With the emergence of reality TV shows such as LA Ink, Miami Ink and London Ink, you would have expected the tattoo standards to get better and better and reach a point where anyone who has been tattooed in the past 5 years would now have a good tattoo…

Well my dear readers, it seems like no matter how much info you put in front of Mr. Average Joe, he just doesn’t get it.

It’s pretty easy though: if you ask for a portrait of your kid and he ends up looking like Chucky or if you ask for a vintage picture of your grandma to be tattooed on your arm and she ends up looking like a chimp … well, it’s NOT good and NO, you shouldn’t be showing it off!

The tattoo industry has been in the spotlight for quite a while now and it did allow us to discover some truly amazing artists; it has, however, also attracted some greedy people looking to make as much cash as they can in a short amount of time (i.e. before they get busted).

I think we need to be realistic here: yes there are a lot of amazing artists, who have a soul and have enough self consciousness to turn you away if they believe they won’t be good enough for what you’re asking… But there are a lot of them too, who are ready to do anything to make a few dollars/euros [insert currency here].

It has unfortunately affected a lot of people’s lives. Between the poor hygiene conditions, or the lack of talent in general, a large part of the tattooed population is scarred for life.

Now who’s to blame? The guy who’s calling himself a “tattoo artist”, but has no clue what he’s actually doing? Or Mr. Average Joe who thought getting inked would be cool, but didn’t want to pay the price and/or do any sort of research before going to the tattoo studio?

It’d be pretty easy to blame the so-called artist. After all, he’s the one using the tattoo machine on these people. And yes, in some countries, the trade should be regulated properly with stricter hygiene standards and proper licenses. That’s where we start blaming the politicians of that one country who haven’t been able to deal with it in due course… Conclusion: the “artist” hasn’t got much to do with the problem. He asked if he could open a shop, was granted the license, bought a cheap tattoo kit off eBay and started tattooing people who had no clue this was going to ruin their life (because it can potentially ruin someone’s life).

So can we blame these shops’ customers then? If you really think about it, they’re the ones who thought getting tattooed after having that one drink too many was a great idea; the ones who chose that random image off a wall covered in flash; the ones who chose an artist who didn’t have a book of his previous work in the shop so they couldn’t’ even tell whether he was good or not; the ones who didn’t think it through until later on that day when they realised it was there for life…

If you put it all in perspective, it’s difficult to find out who’s really responsible for what’s happening lately.

So what could be done to avoid all of the above? There probably isn’t much we can do. We would probably have to change everything that’s been happening in the media.

The fact is, people are being told by the media in general, and their favorite Hollywood stars in particular, that you can get rid of a tattoo when you don’t like it anymore. Yes we do see more and more tattoos on TV, and hear more and more sad stories of heartbroken stars willing to get their ex lover’s name lasered off their body.

Is that giving people the wrong idea about the whole concept of getting tattooed, will you ask? Well of course it is. I mean, unless you know what you’re getting yourself into (which most of these people don’t) you can pretty easily end up thinking that you could be a tattooed dude for a few years, to look a bit “different”, be more “rock & roll”, then get rid of them to live your perfect family life in a perfect suburban area, with the perfect kids, perfect wife and eventually a dog or a cat.

Reality will soon come knocking at these people’s door when they’ll realise that getting your ink lasered off is not really enjoyable for a start, but leaves you scarred for life. Not to mention the cost, often far outweighing the initial money spent on the ink in the first place.

That being said, will we see any improvement in the next few years? Hard to tell. We were already under the impression people would become more aware of what’s good or bad in the tattoo industry thanks to all these TV shows. Reality is, it did not happen.  For some very strange reason, very few people see a difference between a “good tattoo” and a “bad tattoo”. The only thing that seems to matter to them is being part of a “clan”, a clique of people who understand each other because of that one body modification they have in common.

Whether you’re heavily tattooed or only have a few stars on your wrist, you will most of the time end up in a situation where you’ll be talking to complete strangers who happen to have a tattoo too. Good, bad, average, it doesn’t really matter anymore. We have created a generation of soulless people with a need to belong to a group. Tattoos aren’t a way to escape from the boredom of you everyday’s life. It’s a new, cooler way to belong to a group and socialize.

Only when you realize that can you understand why people don’t have any idea what the real difference is between a good and a bad tattoo: that’s not something they actually care about. They only want to feel alive again!