal of something.

flyover country being behind on the trends

Profoundly yes, any major downtown is full of lightly tattoo'd yuppies who work as lawyers, accountants and software engineers and don't get arrested for doing meth and killing people

Putting aside tattoos specifically, obviously any sort of appearance choice is some kind of reflection of the person's personality, sense of self, sense of who they want to be, role they are presenting to society, etc. etc. And obviously it is a very old and natural human activity to make judgments based on this. "Is this person signalling affiliation with my in group?" "Does this person have good taste?" "Is this person conscientious?" "Does this person respect group norms?" If we did not expect people to judge us based on appearance choices, we all would just be wearing gray sweatsuits everywhere.

I tattooed my wedding ring. It's a simple black band around the ring finger that looks like a standard ring from any distance. I did it because:

  1. I like the symbolism that the marriage decision was permanent and there is nothing I can do to undo that decision.
  2. I do enough work with machines that I didn't want to have to constantly be removing the ring (and risk it getting lost, which it would).
  3. Expensive wedding rings (even "simple" bands) look gauche to me and I don't like the striving-middle-class aesthetic they represent.

I'm generally wildly against most tattoos, but I think a thoughtful tattoo that actually represents something meaningful is a good choice. Maybe <1% of tattoos I've seen in the wild fit this category.

actually represents something meaningful

It is meaningful to you, of course, but importantly it's equally meaningful to other people (and I'd suggest this is what makes it truly meaningful to you).

The thing about a wedding ring that makes it eminently appropriate for a tattoo is that it communicates an unambiguous social status to other people and that you are identifiably committed to that status.

The same principle operates for prison gangs, football hooligans and tribal islanders. It doesn't work for artsy urbanites who create their own private symbology, sentimentalists who appear to be concerned that they'll forget their most personally significant relationships, or trend followers that want to add visual interest to their appearance.

Even as a tattoo hater, I have to admit that this is pretty neat.

I like that! That may be the single example I know of of a tattoo that I fully approve of and think is touching.

Walking a significant distance to and from the location

how you would see it?

  • Visiting the location multiple times in one night
  • Visiting the location alone
  • Visiting the location with their wife and all 7 of their kids
  • Buying lots
  • Talking a lot
  • Talking very little
  • Making good eye contact
  • Making little eye contact
  • Slurring their words
  • Having proper diction
  • Talking to other coincidental visitors (strangers to you) at the location

heavily depends on a location (for each I think I can imagine location where given thing would be entirely normal or indication of horrible life choices or worse)

  • Buying little

how it can be weird/problem?

how you would see it?

You're right, this is pretty specific to my location: I live in a very small town and the sight lines are pretty long, so depending on the direction, I can tell if someone's headed my way for quite a distance. I also happen to drive around sometimes and see the same people doing the same things (the list was meant to be for habitual actions). If I know what someone's start point is, I can determine their walk round-trip is about a mile and potentially find it exceptional because basically no one walks in the area unless they're exercising, generally outdoorsy, own a pet, have a DUI, have no driver's license, are a minor who likes to go places, are a minor who is a street urchin with no place to go, are poor, or any combination. That alone might not tell you much, but you could combine it with other indicators to tell you more.

because basically no one walks in the area

oh, I keep forgetting about that USAsian weirdness.

Boys on the motte will clutch their pearls at the idea of defacing the beauty of the human form with art but if you try to get around using the limbs god made for you to walk around with will assume you're a DUI poor

That's a little bit reductive; there are a lot of things on that "or" list, some of which are perfectly fine. Deducing that I have one of the traits on that "or" list from my significant walks to the supermarket would be correct (specifically, I don't have a driver's licence; I'm absent-minded and don't think I'd make a great driver).

It's true! Sad!

basically no one walks in the area unless ...

I find it sad that so many places are like this. Mostly because the urban design sucks, but then even if you're willing to put up with that and walk anyways you're going to get judged negatively.

I'm weird in that I would want to walk places anyways (and have, on occasions where I'm outside my very walkable current location). It would be annoying to be judged for this.

