Let's face it! Kids are stupid! If they were so dumb, they wouldn't be in school from age five to eighteen and more. To think that a kid will know what they want to do for the rest of their lives at age sixteen or seventeen is ludicrous. When I was a wee little kid, I wanted to grow up to be a fire truck. Not a fireman or the fireman who drives the big ladder truck, but the ladder truck, itself. Why? Kids are stupid, that's why. At such a young age, especially these days, kids are quite unaware of how much work is required to achieve life goals. I spoke with a former co-worker yesterday, who said they're having problems keeping staff at her place of work, citing one girl turned in her ID card, stating that she didn't know "work was this hard", then quit.
These terrible decisions are also true of those young folks who decide to get all tattooed up. I'm a fan of good tattoos, but I believe they have to make sense. Be artistic, yes. Be meaningful, yes, to a degree. Be logistically placed, yes, of course. Be placed upon one's face? F*ck no. Unless you're a tattoo artist, a rock star or a lifelong convict, there's no place for face tattoos, and even then, I question the logical decision to do so. 🤔
Unless you're extremely lucky, like former gang member, Jeremy Meeks, who was arrested in 2014 as a result of a "cease fire" campaign by the Stockton (California) Police Department, for weapons violations. The PD eventually posted Meeks' photo, along with some other convicted felons, on their Facebook page and the LIKES began flooding in and eventually garnered the young felon with a modeling career, from which he's never looked back on his criminal enterprises. That was a fluke. A one-in-a-million chance that paid off. If the Stockton PD hadn't posted his photo, chances are, the young man would have returned to his criminal roots and would likely have been in jail or deceased on this day.
Today's celebrities should be leading by example, not inspiring those who worship them, to make ill-planned body modifications that would not benefit anyone not in their industry. Face tattoos should be discouraged.
I am a tattoo connoisseur, although I haven't gotten one in more than a decade. It just hasn't been financially feasible in the past few years. I once had the belief that I didn't want a tattoo below my elbows, so that I could still get a decent job. Then my friend Darcy passed away and I thought the best way to commemorate his life, in a way that I would always remember him, I placed a tattoo on my lower arm. This allowed me to repeat my fond memory of Darcy when asked about the tattoo. As good of a friend as Darcy was, I would never have posted a memorial tattoo of him on my face.
Perhaps I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, now, complaining about all those tattooed kids, but that's furthest from the point. I just don't believe that face tattoos are a smart decision. Case and point: This fellow to the right of this paragraph. Loved the rap group Insane Clown Posse, so much, that as a young man, he had the group's face paint tattooed permanently onto his face. A decision that he's come to regret in recent years, as he's never been able to establish a decent job. Even one of the member's of ICP, commented on the idiocy of this man's decision, on an episode of Your Moms House Podcast with Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky (Christina P). Whoever put that tattoo on this young man's face, (A) did a shit job of it and (B) should have refused to put the tattoo on his face.
Tattoo artists should have some say in the placement of said tattoos. Aside from just being an artist, I believe tattooists need to be a sort of guidance counsellor, too. It's their art on display, after all. They should want it represented in the best light, not something looked upon daily with regret and disdain.
Another case and point: This seventeen year old discovered the music of rapper, Tekashi 69, and as an homage to his favourite rapper, decided he was going to get all the tattoos of his hero. He's just a child, making childish decisions, not taking into account the results of these rash decisions. What makes this case even more jarring, is that his mother paid the bill for her child to look like the former gang member, turned American rapper. This kid is in Russia, so either he's been drafted to fight in the War With Ukraine or his been imprisoned. I'm leaning toward the latter, to be honest.
I have just three tattoos, myself. The first one I ever got, was of Alistair Fiend from Motley Crue's Dr. Feelgood album. It's an incredible tattoo placed there by a young apprentice who went on to get a job with Dark Horse Comics in New York City. I wish I could remember the fella's name. The second is an ICP tattoo, but it's of the Hatchet Man on my left calf. Then the third is the memorial tattoo on my left forearm. One day, I'd like to get a picture of my little boy, Monkey, over my heart.
Kids are stupid. They don't know about cause and effect. Not nowadays. People coddle their children so f*cking much that kids don't know what the world has instore for them. That every choice they make has consequences. As established grown ups and mature individuals, we have a responsibility to help guide the younger generation, despite their having chips on their shoulders that they know what's best for this or that. They don't. They're dumb.
If there's any hope of the younger generation leading our world into the future, they can't have any past bad decisions haunting them as they maneuver their way into the future. I have hopes that the future will be bright and hopeful, like in Star Trek. Clean and law-abiding, not dirty and scorched, like that of Mad Max, although the latter seems more and more likely with each passing day. 😕
I'm not against self expression. Everyone should be allowed to stand out in their own special way, but there should be a line that shouldn't be crossed over. Perhaps it's not wrong to emblazon oneself with face tattoos, but it's not widely accepted, either. I know that if I were hiring for a position in my company, it'd be very difficult to choose a highly qualified person with shit plastered all over their face, rather than the clean looking person who is underqualified. After all, this is a person who would be representing my company. The face that the public sees and I wouldn't want my product being represented by someone who has dozens of micro-tats placed all over their face like shredded confetti. Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, nowadays, but there has to be some kind of order replenished in today's society.
There's a kid who gets on my bus every once in awhile. He's maybe 17 or 18. Face tattoos all across his forehead and cheeks. He doesn't appear to have much of a future. He just roams around aimlessly, hopping this bus and that bus, without any real destination. I sometimes will see him laid out on the side of the road, staring aimlessly up into the sky. He's a young man. No apparent future, but to get high everyday and roam about without anywhere to go and any responsibilities. I fear this is the destiny of many people who choose to get face tattoos. I'm not insinuating that the two necessarily go hand-in-hand, but they're in the same vicinity.
I shouldn't care so much, I guess. I have my shit in order. I should only worry about my own situation and leave everyone else to their decisions. Both bad and good. As long as my tax dollars don't pay for their bad decisions, which I suspect they do, I should just be satisfied. Satisfied and well aware that: Kids are stupid!
