Get inked! Or... not!

'Tis the season to show some skin! Perhaps some tattoo-adorned skin? In this week's episode, Ben tells Amory about the r/tattoos community's reaction https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/1k1w9sj/udoctorkidnapper_was_told_that_flower_tattoos_on/?share_id=g4NcDIUuauN7cM3XBg2lB&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 to a man whose friends made him self-conscious about his flowery tattoo. Amory tells Ben about the science behind why tattoos stay put on https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1kmet8u/with_skin_cells_constantly_regenerating_how_do/ our bodies, which has only recently come to be understood https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5881467/.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for WBUR comes from the Quiet Tension Podcast. When Joe Missoula got the Celtics job, Steve Paliuka sat up until 1:00 in the morning, typing him 25 things about leadership. Dr. Sharon Cherben asks what came first on the list. Listen closely wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:19Amory Sivertson?

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 0:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you know the meme, "Fellas, is it gay?"

• 0:35Amory Sivertson?

  No.

• 0:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, as we approach June, which, as you know, is Pride Month, I bring you the story of the "Fellas, is it gay to?" meme, and a story that kind of fits into that story.

• 0:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson.

• 0:57Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

• 1:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston ZenPR.

• 1:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, look, like so many primordial internet things, the exact origin of "Fellas, is it gay?" amounts to a Know Your Meme entry regarding a tweet from 2009. But that might just be the searchability of the internet playing tricks with our minds, since this really kicked off years later. In other words, you know, a meme comes into existence, you search for the origin of that meme on the internet, and you can probably find someone saying the same words or something similar at some point. But that doesn't mean that it's the actual start of the meme, right? Anyway, this tweet from 2009, whether it was the beginning of the meme or not, was about men who go into bathrooms and stand next to other men at the urinals when there is plenty of urinal space.

• 2:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  And the tweet was asking, basically, "Fellas, is it considered gay to do that?"

• 2:10Amory Sivertson?

  Like, someone in a, coming right next, in the urinal right next to you when they don't need to.

• 2:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah, sorry. I should have explained the man part of this to you as somebody who probably, I don't know if you've been in the urinal zone, but there's like-

• 2:24Amory Sivertson?

  No, but I think they're so strange. I find it so strange that men go into a bathroom-

• 2:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Stand and pee next to each other.

• 2:33Amory Sivertson?

  And just whip it out and pee next to each other.

• 2:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean-

• 2:36Amory Sivertson?

  It's absurd.

• 2:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is. It is. And then also, yes, there is this kind of like unspoken rule of like, it's sort of like a movie seat. It's like a seat at the movies and you sit down at the movies and there's, you're in the theater and there's like plenty of seats and someone sits right next to you at the movies. It's like, come on, man. We got personal space things here. Come on. You could-

• 2:58Amory Sivertson?

  I was trying to take a pee.

• 3:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  I was trying to take a pee in this movie theater. No, I, I think like that's, you know, whatever. It's just like giving each other personal space. And I don't know that that's like a man thing. That's just, these are environments where this sort of unspoken rule might exist. Setting all of this aside, this, fellas, is it considered gay if question, over time becomes a meme and people start making jokes about it. Fellas, is it gay to? And, and you know, it becomes this discussion of like, what is masculinity really? Do we even care? Like, why should we care? Like, it's just, it's connected to this big thing.

• 3:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Because of course, you know, obviously masculinity and being gay are also not mutually exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. So it kind of speaks to this kind of toxic idea of like, don't want to seem gay, so you don't want to do something, right? Like, that's just, I think of that as a pretty silly idea. And so this turns into this meme. It's a meme that gets spread across the internet. People joke about it. They make fun of it constantly. And it gets to this place where people say the sort of opposite of what might be considered gay in this construction. So they say, you know, fellas, is it gay to love your wife?

• 4:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right? Like, it becomes this like joke of, again, sort of what our kind of backwards ideas in some circles might be of like what masculinity is and what gayness is and whether that matters, all of these things, right? So recently on Reddit, in the tattoos community, a redditor posted a photo of their tattoo, which redditors are want to do in this community. It's very common to sort of say like, hey, I got a new tattoo. Check out my tattoo, or I'm really proud of this one, or this one means this to me, right? So this person posted, it's like, you know, it's like, just like a single color tattoo.