I agree that you can add up all these little things together and make more accurate assumptions about less obvious things about a person. But basically everyone has a few non-standard preferences. By default you should avoid judging people on things that don't really matter, and they should do the same for you.

I'm weird in that I would want to walk places

This isn't weird at all. Kind of hilarious the default locomotion option for the last 6 million years is seen as weird in America. No wonder you're all so unhealthy

Tonight when it came up that my fiance and I walked to the bar people were shocked.

It was a half hour! On a pleasant summer night!

Tattoos are a way of giving a piece of your body, permanently to a tattooist. He is literally branding your body, and it is permanent.

This is a disgusting form of submissive behavior.

Granted there are situations where a tattoo is designed by the recipient and the “artist” is passive, but those are rare.

To make this point: NONE of the art that tattooist brand their donors with would be in any way notable or memorable if it was simply put to canvas. The “art” is the act of convincing somebody to donate their body to this. It’s notable because “I have permanently disfigured my body with this”, but that’s the only reason why. It’s also why tattoos have gone through a progression from a simple bicep tattoo, to full sleeves, chest plates for women, face tattoos, and in the most “interesting” cases, a full blackout of the donors body parts.

Go to a tattoo convention and you won’t see small artistic things (if you could call them that) getting attention or notoriety, you’ll see the treadmill increasingly self destructive things. It’s why tattooism is adjacent to other “body mod”/mutilation cultures, and the further into tattoos you go, the more you converge with the mutilation side.

(To be clear, I have tattoos, I don’t regret them, they are my own design. I just recognize this behavior for what it is)

This is a disgusting form of submissive behavior.

Surely that all depends on your perspective, doesn't it!

I would never get one myself, ever. But I don't judge other people for getting them. The correlation with criminality seems rather low given how popular they are these days.

Go to a tattoo convention

that is going to select for people with tattoo obsession/fascination

Tattoos are a way of giving a piece of your body, permanently to a tattooist. He is literally branding your body, and it is permanent.

wait, people are getting tattooed without selecting what they will get?

Let's say you're walking to your workplace or your university class or your school and you see, purposely avoiding anything like a bumper sticker or T-shirt that makes any more clearly identifiable statement or symbol:

  • A man or woman with dyed blue hair
  • A man or woman with a mohawk

These appearance choices are not ugly (in my personal aesthetic opinion), but unfortunately at this point they are strongly linked to objectionable opinions, so I am forced to assume that the person has those opinions.

  • A man or woman with a septum piercing
  • A man wearing sagging pants that show his underwear

This appearance choice is both ugly (in my personal aesthetic opinion) and linked to objectionable opinions.

  • A man wearing suspenders
  • A man wearing no suspenders, no belt, and wearing tight pants (this was me in high school)
  • A woman wearing suspenders

A somewhat weird person who likes outdated fashion and refuses to bow to modern sensibilities

  • A man with golden teeth

A person with dental hygiene bad enough that he lost an entire tooth

  • A white man or woman with dreadlocks

This appearance choice is ugly (in my personal aesthetic opinion) but not linked to objectionable opinions.

  • A man chewing tobacco
  • A woman chewing tobacco

An addict

Or perhaps we could change the context of how you're seeing this person. Let's say you work at a gas station or other commonly-visited public-facing third place and you see people:

I think this example is too location-specific to be useful.

A person with dental hygiene bad enough that he lost an entire tooth

Might also have just had an accident. Or lost a fight.

It’s not that tattooing is evil or inexscusable. It is that it is so rarely a good decision that having multiple indicates a person who makes bad decisions on a regular basis.

Obviously there’s a wide spectrum of different kinds of tattoos- there’s tattoos of the Chinese character which the guy at the shop swears means courage(he doesn’t speak Chinese), there’s swastika and drug tattoos, there’s tattoos of Bible verses. I think I will stick to my ‘three or more tattoos- red flag for poor decision making’ rule in all cases, but obviously reserve the right to judge the guy with a face tat of a crack pipe even if he has no other tattoos.

A good rule of thumb would be - it's difficult/impossible to avoid making snap judgements on appearances, but don't invest much in them. Once you rule out the possibility that the other person is a threat, it's best to treat them the same as you would treat anyone else until given reason to do otherwise. Valid reasons would be that their deeds or words indicate that they're actually a person of low moral character.

