Ask HN: Why did you get a tattoo? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why did you get a tattoo?

I have never had the desire to have one. I think many of them look cool and they are so common where I live that any stigma is long gone, but never had the slightest interest.

Lots of people obviously want one enough to pay good money. Is it possible to describe? Maybe you just want it because you want it? Maybe you feel good for a long time afterwards? Maybe it's often a really deep personal thing you wouldn't discuss casually? Is the pain part of it?

I ask here as opposed to somewhere more general because people here have a keen interest in quantifying things.

View on HN

My step father and father died before I turned 15. I was an emotional train wreck, I never had a support system around me. I never had a chance to grieve in way to heal the pain. A tattoo was my attempt to heal. I also adapted work that my step father created and decided that would be my first.

My subsequent ones were in my travels, a replacement for souvenirs. I have tattoos from Antwerp, St. Louis, NYC and LA.

There is also a rush of adrenaline during the process and after that can be addicting.

If you have no interest, I highly recommend not getting one.

> If you have no interest, I highly recommend not getting one.

Entirely this. No tattoo should ever be done casually. If you aren't sure you want one, and don't know what it would be if you got it, then you shouldn't get one.

Thank you for your story.

I am covered in ink from my ears to my toes. I got a lot of my work done when I was young, addicted to drugs, confused, and would splash whatever garbage I could on my body. Now I spend thousands of dollars fixing these mistakes. Make sure you know why and what you you want and if you aren't fully committed, don't. Good art costs, and good artists you wait to get into. Yes there are the rare exception but generally look for reputable shops, go through their artists catalogs and choose an artists who has a style you really like. Example: Don't take a realistic portrait piece to an artist who doesn't do portraits.

Can you say why, at the time, it was appealing? It was what people around you did? It was a way to express individuality?

Hard to say I wasn't really clear minded at that time in my life, I was obsessed with body modification and uncomfortable in my own body. Some people around me and some of the circles I travelled in were into body suspensions and modifications. I still have subdermal implants in my sternum but don't think I'd ever go through something like that again at this point in my life. It has been an interesting journey to say the least.

Do you have any progress pictures of your tattoo removal?

Well, the short answer is that I wanted to look cool.

The long answer is that "looking cool" is a social signaling mechanism. I now attract friendly strangers who recognize the specific symbols on my skin.

For a fixed cost, I have forever increased the chance of meeting people with common interests and actually realizing that we have common interests.

The downside, of course, is that some friendly strangers (and employers) may avoid me because of my tattoos.

I think, so far, that it's been a net positive experience for me. I'll likely get more when I have more expendable time and income.

That makes a lot of sense!

I have two tattoos. One I got for complicated emotional reasons (I'd say as a commemoration, but that implies a celebratory aspect that it doesn't have).

The other I got as part of a worldwide art project.

I also have ~no interest in getting a tattoo, at best curiosity ambivavent. It might be a lingering sense of perfectionism preventing me from choosing a specific thing, which is why if I ever go for it I'll ask a close friend to do a stick-and-poke of whatever they choose, like how a blank page can be intimidating so just make a squiggle and off you go.

That would be a meaningful marker of place, time, and relationship to me.

For many years I sought creative expression in every part of my life. Tattoo ink was just another way to decorate my body, not really different from all the other fashion-related things I've done with clothes and jewelry and makeup and hairstyles and dye and piercings and so forth.

I have known people who like to get tattoos because the experience of being tattooed does something for them in itself, but for me it was all about the art I wanted to wear. I didn't mind the pain, but it wasn't about that. There is some symbolic significance, which I mostly keep to myself, but mostly it's just that I like the way it looks.

Because they are fucking cool.

1. I don't like needles.

2. I would have a hard time deciding what to get since it was permanent.

3. Negative reaction to the ink.

4. Negative criticism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com