• 5:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't have any tattoos. I have one piercing, which we don't talk about because it's the workplace.

• 5:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  But I was not, in my salad days, I went for piercing, not tattoo. So I don't, I don't know how to talk about tattoos. But this is like, it's sort of like a dark blue, full sleeve tattoo.

• 5:29Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, I'm seeing something giraffe-like, some flowers.

• 5:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 5:34Amory Sivertson?

  Big floral, lots of floral design.

• 5:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lots of floral.

• 5:37Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  And so going back to the fellas, is it gay to? Apparently, this person who got this tattoo

• 5:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  got scared that a flowery tattoo like this might be, quote, gay because his friends told him so. So this person goes out, they get the tattoo, and then their friends start telling them that it's gay, that the tattoo is gay because it has flowers on it.

• 6:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  What happens on the subreddit is immediately people are like, that is completely ridiculous. Number one, what does that even mean? And like, why do we even need to distinguish between these things? Number two, flowers are not gay. Flowers are just flowers. And you put, you wear flowers if you like to wear flowers. This is not like a way to code gayness, right? Or to show gayness. And what happens that's kind of lovely is all these men on this subreddit. Post their flower tattoos. And there's this like explosion of posts of users who participated in this thing and the moderators get involved at some point.

• 6:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  And so it just turns into this, I think, really lovely love fest amongst men who are basically like, I got a flower tattoo. And not only is it not gay to have a flower tattoo, who cares? Right? Like the mod jumps in and, and, and sort of like posts this, you know, there's this 14, at least 14 photo diary of all these tattoos, these men's tattoos that have flowers in them. And in celebration of Pride Month, I thought that was like a lovely thing where, you know, we talk sometimes about calling people out versus calling them in, right?

• 7:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I think, you know, if you have friends who are like making fun of you by calling you gay, like there's a problem there, right? Number one. And number two, just, I, I think turning something like this into positivity and being supportive of this person's decision about what to do with their own body, which applies to tattoos and everything else. I just thought was really wonderful and, and, and beautiful. And, um, and it reminded me, you know, as somebody who, you know, has always loved the colors, pink and purple, and sometimes got teased for wearing those colors when I was a kid. Like, it was just really nice to see a bunch of users, um, sort of supportively be like,

• 8:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm a man who has a flower tattoo and that's cool. And I'm cool with that. And I'm cool with you having one. So it was just a nice thing that I saw, uh, on Reddit and, uh, wanted to tell you about it.

• 8:26Amory Sivertson?

  Hell yeah. Did I ever tell you about this, um, this sweatshirt that I had that I got? I think it had been made in another country. It had a bunch of like wiener dogs on it.

• 8:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 8:37Amory Sivertson?

  Going across it, like marching across.

• 8:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Love it.

• 8:39Amory Sivertson?

  And a bunch of phrases in English, but maybe the person who put the phrases on, English was not their first language.

• 8:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 8:47Amory Sivertson?

  And there was this one phrase that said, every time I move, I feel all right with my own style.

• 8:57Amory Sivertson?

  And I hold, I hold this sentiment in my heart. Anytime that I put on something that, you know, like I, I mean, I have tattoos, but it's usually something that I wear that I'm like, hell yeah, I love this. But it's old or it's got shoulder pads or it's, you know, it's got weird vintagey pattern. And sometimes I put it on and if I feel great, but if others make a comment, I just think to myself, every time I move, I feel all right with my own style.

• 9:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's good.

• 9:28Amory Sivertson?

  And that kind of, that kind of like makes me smile. And also whether it's like a tattoo that I have that I like that others don't, or something that just makes me feel more like me, it's, it's just a good reminder to be like, F them, you know?

• 9:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  F the haters.

• 9:42Amory Sivertson?

  As politely as possible. Yes. You're following your own compass.

• 9:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  And speaking of following your own compass, you should follow your own compass and tell us a story right after this break.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Support for WBUR comes from the Quiet Tension Podcast. There's a part of high performance that drives you, shapes you, and pulls at you too. Rarely spoken, almost never examined. That's the quiet tension. Coming up, psychologist and executive coach Dr. Sharon Turbin with Steve Paliuka on what separates the leaders people follow from the ones they don't. Stay with us for a preview. Listen closely wherever you get your podcasts.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Ally here with cash when you need it. You know, for the taxi that saved you, the guy who helped you move. Wait, are you supposed to tip at the car wash? Don't be in... Ally's 75,000 fee-free ATMs mean you always have cash when you need it. Ally Bank member FDIC.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Politics.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Country music.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  Hockey.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Sex.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

• 11:24Amory Sivertson?