How is it that we've come to a place that old moral aphorisms need to be reiterated? Don't judge a book by its cover. Judge not lest ye be judged.

On the tattoo issue specifically though, you must recognize that your point of view is old-fashioned or at least regionally specific. Tattoos aren't even counterculture or subculture at this point; they're functionally mainstream in the US. There's no reason to associate them with antisocial behavior when you see them. Note, I say this as someone without tattoos who doesn't intend to get any.

I will say, every person I've ever met with more than one tattoo has a weird penchant for self destructive habits/major life choices. One tattoo seems like the gimme. Lots of people get one tattoo. I see lots of people who's singular tattoo is a tribute to someone deeply important to them who passed away, like a parent or child taken too soon.

More than one, and their life choices become totally baffling to me. Not just in the tattoos, but just in all their habits. Bizarre, sudden choices that jump the path of life onto a different (often worse) track. Nightmarish eating, hygiene, spending or drug habits. There is even a peculiar breed of people who get lots of Christian tattoos who are plainly overcompensating for personality disorders that constantly threaten to cause them to break with their faith. It's like they need the words or symbols indelibly scribed on their body in easily viewed places as a reminder not to do shit. This sort of tattooed person is often less bad than the rest, but also tends to be a bit of a powder keg.

I guess if I had to pin a through line of all the people I've ever known with lots of tattoos, its that they are constantly wrestling (or wallowing) in a wide spectrum of self harm.

I think it's fully acceptable to take into account tattoos when judging people. However the blanket statements you're making seem way way too harsh.

First and foremost, they're ugly and I don't like them

K. Why should anyone care about your personal aesthetic preferences?

They indicate a higher level of criminality proportional to how many visible tattoos they have, along with other negative associations like substance abuse, domestic violence, and general "roughness"

This is true in a statistical sense. But the correlation is going to be noisy, and depending on your local culture entirely useless at the low end.

Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way

This is only true if the local culture makes this association. My understanding is that Japan is like this to an extreme degree, to the point you get banned from bathhouses. The general association that a couple small tattoos have is nowhere near that strong in most places in NA, and even less so in most large cities.

Tattoos are expensive and painful to get and permanent

I'd argue that there's actually a positive correlation between the cost of a tattoo and the the quality of the character of the person in question. (As many "trashy" tattoos will be cheap flashes with no thought put into them, or done outside a regular shop on impulse with no thought for the future. Expensive tattoos are typically planned out with great care, discussed with a well-regarded artist beforehand, with the appropriate weight given to a permanent decision).

And painful? It's really not that bad (from my understanding, I don't actually have any myself). But lots of worthwhile things are painful in the moment.

They betray a significant deviation from my values (likes tattoos vs dislikes tattoos) and thus give me an "other" signifier for that person

This is just "I don't like them" again, and says more about you than them.

Again -> perfectly fine to judge someone for having prison-style, or face and neck tattoos, or having cheap offensive tattoos or way way too many. But the blanket statement is going to come off as rude because so many people have one or two tiny or hidden ones, that don't indicate anything significant about their character.

I myself have none, but my SO has a full sleeve, done with careful consideration and consultation with an artist. More are planned. My best friend has a quote from a classic novel hidden under his shirt. One of my siblings has a tiny symbol to commemorate a trip with friends hidden on the side of their foot. None of us are lower-class, we're all high-achieving in our lives, careers, and personal relationships.

and even less so in most large cities.

Rural areas aren’t any less tattooed than urban ones.

Oh probably the absolute rate is more or less the same, but what I was trying to get at is that the types of people who have tattoos, and the treatment of those who do are likely different in a large liberal city vs a "methed up rural area."

You think trailer trash is more judgemental about tattoos than thé PMC?

You think trailer trash is more judgemental about tattoos than thé PMC?

So many of my PMC friends have tattoos that I'm going to have to assume the answer is yes, although I don't really know anyone who is trailer trash so maybe they're super chill about it

The ship for "rahhhh tattoos bad" sailed probably a decade ago for downtown yuppies

I don't care about the judgment of trailer trash - I care about the judgment of the "normal" people (which OP is presenting himself as) in each location.

