re: why are so many young white people getting tattoos?

There are several factors as to why this is happening more so now than in the past:

1. Counter-culture became the dominant mainstream culture in the 2010’s. That means that most of society’s taste-makers are no longer institutionalists or traditionalists, but people who are trying to virtue signal how much they flaunt convention by being “anti-establishment” and non-conformist. They’re not actually these things because they are the conformity and the establishment, as what they initially rebelled against no longer really exists. The mainstream has become the fringe, and the fringe the mainstream.

2. Social media is an addiction machine designed to make people insecure and give them unrealistic expectations for their lives so that they will be more impulsive in their spending habits. One way people deal with insecurity with their bodies is to tattoo places that they’re insecure about. They take a part of their own body which they don’t see as beautiful and turn it into a work of art.

3. When one combines the FOMO envy of social media with the legitimately awful financial conditions for anyone under 30, the youth are seeing worse job prospects, higher costs of living, and less disposable income than ever before. You would think this would cause them to spend less, but it actually created a debt-fuelled dead cat bounce. Basically, people started seeing their financial situation as hopelessly f$&ked, so they chose to spend whatever they had on things to fill that existential hole. For some, it’s concert/sports tickets, others travel to instagramable locations, some try to invest in beautifying themselves with plastic surgery, piercings, or tattoos, and some just indulge in the best food they can find. Basically, none of them see a future for themselves as having a future, so they’re living for today. That debt bubble appears to be popping this year as consumer spending is starting to plummet.

4. The job market has changed drastically. Tattoos were verboten in most white collar professional jobs. However, those jobs are disappearing, especially for young white people. DEI and immigration combined with mass layoffs in tech are devastating the white collar job market. Many have switched to the gig economy (including remote work) often working multiple part time jobs, to get by. The gig economy doesn’t care what you look like. While it doesn’t pay as much or provide benefits like a cubicle 9-5, it does allow for more schedule flexibility and for people to dress (or not dress) however they want. No one cares if their doordash driver has tattoos nor is anyone at a water cooler to talk shite about a remote worker answering emails in their pajamas. Freed from the stigma of HR culture, people could now have as many tattoos as they wanted and still make a living. If everyone is virtually unemployable simply because the economy is so bad, then there’s no real punishment for indulging in tattoos.

5. Getting tattoos releases endorphins. Much like eating spicy food, the pain of the tattooing process also results in a rush of endorphins. People can easily get addicted to that rush because it feels good to them, especially if they already have a high pain tolerance.