  And hopefully make you see the world anew.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

• 11:29Amory Sivertson?

  Wherever you get your podcasts.

• 11:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, I've given you tattoos, fellas, is it gay? You've given me wiener dogs. What else you got?

• 11:43Amory Sivertson?

  I mean, the wiener dogs were not the important part of that little anecdote that I shared.

• 11:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, when are wiener dogs not the important part?

• 11:50Amory Sivertson?

  Feeling all right. That's true. That's true.

• 11:56Amory Sivertson?

  This is a little more sciency.

• 11:59Amory Sivertson?

  So because you don't have it.

• 12:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hold on, let me get my beaker and my lab coat.

• 12:03Amory Sivertson?

  Get your beak, put your safety goggles on. So I've, this is from the, the no stupid questions subreddit.

• 12:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 12:12Amory Sivertson?

  Someone asked, with skin cells constantly regenerating, how do tattoos not disappear?

• 12:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huh.

• 12:21Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of the post says, so tattoos are basically staining the skin, right? With skin cells constantly regenerating, wouldn't the cells that hold the color be replaced? But obviously tattoos don't disappear after a month. So how does that work? How do the new cells keep the color of the old cells?

• 12:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  That is fascinating. I've never thought about that.

• 12:41Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 12:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  I was just like, yeah, it goes, the needle goes deep and so it doesn't go away. That's been my thinking.

• 12:49Amory Sivertson?

  So this, this post has like 3,000 and change upvotes. The top comment has twice that. And the top comment is just like chef's kiss.

• 13:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 13:01Amory Sivertson?

  An incredible response. The top commenter, the username is Noggin Scratcher.

• 13:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 13:08Amory Sivertson?

  Already liked this person. Here's the answer. I'll condense it just a little bit. The top layer of the skin, the epidermis, is constantly shedding off and replacing itself. But the tattoo ink is injected down into a lower layer of the skin, the dermis, which is more permanent. Once it's in there, it gets recognized as foreign and eaten by an immune cell, which tries to digest it. Okay, so if you inject like a foreign thing into your body, this is me talking now, your immune system is gonna be like, oh no, intruder. And your immune cells are gonna like start fighting it. So.

• 13:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, yep.

• 13:46Amory Sivertson?

  Eaten by immune cell which tries to digest it. When the cell can't break it down, it instead just anchors itself in place to contain the invader.

• 13:57Amory Sivertson?

  Eventually, that immune cell will die and the pigment will be released again. So now the thing is dead, the pigment's going out, and promptly eaten again by a fresh immune cell. So like.

• 14:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which then locks itself in place and holds the, holds the matter inside of it until it dies. And then it just keeps happening over and over? That's the deal?

• 14:19Amory Sivertson?

  Exactly. So the ink might move around slightly before it gets engulfed again.

• 14:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  But does that mean that it just gets blurrier and blurrier over time? Because every time it leaks, it's getting a little bit, it's tiny bit blurrier?

• 14:31Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. So they, this is why tattoos appear faded over time is because the skin cells, like, like your skin regeneration process, it's kind of like an upwards conveyor belt.

• 14:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:42Amory Sivertson?

  This was another thing I learned in the process is that all of the skin that you can see, dead. This is all dead skin. The living skin is, is beneath the surface. And so, uh, we're always seeing new, new versions of each other, new skin.

• 14:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  New dead skin.

• 14:59Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Does that mean that if we lived for a thousand years, our tattoos would be so blurry? Like, would we just be covered? Do you know what I'm saying?

• 15:11Amory Sivertson?

  I don't think that they would, I don't think that it would spread out.

• 15:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 15:15Amory Sivertson?

  Like, it's not, it's not necessarily blurry like it's spreading out, but yes.

• 15:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's not increasing in volume.

• 15:19Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, man, that was another fun fact I learned. Oh, I've got to find this comment. There was, there was a comment here that actually said that at a certain phase of body decomposition, your tattoos look fresh as the day you got them. Because the skin is, you are, you are losing skin layer by, your skin is decomposing layer by layer.

