“Which Type Of Tattoo Makes You Cringe The Most?”: 50 People Don’t Hold Back

According to the Welcome Collection, the earliest evidence of tattoo art comes in the form of clay figurines that had their faces painted or engraved to represent tattoo marks. The oldest figures of this kind have been recovered from tombs in Japan dating to 5000 BCE or older.

Meanwhile, in terms of actual tattoos, the oldest known human to have tattoos preserved upon their mummified skin is a Bronze-Age man from around 3300 BCE. The man, named ‘Otzi the Iceman’ was found in the Otztal Alps glacier and he had an impressive number–57 tattoos.

Scientists also traced back early proof of tattoos to the Middle Kingdom period of ancient Egypt. Meanwhile, in early Greek and Roman times (eighth to sixth century BCE), tattooing was associated with barbarians. They believe that the Greeks learned the art of tattooing from the Persians, and used it to mark slaves and criminals so they could be identified if they tried to escape. Later, the Romans continued this practice they learned from the Greeks.

Still today, tattoos remain these fascinating objects that bind cultures, societies, and people into a huge community of ink art lovers. But with the increasing amount of incredible tattoo artists and more people wiling to get their skin inked, bad tattoos are also getting more common.

While we can argue for hours on what is a bad and a good tattoo, and agree on the fact that every ink artwork is deeply personal and can indeed be incomprehensible to an outsider, it doesn’t change the fact that bad tattoos exist.

Dr. Kirby Farrell, a University of Massachusetts professor specializing in anthropology, psychology, and history, thinks there’s a bigger explanation for bad tattoos. For Farrell, bad tattoos are a representation a self-defense mechanism people have. They offer “physical and artistic representations of values you can identify with.”

“People feel especially pressured to try to find their own magical reinforcement for things that the culture is not really helping you much with,” Farrell explained in an interview for Vice. He believes that bad tattoos give people exactly that, a reassurance that their existence is somehow different, heroic, and special, and the tattoos are meant to capture that.

Farrell argues further: “Like if you want to tattoo yourself with a line from your favorite song, almost certainly you're feeling a kind of emotional excitement and admiration for that song. A kind of warm, romantic ecstasy. You hear people say, ‘It has special meaning for me.’ It's a kind of emotional halo that's around this object.”