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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   28526 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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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.

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