More people are getting their tattoos removed
31 comments
·May 8, 2025elric
jsbisviewtiful
Right - The tech/procedure to remove bad tats is also getting less expensive and more available. Very misleading headline imo
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JohnMakin
And I only recently got my first tattoo around 40. Not sure this article makes it clear what is driving this trend? Tattoos come and go out of style even in my own life (when i was young to young adult, it was bad, then it was good, now seemingly bad again). If I don’t like my tattoo in 20 years I really don’t care, you can always replace it with more work if it fades. Probably will get more. It isn’t very expensive. It’s a form of expression I can’t really get anywhere else - I like looking at my tattoo and dont particularly care what anyone thinks of it.
brokegrammer
I got a tattoo to cover a birth mark a while ago. I used to be nervous about people seeing the mark before, now I enjoy people looking at my tattoo instead.
I think tattoos are cool because it's art where your body is the canvas. Pure human evolution really. I'll be getting more tattoos soon.
gardenhedge
I didn't realise you can do that. Is the mark incorporated in the design or actually covered?
tough
as long as you don't have a MS-13 one you should be safe, right?
RadiozRadioz
If there is anything that's a constant in life, it's that nothing is a constant. Tattoos have a permanence that is rarely matched by one's character - many people don't seem to realise that.
ravenstine
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.
kube-system
I'm not sure, in my experience, the older people I know with tats have exactly the personality that goes along with it.
ghaff
It used to be that tattoos were a marker of some combination of lower class, military, sports, etc. But you'd pretty much never see them in general on most middle/upper-class professionals. That changed with developers etc. over the past couple decades. Not shocking that might reverse. Not personal commentary but just an observation.
kube-system
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.
apercu
> lower class, military, sports, etc.
I think I'd put "counter culture" rather than lower class.
ghaff
There's probably a lot of intersection. Don't really disagree. Though counter-culture folks I went to school with in engineering/etc. still didn't tend to have tattoos.
vorpalhex
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.
tehjoker
well if the capitalists get their way, we'll be lower class soon enough! :D
goda90
It seems like the market has filled up with body art that fits someplace between permanent tattoos and the little toy temporary tattoos that are basically stickers. Stuff that lasts for weeks, months, or years before fading away. Encouraging people to try those out first before committing to something permanent would be wise.
ramesh31
They became so ubiquitous that the entire point of it (being unique) was lost. It's actually cool now to have none, and point and laugh at the suburban dads going out to get full sleeves done.
ir77
all the tramp stamps and terrible back tattoos from early 2000s?
i see more aging hipsters than ever with sleeves and they seem to keep adding, so i wonder if this is "genre" specific.
BoxFour
The article touches on this only briefly at the end, but I wonder whether the popularity of tattoos is beginning to wane. After more than a decade of a cultural embrace of tattoos, we could be starting to see the fashionability of tattoos decline (and then I'm sure it'll be back in a couple decades).
mnky9800n
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.
gosub100
"you are unique, just like everyone else"
ramoz
I'm in LA and it's a very big trend here atm. My thought is some cultural influencers are leading the way but I'm not really in tune.
deadbabe
I will wait to get tattoos until the state of the art advances to a point where you can regular change them out without much hassle, and they look just like the real thing.
More people have tattoos, so it's only natural that more people would get tattoos removed. Doesn't strike me as particularly surprising.
It's a lengthy, expensive, and often painful process. Getting shoddy work covered might be a better deal in some cases.