More people are getting tattoos removed

I’ve had tattoos removed and currently removing two more. They are all 20 years old, very faded, blurry they honestly just didn’t look good any more.<p>The first removal 5 years ago would leave me bleeding and require bandage changes for a week.<p>The new tattoo removal lasers leave you feeling like a sun burn for two days. No blood, no bandages.<p>It will become way more common.

If there is anything that&#x27;s a constant in life, it&#x27;s that nothing is a constant. Tattoos have a permanence that is rarely matched by one&#x27;s character - many people don&#x27;t seem to realise that.

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.

My grandma used to have a copy of &quot;The Sneetches&quot; by Dr. Suess I read as a kid. A guy rolls into town and convinces all the sneetches critters that they ought to have a star put on their stomach to be special with a machine he built. Then when everyone gets one they don&#x27;t feel special so he offers a machine to remove them. Chaos ensues.

It used to be that tattoos were a marker of some combination of lower class, military, sports, etc. But you&#x27;d pretty much never see them in general on most middle&#x2F;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.

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.

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.<p>I think tattoos are cool because it&#x27;s art where your body is the canvas. Pure human evolution really. I&#x27;ll be getting more tattoos soon.

Having a well-made tattoo is one thing. But most of the kids with tattoos these days seem to just have a bunch of random small tattoos sprinkled all over with no discernible rhyme or reason, and that I just don&#x27;t get.<p>That said, I&#x27;m old enough that most of those could be my kids, so I realize I&#x27;m an old fart at this point.

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&#x27;m sure it&#x27;ll be back in a couple decades).

I live above a tattoo shop with a big window that people get tattoo&#x27;d in so everyone on the street walking by can see. I&#x27;ve been calling it the window of future regrets.<p>The owner has a removal studio not far away.

If you like &#x27;em get one. If you don&#x27;t like it later, remove it. Sounds good to me. I always take ideas to the extreme to see if they still make sense. It seems like over time tattoos are becoming less permanent and it isn&#x27;t inconceivable that they could become exceptionally transient meaning add&#x2F;remove at will (or even become &#x27;live&#x27; interactive displays). Does that change their meaning or value? Some people wear a belt buckle or jewelry for decades because of sentimental value even though they can easily change things. I suspect in a future where this is easy&#x2F;normal we will see even more variety, expression and meaning.

Multiple members of my family have tattoos or brands. I&#x27;ve just never felt the need to permanently mark my body like that, so I feel like I&#x27;m considered somewhat boring or vanilla for not getting one myself. Of course, they don&#x27;t know that I&#x27;ll be first in line should novel in-vitro genetic manipulation technology become available. We&#x27;ll start with growing a tail and work from there. Turns out, when it comes to body mods, I&#x27;m less, &quot;Ew,&quot; more, &quot;Go big or go home.&quot;

I&#x27;ve looked into getting my tattoos removed after reading about Pete Davidson, of all people.<p>Then I looked into it, and it seems to be pretty hit or miss. Some people have great outcomes, some people end up with something that looks even worse than what they started with. It can take years for the removal process, and you won&#x27;t know if you&#x27;re going to end up with a good or bad result until the end.<p>That doesn&#x27;t even touch on the price.<p>So, for me, I&#x27;m just going to cover mine up, and accept that I&#x27;ve only got a few more decades with them anyway.

I&#x27;m in LA and it&#x27;s a very big trend here atm. My thought is some cultural influencers are leading the way but I&#x27;m not really in tune.

The Dr. Seuss story about the Sneetches comes to mind.

I think social media has done what it does best, skewing people perspective. Look up almost any tattoo artist on social media and you&#x27;ll see a portfolio of beautiful work. Artists never post their bad tattoos (Ariel DeJesus excluded). It makes it seem like everyone is giving and getting amazing tattoos. Then when someone gets a tattoo and it&#x27;s just average, they are disappointed.

&gt; <i>&quot;Suits make a corporate comeback,&quot; says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.<p>&gt; Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren&#x27;t about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;submarine.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;submarine.html</a> (April 02005)

Tattoos as fashion: The height of youthful confidence; when one&#x27;s 20-year-old self presumes to know what one&#x27;s 40-year-old self will desire.

I&#x27;ve never gotten tattoos, and it&#x27;s in part due to the fact nobody I respected growing up had them. People act like they&#x27;re ubiquitous but tattoos are still a class signifier, and you can still miss out on jobs or other opportunities if an employer sees your tattoo(s).

More people have tattoos, so it&#x27;s only natural that more people would get tattoos removed. Doesn&#x27;t strike me as particularly surprising.<p>It&#x27;s a lengthy, expensive, and often painful process. Getting shoddy work covered might be a better deal in some cases.

