More people are getting tattoos removed

Are the new lasers very painful when applied ?

You know, as much as I want to agree, it feels a bit shallow to look at life that way. I've got tattoos, sometimes people ask me "What does this represent to you?" and honestly I never really know what to say because I don't overthink them. What I do remember is where I was, what I was doing, and my whole vibe back then. It's a cool reminder that nothing stays the same and that I'm a different person now. It's kind of like asking your grandpa the story behind a scar he has.

Now lately I feel like the speed on which trends are born and die, the non-stop over sharing, and that constant itch for "what's next" is really pushing us all to become these kind of formless blobs, scared to show any real "edges." For example:

- Cars all kinda look the same now and are mostly some shade of grey. Same deal with phones and pretty much all tech.

- Buying clothes with bland colors with almost no originality with the expectation that it will probably be in the bin the next season.

- The whole clean girl aesthetic on putting in a ton of effort to look like you put in zero effort.

- And don't get me started on how sad beige parenting is not a joke

You only live once, there's no scoreboard at the end. Just do what you want with your life. More often than you'd probably like to admit, nobody really cares that much anyway.

This is why I likely will never get a tattoo of any kind, other than the fact that I simply have no desire for one. Some people become themselves early in life, but I feel like I different person every year that goes by. I don't even like the kinds of clothes I used to wear not that long ago, so I know I would soon hate any tattoo I'd get.

The idea that your character is able to be quantized to a moment in time instead of the history of your life is bizarre to me.

For the vast majority of people who haven’t suffered some kind of brain damage, life is append only and the current state is completely dependent on the history. You have markers of your past good and bad decisions all over you.

I'm not sure, in my experience, the older people I know with tats have exactly the personality that goes along with it.

I think for some people, at least myself, tattoos are a narrative, it's such a bizarre process, half art and half science, that each session, wether it was in a punk house with no electricity or an upscale art gallery on the other side of the world gets ingrained a little deeper. They're like little time machines, I can remember who I was, where I was, who I was with. And I'm guessing I'm in the minority here, but I can't stand the look of a fresh clean tattoo, the stick and poke in a dorm room, the 20 year old one done in a studio that wasn't too concerned with checking ids, the one that was done way too deep, in the dark, and healed into a puff sticker like scar consistency, that's what I love. I've considered a few times going in and getting some of my more visible ones removed, and the occasional must wear long sleeved shirt wins every time, no matter what I gain or lose, I like my garbage art time machines

I got inked twice before I made a commitment to my third tattoo on my wrist so it would be plainly visible. I committed to never working with or for someone who refused to hire a person because of something like a tattoo. Sometimes the commitment goes beyond the ink on the skin.

I don’t regret or fancy my decade old tattoos.

They symbolize a past life to me basically, and that brings meaning and unique introspection to me in a way.

It depends on one's outlook. I know people who's attitude is both "boy that was a dumb tattoo to get at 18" and "dumb 18 year old me is still me, and I don't want to remove that tattoo any more that I want to remove that part of myself".

Obviously circumstances may change if the tattoo is offensive.

"Nothing lasts forever, only change" --Genghis Khan

Some people get them as things they have done or experienced. In that sense it doesn't matter if they change in life because their story hasn't.

I don't have tattoos because I could never commit to having any specific image permanent on my skin. I have considered getting a public key tattooed though.

A guy in jail once described his tattoos as “a permanent reminder of a temporary idea” and I found it insightful.

For many of us keeping a reference to not change/forget some things is a strategy not a mistake.

I’d assume that the driving force is just “more people have tattoos”

I'm 40 now, and have always wanted a tattoo but could never decide what I should get. I was thinking something linux or maybe vmware related because I love both of those things. Very glad I didn't get anything vmware related now!

> Not sure this article makes it clear what is driving this trend

People who got inked in the 90s tattoo boom are now wearing blurry smudges unless they were careful to minimize the fine detail.

> Not sure this article makes it clear what is driving this trend?

Technology improvements leading to better removal quality, reduced removal times, less post-procedure pain, and better word-of-mouth response is a suggestion.

Up until the 2010's the range of Quality(Q)-switched lasers was the main tool available. They produce pulse widths in the nanosecond range and can remove multiple colors. Big improvements over the Argon and CO2 laser systems from pre-80's / 90's with less scarring. However, often still had long, painful recoveries between sessions (depending on the tattoo).

In the 2010's, the various picosecond pulse-width laser systems came out, and they usually require less sessions than the Q-switched procedures people are used to, and the reports tend be of less pain and discomfort after the removal procedure (described like getting a bad sunburn). Probably both have resulted in better word of mouth, and larger numbers recommending getting removal.

A friend of mine tattoos in my city and we were talking about this a few weekends ago. He mentioned three related things that contribute to removals he’s aware of.

Tattooing got immensely popular and a lot of people who shouldn’t not have taken on apprentices took on apprentices. The quality of apprenticeships dropped and artists were getting put on skin way before they were ready. Many artists never learned proper technique or placement.

Styles changed so people were getting their first tattoos in visible places. When he started tattooing, artists wouldn’t do a first tattoo somewhere visible unless the client had a very very good reason. It always took dialogue. Now you can walk into a shop, point to flash and get it out on your neck or hand.

And finally, realism hit tattoos.

So in his opinion. You take a lot of artists who shouldn’t have been putting ink into grapefruits not skin. Put them to them to work on highly visible realistic looking art on people who don’t know enough about tattoo to know whether they’re making a mistake. And you end up with a lot of people staring at visible art that didn’t heal properly, with blown out lines and poor placement.

I didn’t get tattooed until after another good friend had finished his apprenticeship- I’m very glad I waited because I love my art and will slowly keep getting more. But I feel bad for people who fell into that trap of getting an unqualified artist to put bad art on their bodies.

