Who needs personality when you can have ink?

Dear tattoo enthusiasts,
Help me out here, would you? I’ve been trying to find any reason at all to have some faith in the tattoo subculture and I’m met with difficulty at every turn! Allow me to voice my frustrations:

First of all, I’m not one of those people who’s going to sit here and talk about how tattoos are STUPID unless they have a specific personal meaning to the person with the tattoo, i.e., “I got this after my grandma died because she liked kittens” or “Me and my bro each got one of Megatron because we love Transformers” or even “That’s my dog’s name, and that’s his paw print” because honestly I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t think a tattoo has to be some kind of dedication or private joke or commemoration or anything. In fact, I’d definitely respect someone WAY MORE for just getting a tattoo because they thought it looked cool, as long as they could admit it. I feel this way because I’ve begun to have a sneaking suspicion that not all of these supposed background stories are legitimate!

Here’s the problem; I always thought that tattoos were about the individual. That the whole idea was to further accentuate a person’s uniqueness with a unique piece of art, whether to commemorate an event, or just because they wanted to do it. The key word in my opinion is unique. And that’s where it gets a little hazy. If tattoos are about uniqueness, WHY DOES EVERYBODY’S INK LOOK THE SAME?

Why do I suddenly know a million people with koi fish tattoos, or skull tattoos, or butterfly tattoos? How are these people convincing themselves that they’re being original and that their art is important and meaningful when it’s something everyone else has, that they just picked out of a fucking binder?

There’s exceptions to every rule of course. The odd person might actually really be into butterflies and really associate themselves with the symbolism, and maybe they designed the butterfly tattoo themselves, so at the very least, we can be assured that the specific art on his/her hip is a unique piece, the only one of its kind.

But in general, I’m beginning to believe the rule is young people, inspired perhaps by liquor, or a burst of rebelliousness, or some desire to get noticed more, are showing up in tattoo parlors with some half-assed ‘story behind it’ that they dreamt up on the bus ride there, flipping through a few flash binders, and choosing the exact same image.

And the hilarious thing is, you can’t really call someone on it, can you? Nobody’s actually willing to talk about the issue. It’s the same reason it’s considered rude to call some sixteen year old girl an idiot for getting pregnant and having a child with some guy twice her age she met at a party; what good is it going to do? It’s not like they can ‘take it back’ and just correct their mistake, learn from it, and move on. The permanency of the art is what forces people to stick to their guns. Maybe they’ve already realized that they’re not the only ones in the world with a koi and some kanji written on their ass, but whatever their reason, you can bet they’ll be coming up with some kind of heartbreaking anecdote explaining why that particular bit of top-selling clip art is forever needled into their pores.

And so the circle continues, and tattoos lose more and more meaning and individuality. Nobody can just come right out and say that folks with mass-produced ink (who believe they’re hardcore) are basically idiots who don’t get the point. Ten years down the road, people who refuse to get tattoos will become the new counter-culture.

So I guess in summary, I’d like to point out I don’t actually have anything against tattoos, in theory. I think they’re actually often really beautiful and interesting. They enhance a person’s attractive characteristics more often than not. My gripe is with (A) people who got meaningless tattoos but won’t admit it (isn’t it okay just to have art for the sake of art? There doesn’t HAVE to be a story) and (B) people who get tattoos that are supposed to be meaningful, except that the art that they choose is mass produced and overused.

Anyway. That’ll do for now.