I think the normal person in "methed up area" will have a harsher opinion on tattoos than a "normal" person in a large city. A couple of reasons:

  • rural areas tend to be older and more conservative
  • cities have more distinct subcultures that are both not-trash (to the typical PMC) and have frequent tattoos (e.g. LGBT folks are much more likely to be tattooed, and are not judged harshly by the PMC)
  • the types of tattoos you'll see on people in the city are likely different, and on average will be more tasteful to PMC eyes
  • more PMC people will know of "respectable" people who have a small tattoo that disappears under their white collar every day - there are fewer white collar "respectable" jobs in rural areas

I don't think the exact nature of judgement between cities and rural areas is central to my point though. My point is really just that local cultures differences exist, and so you can't make a blanket "Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way".

K. Why should anyone care about your personal aesthetic preferences?

I find this flippant. Why should anyone care? Because I'm not the only one and there's an entire wing of politics where people worry about systemic discrimination and think it's a huge problem. We live in a society and interact with other human beings and having those human beings like you can be important.

This topic came up because I was ranting against Pete Hegseth. The party of family values puts forward this womanizing gruff tattooed washed up Fox News guy. If he was someone you could vote for on a ballot, the aesthetic choices he made very well might put me over the edge on not voting for him if I knew what he looked like and nothing else, or if I was on the fence before seeing him. If someone knows that they may be systemically discriminated against for their choices, and does it anyway, okay. But then that would definitely reinforce my choice to trust any given stranger less if they have them, and it's something I have to assume of pretty much anyone who gets them, because the idea that "family values" types dislike them is pretty widespread, I think. If you are comfortable running against "family values", that says a lot! And yes, I understand that may be less true in other places, but it is probably still a little true even in those places.

We live in a society

Bottom text

This topic came up because I was ranting against Pete Hegseth. The party of family values puts forward this womanizing gruff tattooed washed up Fox News guy.

...You left out the Veteran part. that seems like a notable factor to exclude.

Hey, lots of veterans are meatheads who make awful decisions, too. Who was doing the raping during the Rape of Nanking? Yes, that's a bad example in the context of America.

Not all veterans, of course, but men in the service are commonly exactly the stereotype that I'm struck by when I notice multiple visible tattoos, coarse rough-and-tumble assholes who one-up each other, drink, and do stupid things. My favorite non-fiction book is probably Quartered Safe Out Here, which certainly did not dispel my false stereotype. I actually didn't recall that Pete Hegseth is a veteran, if it helps.

TBH it was intentionally flippant, sorry.

I think when arguments around what aesthetics are good/bad in general, arguments cannot be made on personal preference alone. It read to me like someone who hates broccoli, and wants us to judge people who eat it by saying "first off all, it's gross and ugly". Perfectly fine as a personal opinion! But you have to demonstrate your aesthetic principles are widely held, or justified in some other way.

I mostly agree with you about Pete Hegseth. I don't care that he has tattoos, but I very much dislike the content.

This topic came up because I was ranting against Pete Hegseth. The party of family values puts forward this womanizing gruff tattooed washed up Fox News guy.

The party of family values was Bush's GOP. Trump's GOP is different. He's been hiring guys with tattoos since he was a teenager.

I remember suddenly hearing the verb "judge" a lot in high school from girls. "She was judging me!" "You're being really judgy!" etc. and I was baffled by the usage. My internal reaction was something like... uh, yes? Everyone's judging everyone about everything all the time? Subconsciously most of the time, even? I understood that the girls were not trying to stop others from "judging" per se (since presumably they themselves often made knee-jerk and subconscious judgements about others) -- they simply wanted immunity from criticism about their choices (bad boyfriend, questionable fashion, low status friends, etc). I remember feeling unconvinced by their appeals against "judging" but at the time I couldn't put my finger on why. Nor could anyone else, so it was an effective tactic to immediately shut down any criticism (cf. "you're being inappropriate").