This is one of my favorite stories, because you realize later how many things in life this applies to. Once the 'others' start doing something, the originals don't do it anymore! You see it in everything from food menus, to devices, to clothes, etc.

I think society's attitude towards people with tattoos ebbs and flows over time too. I think with the recent political happenings we might be in a bit of an ebb.

> lower class, military, sports, etc.

I think I'd put "counter culture" rather than lower class.

My understanding is that it was an upper class thing in the late 1800s.

Fashion goes in cycles and all that.

I really like my tattoos but this is why I've chosen to have them in easily covered areas.

Tattoos say different things to different people in different times. Right now tattoos are fine in most white collar settings but this won't always be the case.

Middle and upper class professionals have plenty of tattoos. They just have them in places that are easily covered up when they're at work.

well if the capitalists get their way, we'll be lower class soon enough! :D

It turns out that those ephemeral tattoos did not fade out in time and are extremely problematic when trying to laser remove them. The company that originally started that tech is gone, and the "ephemeral" tattoos they created are still around.

During the height of my adolescence, I had pretty bad acne and jokingly wanted to get a constellation tattoo connecting the pock marks to distract from it.

I didn't realise you can do that. Is the mark incorporated in the design or actually covered?

One good one I heard is that before you get a tattoo, go to the local water park. You'll have ample time waiting in line to look at what your hypothetical tattoo, or a close enough one, will look like on all sorts of bodies and skins.

If there were microdot e-ink tattoos (whatever their equivalent would be in human machine interface systems, anyway) I would strongly consider getting one. You can do a lot with a 64x64 matrix especially if you can change it with a usb powered overlay device or like a laser at a specific light frequency or something.

But this is also why face tattoos are more popular. Face tattoos are still considered “hardcore” of whatever. Before just having a tattoo anywhere made you an outsider. But then emo happened and everything that was cool was commoditized and now the modern world is the way it is. Or something. I don’t know how you feel but I think we should blame the world on emo.

It seems mostly like induced demand from the equipment being cheap and readily available these days. People have always regretted their tattoos after getting older, but it was never a thing in the 90s or 2000s to just go down to a local clinic and have it done for a few hundred bucks. It was something you just heard about rich/famous people doing every now and then.

Great article, thanks for sharing. Though what I liked about it has nothing to do with tattoos.

Towards the end he talks about how people trusted blogs and online content more because mainstream media was fake and biased.

The final paragraph:

> PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.

This is where we are now. It's even worse, I guess. Publishing online is essentially free, so they don't really have to try hard. And we are left with the work of separating the wheat out of this tsunami of chaff. The future of the Internet looks bleak TBH.

Right - The tech/procedure to remove bad tats is also getting less expensive and more available. Very misleading headline imo

It's really easy actually

You just pick something really cool when you're 20, and then you resist turning into a boring person who hates what you used to like when you're 40

You get a tramp stamp because your drunk friends decided it was a good idea. You get a sleeve when you've thought about it for a while, and budgeted for a $1500+ expenditure. I think it's a different mindset.

The only people I know who got a sleeve lazered off did it because they wanted to replace it, not because they wanted to be ink free.

Tattoos come and go in fads, and it's weird how some people will insist their quirky line tattoo is an ephemeral trend

> tbh, i don't really care if "squares/normies" get tattoos or weird piercings (or get them removed)

EDIT: I think I misinterpreted your statement, but I'll leave my response anyway just because. I thought you meant "get" in the sense of understanding them.

I appreciate you saying this offhand for some reason, even though I don't think you were trying to give credit to others.

Naturally, I am both liberal and perhaps libertarian in the sense that I think people have a right to get tattoos and I don't have a problem with people having them.

What has long bugged me though are the numerous people who clearly get body modifications in order to attract validation from others. If one isn't in their unspoken club, they become super defensive and accusatory.

For example, as much as I have no interest in getting tattoos, I will compliment people on their tattoos that I appreciate. When inevitably asked in response why I don't have any tattoos, I tell the other person that I simply have no desire for one. When that answer isn't accepted, I sometimes (mistkenly) admit that I don't like them in general. This triggers a lot of tattoo people, even though my choice of words doesn't actually suggest that I hate all tattoos or their tattoos.

On an even more intense level, it's verboten in my society, as a man, to openly state a preference for women without tattoos. I never bring it up unless prompted, yet I often get so much blowback for this. The word "judgmental" always gets slung my way. It's pretty clear that something else is going on here when people get this defensive over something that is fairly trivial.

That's what happened with Rampart: young gang members didn't get tattoos so they could join their neighborhood police and take out other gangs.

I think temporary tattoos will eventually just get good enough to allow you to accomplish the same end.

how is it anti-social to not to engage with someone whose overly judging you? seems like a pretty universal response. sure everyone has first level impressions, but I’m not going to put my energy into someone who never outgrew the child level thinking of leading head first into surface level impressions

Some people get tattoos or dress in a nonconforming way specifically to filter out people with this line of thinking.

I don't have any tattoos but I'd rather be judged for something surface level than for having a belief like "let's all aspire to be the default Stable Diffusion idea of a person."

I think tattoos can quite often look nice, so no, not everyone "knew this to be true."

Just say what you believe instead of trying to launder your opinion as generally accepted truth.

That is absolutely how I feel about it. And even if you don't, the world changes. Someone I know got his band logo tattooed, a big HP. Then a decade later 'Harry Potter' becomes the iconic HP with a similar style font ....

That only applies to non-citizens, like Garcia, and I don't think his MS-13 tattoos were the reason for his removal, he was sent home because he was here illegally and had prior charges (such as beating his wife)