I am thinking what all that stuff written and drawn on people should tell me? I cant even talk to them while commuting, they only stare in their phones. What is it my business when the litte daughter was born or a half readable scribbling above the boobs is there? I dont get many tatoos, some of them you see around the world in the same manner. Some are complete bullshit. But well, as long as people have money for getting and then removing them, all is fine.

I waited until my late 20&#x27;s to get tattooed. One of the few good decisions I made as a young person.

all the tramp stamps and terrible back tattoos from early 2000s?<p>i see more aging hipsters than ever with sleeves and they seem to keep adding, so i wonder if this is &quot;genre&quot; specific.

I am not sure I want to have the same painting or a poster on the wall not even for the rest of my life but for 5-10 years. Apart from maybe a tattoo with one&#x27;s blood group frankly I am puzzled by the idea of getting even the most artsy-fartsy tattoo anywhere on my body.

Since tattoos themselves have greatly increased what&#x27;s really going on here?

Ed Sheeran is the poster child for bad tattoos. As rich as he is he got tattoos from some very bad artists.

I got my entire arm blacked out like 20 years ago, back before it became a subtrend. Back when I did it I think I had only ever seen it one other place and that was some guy featured in BME. Whenever people ask me about it I tell them the truth, which is when I did it I was obsessed with taking things to their logical extreme, and blackout to me at the time was the logical extreme of tattoo, which is covering your skin in ink. I&#x27;ve since had my other arm done with an extremely colourful trippy design. The contrast is immediate but the story for me is one of life stages, and not just any life stages but my life stages. I don&#x27;t care what the current fashion is, they&#x27;re staying.

There&#x27;s a lot of bad tattoos out there. It&#x27;s something people should give more thought to, but tattoos can look really good if they&#x27;re done well.

When I woke up from study-job-relationship marathon lasting 2005-2019 and looked around I realised everyone have tattoos including underage and doctors, including face tattoos. Luckily this is passing.

more people have tattoos that, given other social indicators, would probably not have gotten (as many) tattoos as they might have in the past. it&#x27;s definitely been something of a fad over the last decade or so that seems to be ebbing a bit (at least according to friends of mine who tattoo - bad for them, but that&#x27;s life).<p>we saw the same thing over a shorter period with stretched ears - a lot of people did it at the height of its popularity but have since let their piercings close (or resorted to surgery if they were past that point).<p>tbh, i don&#x27;t really care if &quot;squares&#x2F;normies&quot; get tattoos or weird piercings (or get them removed), but i do kinda welcome the return to &quot;otherness&quot; that it used to confer. i like having tattoos and piercings for their own sake. even though 99% of my tattoos are extremely stupid and i wouldn&#x27;t get them today, i&#x27;m happy to keep them as a reminder of where i was in life when i got them.

Whatever happened to Inkbox (temporary tattoos)?<p>Acquired by BIC in 2022 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;corporate.bic.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;news&#x2F;bic-acquires-inkbox" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;corporate.bic.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;news&#x2F;bic-acquires-inkbox</a>

If the pool of people having tattoos grows (and it does), so does the total amount of people removing them.<p>The more interesting question is how the percentages changed — although that very likely just tells you something about the quality and availability of tattoo removal services.

When the president of El Salvador started throwing people in concentration camps based on tattoos, I said gangs will adapt and just stop getting such prominent tattoos. I wonder if that has something to do with this.

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.

I find it pretty damning that AI Art will not put tattoos on beautiful people(unless specifically instructed).<p>I think everyone knew this to be true, but we are polite to people who have tattoos.<p>On the flip side, there are people who claim &#x27;I don&#x27;t care what they think&#x27;. And this is just an anti-social attitude in disguise of rebellion. It genuinely doesnt matter, people make split second judgements that DO affect you, even if you claim you don&#x27;t care.<p>I&#x27;ve been at busy events and decided to talk to a decently dressed person over the person wearing raggy clothing. We notice patterns, often subconsciously.

Imagine deciding in your early 20&#x27;s back in the 1990&#x27;s to put on that awful floral shirt and those jeans torns and ripped with paisley patches. Your mullet hairstyle, your 10 earrings.<p>Now that&#x27;s your fashion decision <i>for the rest of your life</i> because you thought this is such a cool look, you&#x27;ll wear it until you die.<p>That&#x27;s tattoos.

I&#x27;m surprised nobody has mentioned how these days having a tattoo, no matter which, is a potential one-way ticket to a prison in El Salvador. That&#x27;s a very good reason to having them removed.