Tattoos...how do you feel

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Freedom of expression as long as it doesn't harm anyone else is fine by me. There's nothing wrong with them in my point of view.

I've got a couple and i love them, will be getting several more just cant decide which designs i like best. Why be plain and boring? GOD has made sure that i stand out of the crowd in every other way so why not do a little myself.

Due to an accident when I was a baby, I have third-degree burns all down my left arm. Throughout my childhood, children (and adults!) would let me know how revolting they thought my arm looked, so I spent most of my life wearing long sleeved clothes.

Several years ago I got a sleeve tattoo which works around the scars on my arm, and it's now pretty hard to tell the skin is even scarred.

Nowadays, people frequently comment on the beauty of my arm. I have even been told "you have beautiful skin". As part of my job, I model clothing and accessories, have been on the cover of magazines, and I now own plenty of short sleeved clothes. Without my tattoo, none of these things would have been possible.

I thought long and hard about getting a tattoo, it wasn't a rash decision, and I don't see anything negative about them, or the decision I made. I love my tattoos. They have given me so much, and changed my life so positively.

xx

the above poster reminds me that there are some good reason for having tattoos.

The process of mildly mutilating the body for decorative possibilities by injecting subcutaneous colors has been variously useful beyond mere cosmetics. The Nazis used it to effect in permanent identification of their concentration camp prisoners and it thereby became rather negatively labeled but it has its modern counterpart in the planting of ID chips in pets which has successfully re-united lost beloved animals with their owners many times. In all probability this will eventually be extended to newborn babies as a routine guarantee that there will be no possible mixup in hospitals. These chips, then, can no doubt become effective location devices and might be accepted as keying devices to permit proper individuals to enter restricted locations. If they can be modified by reprogramming they might replace house and automobile keys and contain vital medical information for emergency services. Beyond that, as computer chips decrease in size and can be functional on body heat these devices may evolve into useful mental assistants to accompany and be helpful throughout a person's entire life, replacing the current pocket telephones with a kind of electronic telepathy.

on the flip [dystopian] side of the coin, there are some folk for whom this development equals "the mark of the beast" - i.e., biblical warning about end times requirements for a mark [fingerprint? implant? retinal scan?] on the hand or forehead to buy or sell.

I am occasionally tempted to get a highly visible tattoo to prevent as*holes from trying to hire me. I'd never want to work for anyone who would make such a big deal out of my appearance, and something like a neck or face tattoo would prevent that sort of mix up from happening.

Step on a crack and break your mother's back.

a person choosing to get a tattoo for themselves, and whatever personal reasons that they have, has absolutely nothing to do with Nazis, the cancer inducing silicone chips in dogs, or advocating using them to control the populace with fascist means.

I was not trying to be negative about tattooing, merely stating the fact that the Nazis tattooed numbers on concentration camp internees. That's indisputable. Implanted electronics can, of course, be used for totalitarian purposes but that's a very narrow view of the possibilities and if silicone causes cancer other more friendly materials surely exist for the purposes. I admit admiration for some of the fabulous tattoos I have seen on some Japanese people but I do not myself feel the need to decorate myself in any way and do not even wear rings or other jewelry. It's a matter of personal taste and feeling no need to modify my appearance. Aside from being clean and keeping my clothing in repair and trimming my hair I really don't give a damn how I look.

sorry, that did come off way too sh!tty and defensive.
personally i have never really included the nazis (or other political movements or cultures that forcibly tattooed people) as a part of tattoo thought or history. primarily as i can't put the victims into the same thought process as a bunch of young marines getting their meat tags on their ribs before their first deployment. but i do think it is my position as a tattooer that is limiting my perspective their.
the japanese have a very rich and interesting tattoo history, that includes a long held prohibition and created the basis for western tattooing as we know it.
like i said it is interesting if you ever feel like looking it up.
and kudos for being so at home with yourself. seriously, the world would be better off if most people were.

No offense. I was just imagining other possibilities. There will probably soon be coming on the market extremely small LEDs and other luminescents that could be powered by body heat and implanted just as the current dyes are now done and glow in the dark tattoos could emerge as an interesting variation.

there are currently black-light reflective pigments, but they have phosphorous in them so i have never used them.
as far as any kind of implants, that belongs to the realm of the piercers and scarification people. as far as industry and such that's a completely different monster.
i will say that the one thing i really love about tattooing is that we have gleefully avoided moving forward. the machine i use is still the same modified doorbell they started using in new york in 1905. it really is one of the few crafts that has remained unchanged, and actually gained in popularity as the world has moved on. hell man, there wasn't a pin with a point specifically designed and ground for tattooing until 2004. but then again most of the kids giving people tattoos these days probably don't even realize it.
one last point before i degrade into a full-on rant: it's a wonderful way for a social backwards aspie like myself to find a nice groove in the world where he isn't expected to try to hard to be normal, and get just enough social interaction to keep him from feeling like a totally out of step freak.

I have seen some beautifully designed highly skilled and intricate tattoos and I suspect they were done by needling in the pigments previously captured on a sheet of paper or some more appropriate surface like adhesive tape. Perhaps printed out on a computer printer with special pigment cassettes. That would permit very easy tattooing photos as well. Since I know almost nothing about the technology I can only guess how it was done.

there are a very small amount of tattoos that use hectographic ink with printers to make stencils.
but 98.9% of tattooers make their stencils using old an old school thermafax machine and carbon paper. they were all the rage back in the day to make those carbon copies of tests in school. we use the machine that makes the reverse negative on carbon paper, stick that on the skin and go to town. when not using that i grab markers and draw on the skin first, which is my most common and preffered method these days.
but see what i mean... even in two thousand and ten with people buying single pieces of tattoo flash (the designs on the walls of shops) off the internet we, the tattooers, are single-handedly keeping some otherwise piece of equipment and supplies. and there are enough of us that the paper is still being produced. i have personally never seen it used anywhere but with tattooing since the early eighties.