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Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

Excellent, the source code equivalent of

http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

which implies that about 99% of westerners walking around with Kanji tattoos either have gibberish font (hilarious, read up about it) or think they have some girls name but its actually "weeds / brush (vegetation) / wild grassland"

The concept that you'll look better with a foreign language phrase as part of your skin is weird / mildly amusing all by itself, but the really funny part is the execution is so often an epic fail. So you've got an illiterate foreign language on your skin, not just a foreign language.

Given the apparently extreme popularity of the above genre, ridiculous source code should fit right in.

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I've heard of some tattoo artists that grab a copy of the barcode for Tampax or Corn Flakes when they're asked to do a barcode tattoo.

I have a theory that foreign language tattoos (or code tattoos, for that matter) arise mainly from a desire to have something (seemingly) unique tattooed. That, and some signalling implying some hidden skill/knowledge that the tattooed person must have.

The uniqueness bit is somewhat ironic, considering it's the thing that a large part of your peer group is rushing to do, as well.

"considering it's the thing that a large part of your peer group is rushing to do, as well"

I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not having tattoos or piercings. From what I've seen of the general public, the peer pressure on younger people must be immense to get tattoos / pierced.

> I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not having tattoos or piercings.

Ha. I love it!

"No tattoos or piercings? What are you, one of those straight-edge weirdos?"

"No, I'm just like, you know, a normal person."

Or, I'm a cop, or, I'm so poor I can't afford the tattoos they have.

I remember when my brother proudly showed me his Chinese tattoo. He said "guess what it says". I looked at it for about 15 seconds and said "Tiger?" and he was like "how'd you know that?!".

It said "tig" in a sort of Chinesey looking font.

Could be worse. I know someone who picked a tattoo out of the artist's book because it looked cool, and later discovered it was the logo of a Mexican prison gang.

You’ll see just as much english gibberish on chinese teens t-shirts. I haven’t seen any on tattoos, but they also seem to be significantly less common than in the US.

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