Americans are taught from a young age that we "shouldn't judge a book by its cover," that we should "judge by the content of their character," that we "ought to walk a mile in their shoes," and so on. This stems from a belief in an obscure nameless virtue that's not quite captured by the term "tolerance." The best name for it I've seen (sadly from a writer whose name I cannot remember) is "indiscriminateness." It's not enough to tolerate your neighbors weird facial piercings/taste in movies/cooking/religion -- to simply let them enjoy those things without trying to stop them -- no, you must pretend (and strive to actual believe) that you can't even see a qualitative difference at all between Christianity/Islam, Michael Bay/Ingmar Bergman, natural look/septum piercings, etc. I think that "indiscriminateness" as a virtue is the fruit of Americans' extreme fixation on egalitarianism and discomfort with any sort of hierarchy or authority.

So what is it "okay" to judge? Everything, I suppose. You cannot stop other people from judging you, at best you can just shame them into lying and saying they're not (which sounds like a worse outcome to me -- now you don't even know who looks down on you!).

If you want to get a hideous septum piercing or dye your hair some ludicrous color, please weigh whatever benefit you'd get from that action against the negativity you'll get from others (comments, mockery, rejected job applications) and then, make your decision and own that decision.

To directly answer your questions:

How much should you judge people? All the time. Unless you've been living alone on a desert island you've met a lot for people, so you have tons of data to use. It would be foolish not to use it. Your brain is designed to due exactly that sort of thing (pattern recognition).

On what should you judge them by? Any characteristics for which you have data.

Is there something you think it's wrong to judge people for? No, with some exceptions for leniency on people who have Seen Some Shit (e.g. abuse victims, war fighters/survivors, mentally ill people).

Americans are taught from a young age that we "shouldn't judge a book by its cover," that we should "judge by the content of their character," that we "ought to walk a mile in their shoes," and so on

The argument is particularly strange when the book is literally choosing to draw its own cover. It makes as much sense to judge a tattoo as it does to judge something that someone has written on a piece of paper and handed to me.

The argument is particularly strange when the book is literally choosing to draw its own cover.

writers in many cases do not get to choose covers and in some were extremely disappointed with what publisher did to their book

though I am not fan of this saying either

Matthew 7:1-3

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Another one we can lie at the feet of Christianity.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Sounds to me like an endorsement of judging, so long as you realize you will be held to the same standards.

Matthew 7:2 isn't so bad, on its own, but 7:1 literally starts with "judge not". And Matthew 7:3 suggests the judge has problems of his own he ought to be considering before judging anyone else.

The same sentiment is in John 8:7, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her". Only the perfect (i.e. God) get to judge, everyone else can suck it.

7:1 starts with "judge not" but then immediately explains why you would want to do that: "lest ye be judged". It's saying "If you judge people then God will judge you." It's the exact same idea as 7:2 (which makes sense! 7:2 is literally the next sentence of the sermon!).

It's also worth noting that in John 8 at the end even Jesus (i.e., God) declines to judge her, and then says "Go and sin no more." Which means that acknowledging adultery is a sin is not the kind of judgement he is talking about. He's talking about the punishment part of judgment.

Everyone always leaves out verse 5:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Is the man in suspenders a slender, bearded twenty-something man from Brooklyn, or an overweight septuagenarian?

Whoa, you must have some problematic associations with suspenders! I hope you feel sorry.

I don't know that I've ever seen anyone wear them seriously except for Amish, my dad, and the only lesbian in my class when she went to a school dance once.

Old farts wear them. They’re pretty common in little-boy church clothes type outfits- you know, the ones moms think are cute on toddlers for the five minutes before they get ruined.

The most common suspender wearers that I see are older guys who have put on enough weight and lost enough muscle that belts don't properly hold up their pants anymore.

For me, it's condescending Unix users.

They are associated with hipsters (the "slender, bearded twenty-something man from Brooklyn", though I might note that while the hipster lives in Brooklyn he's probably not from there), and fat old guys from the South. Also, not mentioned, lumberjacks. The hipsters wear them ironically because they do everything ironically, and the other groups wear them seriously.

I instinctively pictured the boss from Office Space.

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