Christine with her "Trollface" tattoo and an anonymous Harambe tattoo (not hers). Photos: courtesy of subjects
At this very moment, there are at least 39 people walking this earth with a Baby Yoda tattoo. I know this because of the helpfully headlined article, â39 Tattoos of Baby Yoda That Prove Weâre All Obsessed With The Mandalorianâ, which showcases a sad Yoda, a stern Yoda, a dancing Yoda, and a Yoda eating a frog, among other bĂ©bĂ©s. If you cast your mind back to 5,000 years ago â December 2019, to be precise â youâll remember that Baby Yoda was once an incredibly popular meme. Less so, now.Itâs easy to imagine that people who get meme tattoos are filled with regret. All tattoos age, but the fragility of memes means that the joke may begin to fade long before the ink does. Yet do people who are impulsive enough to get meme tattoos actually care? To find out, I spoke to the âsomeonesâ in everyoneâs favourite âSomeone Got A Tattoo Ofâ viral news headlines.Early memes remain some of the most recognisable, because before our current era of Pretending Everything Is Funny To Distract Us From Current Affairs (PEIFTDUFCA), a good meme would have to last us months, if not years. Youâll undoubtedly recognise the tattoo near 31-year-old Christineâs armpit: a ghoulish, grinning trollface that was part of the rage comics popular on Reddit and 4Chan in the late 2000s.âI was a teenager when I got it and I think a lot of alcohol was involved,â Christine explains of her motivation to get the tat, âI donât know why I get a lot of tattoos.â Christine says thereâs âno real reasonâ why she got the trollface inked, but she was âcarelessâ at the time, allowing a friend who wanted to get a tattoo parlour to practice on her for free. She says friends found the tattoo funny but not all of them recognised the face, as ânot everybody was super into memes back then like they are now.âNowadays, Christine says the trollface doesnât bother her because itâs easy to hide, although she thinks sheâll probably get it covered-up eventually for aesthetic reasons (as it doesnât match the rest of her tattoos). âI donât really regret any tattoos because theyâre all just kind of silly, I donât take it seriously,â she says. âAt the time it was funny and new, now I guess I should be embarrassed, but Iâm not,â she laughs.Five years ago, at Katy Perryâs Super Bowl XLIX halftime performance, a clumsy shark stole the show and our hearts. âLeft Sharkâ was a man in a seven-foot shark costume who seemed completely unable to dance in time to the music. Due to the popularity of the Super Bowl, this was one of the first memes that seemed to capture everyone, everywhere, and as such it was immediately capitalised upon. Within six days, Perryâs lawyers sent cease and desist letters to people selling unofficial left shark merchandise online. But five days before that, 40-year-old Matty got left shark tattooed on his ankle.âIt wasnât super premeditated,â Matty explains. Because his surname is âClarkâ he is often nicknamed âSharkâ, meaning a tattoo artist friend joked he should get the meme commemorated on his body. âPeople were tagging me on Instagram because it was a shark-related thing and my buddy drew up a tattoo and I got it the next day. We werenât trying to capitalise on anything really, it was just a dumb idea that happened real fast.â He estimates the tattoo took 15 minutes and cost less than $100.âOnce it started blowing up and getting attention, it was a fun week,â says Matty, whose tattoo made headlines, was shared online by Katy Perry, and was mentioned on late night American talk shows. âThe ego in you makes you feel like, âTheyâre talking about me!â but at the end of the day theyâre making fun saying, âWhat kind of idiot would get a tattoo like this?ââ. Matty says this didnât hurt his feelings, âbut at the same time, you know, it is on my body.âMatty says the meme died out quickly, but half a decade later, he now considers the tattoo a âsouvenir of a real weird six weeksâ. He says half of the people who see the tattoo nowadays do recognise it, but others just see it as a cartoon shark. âIt seemed like it was the most important thing on earth for like a week, but then the world moved onâ.There are those of us who are cursed to be celebrated in death, not in life â Van Gogh, Galileo, Harambe. If you are somehow unfamiliar with the last of those legends, Harambe was a 17-year-old gorilla who was shot to death in May 2016 after a child fell into his zoo enclosure in Cincinnati. Immediately, the ape became a meme â #RIPHarambe trended across the globe, myths spread that Harambe got 11,000 votes for president, and an anonymous young college student sat down to get the gorilla tattooed on his thigh.âMy tattoo artist and I had both been partaking in the smoking of marijuana,â says the anonymous Harambe-haver, who got the tattoo a week after the gorillaâs death when he was already in the tattoo parlour having another piece of art worked on. The tattoo artist confessed that he wanted to do a Harambe tattoo, and so our anonymous tattoo-ee told him to âthrow it onâ him.âIt was his idea and I was all for it,â says the 23-year-old, âIt was a party trick, it was a gag.â At the time, the then-student used to go to parties where people would âtake a shot for Harambeâ, and he says the meme was a fun thing to be involved in during the tumultuous American election. âIâm not gonna say it brought everyone together, but it kind of did.âYet nine months after being tattooed, the student decided the tattoo had ârun its courseâ â he describes it as âdumbâ and ânot as funny as it once wasâ. He returned to his artist and got Harambe covered up with a black stormtrooper from Star Wars. âIâm not a big Star Wars guy but the picture looked cool.âAsked what advice he would give to anyone else considering a meme tattoo, our anonymous friend says: âdo itâ. He adds that it might be best to get a meme tattoo in a less visible area on your body to avoid judgment.The dress â was it black? Was it gold? Was it white? Was it blue? Unless youâve discovered a time machine and also somehow got that time machine stuck in 2015, itâs likely you donât care. Yet 30-year-old Daniel wonât forget the meme in a hurry, thanks to the fact itâs tattooed near his knee.âI got it cause it was such a frustrating argument,â says Daniel, who got the tattoo the day after he found out about the meme. He saw the dress as blue and black originally, but âone night after a few drinksâ saw it as white and gold (the tattoo depicts the dress in the former colours). Because Daniel works in a tattoo shop, the tattoo was free.âEveryone thought it was funny, the only people who said I would regret it were ignorant, close-minded people,â Daniel says. He says he doesnât think about the tattoo often because itâs never really in his eyeline, and he is â75% covered in tattoosâ.A year later, Daniel got another meme tattoo â this time celebrating the âDamn, Danielâ Vine that saw our eponymous hero praised for his âwhite Vansâ. Daniel (of tattooed, not Vine, fame) says he doesnât have a favourite between his two meme tattoos, but this one âwas less of a big deal because people didnât hate this meme as much.âDaniel got the âDamn, Danielâ tattoo because heâs named Daniel â a sentence I shouldnât have to type. He explains that he would rather have a unique piece of art than be one of the hundreds of people who have the same tattoo design from Pinterest. He also says heâll get another meme tattoo if the meme in question is âgood enoughâ, and if he has enough space left on his body. âI donât regret either,â he says of his inked memes, âTattoos are just things to look at.â@ameliargh
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Christine, 31, âTrollfaceâ
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Matty, 40, "Left Sharkâ
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Anonymous, 23, âRIP Harambeâ
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