{"id":52154,"date":"2022-08-30T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=52154"},"modified":"2022-08-29T09:52:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T13:52:40","slug":"qotd-the-secret-language-of-tattoos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/08\/30\/qotd-the-secret-language-of-tattoos\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The secret language of tattoos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There’s a fascinating old book called Codes of the Underworld<\/em>, that discusses things like face tattoos on convicts. He makes an obvious \u2014 yet almost entirely unobserved \u2014 point: The kind of folks who do things like that have totally given up on “straight” society. Those tattoos, and other mob-type behaviors, aren’t intended to communicate with normal folks; they’re signals to other lowlifes. To normal society, they convey only one message: “I am dangerous; stay away.” But to their fellow scumbags, prison tattoos<\/a> and the like contain a wealth of vital information. Only people who are part of that world can understand.<\/p>\n

We normal folks have the same problem when confronted with Leftists. Just to stick with a theme, consider tattoos. A quick googling suggests that something like 20% of Americans ages 18 and older have at least one tattoo. This Federalist<\/em> piece<\/a> doesn’t cite its source, but the claim that 40% (!!!) of those aged 18-29 are tatted up sure feels right \u2014 anecdotes aren’t data, of course, but I taught college for years; I’ve got lots<\/em> of anecdotes. Kids these days are slathered in garish, gaudy ink.<\/p>\n

Now, it’s probably safe to assume that those tats don’t mean anything criminal … but how would you know? Back when only sailors and military types had tattoos \u2014 you know, those dim dark days before about 1994 \u2014 tats had fairly obvious meanings. Globe and anchor \u2014 Semper Fi<\/em>, buddy. But these days they seem entirely random. Which is the point \u2014 if you catch yourself wondering “What kind of idiot would get that permanently etched into his flesh?”, then by definition the message isn’t for you. But think about how much time, effort, and money is expended on tattoos. They mean something<\/em>, I promise you.<\/p>\n

Dealing with Liberals is like that. Every element of every tattoo is recognizable, but the meaning of the whole is utterly opaque. So it goes with Leftist language, Leftist gestures. We understand all the words that they say, and they do all the things normal people do, but not for any reason any normal person can figure out. We don’t live in their world.<\/p>\n

Actually it’s worse than that. We think<\/em> we know what they’re doing. We’ve got a cute label for it: “Virtue-signaling”. But that doesn’t go far enough. What virtue, specifically, are they signalling? Figure that out, and we might be able to find a way to break it.<\/p>\n

I suggest that the key to understanding Leftism is: Conspicuous consumption. I think it’s the point of all those weird college-kid tattoos, too. The whole point of the exercise is to show that you have the resources \u2014 the money, tight young skin, and above all time<\/em> \u2014 to undergo such a laborious process. Time is the most precious commodity of all. All the money in the world won’t buy you a single second more. Every second you spend worrying about your pronouns is a second you can’t spend doing anything productive … which is, I submit, the entire point<\/em> of worrying about your pronouns. Only the young, or those stuck in permanent adolescence, can be so profligate with time.<\/p>\n

Severian, “Skin in the Game”, Rotten Chestnuts<\/em><\/a>, 2019-10-28.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a fascinating old book called Codes of the Underworld, that discusses things like face tattoos on convicts. He makes an obvious \u2014 yet almost entirely unobserved \u2014 point: The kind of folks who do things like that have totally given up on “straight” society. Those tattoos, and other mob-type behaviors, aren’t intended to communicate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41,13],"tags":[377,343,262,956,1020,1462,103,1238],"class_list":["post-52154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-conspicuousconsumption","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-culture","tag-millennials","tag-progressives","tag-severian","tag-tattoo","tag-virtuesignalling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dzc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76012,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52154\/revisions\/76012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}