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It's the Classic Geeks MOPS and Sociopaths model applied across status in different subcultures. From the time I was 14 to today, I've been a part of some subculture in which the super-serious hardcore guys were covered in tattoos, the regulars all had a few with varying visibility, and I was weird for not having any tattoos at all. Boxing, attending local punk rock shows in warehouses and basements, crossfit, rock climbing, I've always had some hobbies where everyone has a tattoo or seven. The question among my friends was never "Why do you have a tattoo?" it was "Hey FiveHour, why don't you have any tattoos yet?" This holds across a lot of other hobbies and subcultures, like motorcycles or the military. The dynamic, regardless of hobby, is that the guys who make money from the hobby (whether a lot or a little) are more likely to be more heavily tatted, as they don't have to worry about judgment from the "straight" world. The rest are imitating the higher status members of the subculture. As we're seeing more and more professionals and normal citizens take up hobbies like rock climbing and crossfit instead of hobbies like golf, we're going to see more and more professionals and normal citizens get tattoos. The gumbies want to look like the old timers, and a tattoo is a way to "buy" credibility.
This also parallels the decline of the corporate dress code. Suits and ties went from a natural status item "When you're at work, you dress the way rich people dress all the time;" to an artificial imposition, the monkey suit, "nobody dresses like this off the clock, we all know that we take off our suits as soon as we get home, and nobody goes out in a tie unless they don't have time to change." As soon as a suit and a clean white dress shirt became affordable to the average working stiff, it became unfashionable and the upper classes began to work their way into our culture of casual dress. You get the phenomenon of flouting the dress code as a status symbol, which arguably starts with go-to-hell pants and related items in the preppy subculture which were as obnoxious as possible while still being within prep school and country club dress codes, and runs through the apish imitation of Zuckerberg's refusal to wear formal clothing. Geniuses and the highly valuable were allowed to flout dress codes, so midwits ape them and flout dress codes in hope that people will perceive it as high status. Same dynamic with tattoos. The rainmaker has visible tattoos as a status symbol, he is above the losers in HR who would discipline him. Others ape him, to try to show that they are also above HR.
Much as berets in military uniforms went from elite commando units to part of the standard, tattoos have gone from symbols of the absolutely dedicated to alternative cultures to silly play-acting alt-hobbies. We've gone from a standard in professional settings of "no one has tattoos," to a standard of "if you have a tattoo no one should ever see it," to a standard of "if you have tattoos, you should be able to cover all of them up." We're inching towards a standard of "We all have tattoos, but you should be able to cover most of them up." Increasingly it's expected that people will have tattoos, that everyone has them, and as that happens it's going to make less and less sense that they can't be visible. Just as people used to wear suits and ties to work, and to go out for a drink, then slowly it declined to the point where few wear them to work and no one wears them out; now people conceal tattoos at work, but don't at home, and slowly they'll reveal more of them at work.
As for your kids, short of moving to Lancaster or Medina, do your best to raise them with long time horizons on their mind. Getting a tattoo is really fun, but you're stuck with it forever, so people who think short term tend to get more of them. If your kids are long term thinkers, they're likely to never get one, and if they do want to they're likely to put so much thought into it that they never end up pulling the trigger anyway.
Though, some of the arguments you make in your post strike me as piss poor. "Your tattoo will look stupid when you're old and saggy;" "Ok but I'll be old and saggy anyway, and the internet is full of dudes telling me I'll hit 'the wall' soon and it won't matter after that." What good is avoiding regret, anyway? Tattoos aren't really very expensive, unless you're having a huge complicated piece done by a well known artist, a couple hundred bucks will get you good custom work on a small piece at a clean professional studio, and if you order straight out of their book it'll be cheaper still. "Hip to be Square" is an argument that's been made since, well, quite a while, but never really been landed worth a damn.
You should work on sharpening your anti-tattoo points before your kids hit their late teens. I still remember going on a double date with a single friend of ours, who had only met her date in passing before this. The kid shows up, and he's got APPLE PIE tattooed across his knuckles. Yes, Apple was split across both hands. He got it done as a gag at a house party in high school where someone had brought a tattoo gun. The date was over for him right there.
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