Tattoo Fails

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Featured Episode

About

Tattoo Fails are photographs of faultily designed or poorly inked tattoos which are often shared online via internet humor sites and body art communities.

Origin

In August 2006, the domain for the single topic blog ShittyTattoos^[11] was registered, which highlighted photographs of poorly drawn tattoos submitted by users.

Spread

On May 14th, 2007, Flickr^[2] user casting.shade uploaded a photograph of a portrait tattoo with the caption "Never seen a tattoo end up this bad" (shown below).

In April 2009, the single topic blog Ugliest Tattoos^[1] was launched, highlighting notable photographs of poor tattoo designs. The site was later acquired by Cheezburger under the site FAILBlog.^[2]

On May 12th, 2009, the Bad Tattoos Tumblr^[8] blog was created. On February 12th, 2010, the /r/badtattoos^[7] subreddit was launched for photographs of poorly designed tattoos. On April 8th, 2011, the Fuck No Bad Tattoos blog was created on Tumblr.^[9] On January 6th, 2012, the /r/shittytattoos^[10] subreddit was launched. On April 30th, 2013, BuzzFeed^[4] highlighted tattoo fail pictures in a post titled "47 Cringeworthy Tattoos Being Regretted As We Speak." On May 20th, 2014, BuzzFeed^[3] published another compilation of notable tattoo fail photos. The following day, Redditor Mister_Kurtz submitted an Imgur gallery of bad tattoos titled "The 'No Ragrets' Tattoo Series" to /r/WTF,^[6] where it gathered upwards of 3,600 votes (92% upvoted) in the first three months. On July 10th, Redditor Alexander_Supertramp submitted a Facebook photo post featuring two friends with matching lips tattoos above several comments brutally critiquing the artist's work (shown below). In two months, the post gained over 4,700 votes (95% upvoted) on the /r/cringepics^[5] subreddit.

Notable Examples

Kimberly Vlaeminck

Kimberley Vlaeminck is a Belgian teenager who failed a lawsuit against a tattoo artist for tattooing 56 stars on her face, three more than she claims she had asked for, after she fell asleep during the procedure. Later, Vlaeminck admitted that she fabricated the story after seeing her father become furious at the sight of the tattoos.

Tattoo Comparisons

On November 20th, 2013, the subreddit /r/tattoocomparisons^[13] was launched, featuring photoshopped images with poorly drawn tattoo heads superimposed over various people and animals.