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The issue with gang tats isn't that they have ink in their skin; it's that they are openly advertising that they are a member of a murderous gang. You're conflating the message with the medium. Do you not actually judge all people with tattoos in general? If you do, can you explain what you're judging them for/about? The same goes for piercings and swearing; what about these things leads you to make character judgments?
Yes, I judge people with visible tattoos for it. Specifically, they’re valuing self expression over not looking like ruffians.
“Like ruffians”? Piercings and non-facial tattoos aren’t that taboo anymore. Almost half of adults under 45 have at least one tattoo. It’s been over a decade since the “tatted-up barista with full sleeves” archetype became a thing. Workplace rules about covering up tattoos have also become far more relaxed in most industries. Sure, face tats are still pretty taboo outside of the traditional subcultures you'd find them (line cooks, construction, etc.), but the OP didn't specify face tats in particular.
Personally, I don’t have any tattoos, but that's because I’ve never felt the desire for any, not because I think I would be ostracised for violating a social norm. The worst I would have to endure is my parents giving me shit cause they think all tattoos look ugly.
You can say it about other things as well. More than 20% of people in USA are obese, 1 in 5 people un USA experience mental illness, 25% of women are expected to get abortion, 28% of black males and 16% of Hispanic males will be incarcerated during their lifetimes. We can go on. I do not think that just because something is common, that it automatically means it is also a good thing.
So yeah, maybe it is not such a good thing that we normalized former taboos. What is also interesting in this debate is that the word judging really has negative connotations for many people - except of course if you "judge" something positively. Fat Cosmopolitan model? No problem if somebody judges her overflowing fat as beautiful and herself as stunning and brave person. Somebody has neck tattoos and sleeves? No problem complimenting them for their bravery and confidence. Of course you can judge somebody if he has Make America Great Again sleeve, in that case it is disgusting and not a signal that this person is actually brave to wear his beliefs literally on his sleeve.
It is not about being judgemental or non-judgemental. It is about judging certain things positively and other things negatively, while claiming the moral high ground.
My point wasn’t that because tattoos and piercings are now common that they’re now good; my point was that they're now so common that they’re no longer a useful signal of if someone is a “ruffian,” I.e., a criminal, member of the underclass, or otherwise the type to get in bar fights (e.g., tattoos have long been associated with marines and sailors).
You now have to actually look at the tattoos to potentially get any useful information about the person with said tattoo. If they have prison tats that tells you different things than if they have a USMC globe and anchor which tells you different things than if they have generic normie tattoo art.
Being fat is different. No one wants to be fat for the most part (aside from maybe young women who put it on only in “all the right places” in subcultures into that look), and absolutely no one actually wants to be obese; anyone saying otherwise is coping. So when you see someone who is fat, you see someone who, for one reason or another, either can’t or doesn’t even try to manage their weight. That does give you some amount of information about them, but as more and more people get fat, the information is starting to go from “this is a person on the lowest end of the self-control spectrum” to “this person is not on the highest end of self-control”.
I am not disputing the fact, tattoos may have different meanings in different time and places. In the past, sailors got tattoos indicating if they crossed Atlantic, or other deeds. Prisoners got their own tattoos and so forth. All useful signals for judging people. In modern time, some girl has a tramp stamp or flower tattooed on her ankle, somebody else can have some other patterns tattooed. However it still is a signal of some behavior. I do not have interest to now have PHD style post analyzing all the tattoos, I will generalize.
In fact I can go even deeper. What if I find tattoos stupid, disgusting and weird. That is my judgement and I do not care why you got them or any other excuse. That is my judgement and I do not give shit about what you think in the same way people with tattoos often claim that they themselves do not give a shit what other people think about their tattoos. In fact it may be a lie and maybe the think that my disgust with their tattoos is also some sort of signal and they will judge me for my "bigotry" or lack of empathy or whatever.
In the end the argument stands: people do judge other people and I do not see any problem with that.
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fucccccckiinnnnnnnn BOOT!
There is a 90% chance he got that within a week of stepping off of Parris Island
I was tempted to use this one as the example instead.
That's actually hilarious. I'm not a fan of "funny" tattoos due to their permanence, but that is a 11/10 boot tattoo.
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Sure, the MS-13 face tattoo was just an obvious example that was meant to show the principle - if you present yourself or behave in certain way, you will be judged, it is inevitable.
Let´s say that I know that somebody has tattoos and piercings, and I do not know anything about it: if it is some face tattoo or tramp stamp or nipple piercing etc.
I could judge such a person as having been at certain point in time as reckless, vain, possibly with some body dismorphia or at least self-esteem complex. It is not some gamebreaker for me, but neither is obesity. But it is a hint.
But there is another level here I want to touch. Sometimes there are situations, where we are speaking about very deep concepts, which evade “rationalist” thinking and endless scrutiny. One famous example is when Plato went about in his Academia, thinking about definition of what is a man, he came up with definition of “featherless biped”. Then he met Diogenes:
This is such a rationalist story. Everybody knows what is a man, even a child or village idiot. A good example of trying to ruminate and categorize definitions of what is X, only to completely miss the point and ontology of the problem. This is similar to me: being a fat, weak, tatooed person with a ton of piercings who swears like a sailor is weird and stupid. We may endlessly harp on it, adding epicycles to our definitions but it will not capture the essence. Also there is the tactic of “dont be judgemental” and accept the expert definition, in order to shame you out of your instinct, that even a small child learns somehow without knowing that fat people have higher risk of diabetes according to this metastudy.
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