• 15:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah!

• 15:41Amory Sivertson?

  Someone said that they witnessed this. Yes, someone in this thread said that they witnessed this at a body farm. So a couple other comments in this thread that jumped out at me is that someone pointed out that it's only really recently that we knew this. For a long, long, long millennia, we didn't know why tattoos stayed in place. Which is crazy because we've been getting them for that long.

• 16:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Classic human behavior. Classic human behavior. Oh, well, that worked. I guess we'll do more of this.

• 16:09Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. It was 2018 when research was published saying, hey, we know why tattoos stick around in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

• 16:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huh.

• 16:20Amory Sivertson?

  Another great comment here, the Reddit user Got Smoke In My Eye says, to add to this, that's how laser tattoo removal works. The laser breaks the pigment down into small enough chunks to actually be digested and taken away by your cells. Then you pee out the ink. Which I, of course, wanted to fact check this as well. You can pee it out, it can come out the other way, you can sweat it out.

• 16:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  We're coming full circle. We're back to the, we're back to the stalls.

• 16:50Amory Sivertson?

  So they say the laser basically acts like a jackhammer.

• 16:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Fellas, is it gay to pee out the ink?

• 17:00Amory Sivertson?

  That's just human, man. As long as you feel all right with your own style. It can, it can come out anyway.

• 17:09Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, so this was, I immediately showed this to Mike, to my husband, because we, we both have tattoos. He has quite a few more than I do.

• 17:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:19Amory Sivertson?

  And was like, did you know that? I didn't know this. Did you know this? And he was like, I didn't know this.

• 17:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's cool.

• 17:25Amory Sivertson?

  And, I mean, I also learned that, and I sort of knew this, but a tattoo needle... It goes into the skin at the rate of somewhere between 50 and 3,000 times per minute.

• 17:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 17:40Amory Sivertson?

  So you're just getting, you're just getting stabbed over and over and over and over again.

• 17:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Amory Sivertson?

  Until you have something beautiful. On getting stabby.

• 17:51Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, so, um, so this makes you want to get a tattoo now, right?

• 17:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  I've never really been anti-tattoo. I've just, I've just, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm very conscious of how my body has changed over time. Um, cause I used to be a, I used to wrestle at 135 pounds.

• 18:09Amory Sivertson?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  And so I'm like, do I really want to be putting a, like, which parts of my body do I want to decorate with art? And then watch that art change because of the distortion that will occur over time.

• 18:29Amory Sivertson?

  There are areas that distort less.

• 18:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, man, these tads get real distorted.

• 18:36Amory Sivertson?

  If the urge ever strikes, we can talk about, um, placement for you.

• 18:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Maybe what I should get is I should get a tattoo that like it, as it distorts, it will get cooler and different. You know what I mean?

• 18:50Amory Sivertson?

  That's right. That's right. Like a galaxy that will just keep.

• 18:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  It'll just keep extending, man.

• 18:57Amory Sivertson?

  A supernova star that explodes.

• 19:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, in slow motion.

• 19:02Amory Sivertson?

  Poco a poco.

• 19:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  But it should just be donuts, like everything is donuts. You know what I mean?

• 19:09Amory Sivertson?

  The donuts are getting bigger.

• 19:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Galaxy expands, you know?

• 19:14Amory Sivertson?

  No, truly, I think, um, getting a tattoo is like, like running a marathon. You have to want to do it or else you shouldn't do it.

• 19:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  You do you. Hashtag.

• 19:24Amory Sivertson?

  Feel all right with your own style. And that's all you gotta worry about.

• 19:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Cool.

• 19:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 19:42Amory Sivertson?

  This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson and me, Amory Sivertson.

• 19:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mix and sound design for this episode from Emily Jankowski. Our editor is Meg Kramer.

• 19:51Amory Sivertson?

  And the rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Franny Monahan, and production manager Paul Vikes.

• 19:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery that you want us to tell, you can hit us up, [email protected].

• 20:05Amory Sivertson?

  If you have any tattoo suggestions, Ben is really looking for some. So you can send those as well.

• 20:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, yeah, I'm ready.

• 20:14Amory Sivertson?

  He's ready to get inked.

• 20:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lower back, I'm ready.

• 20:18Amory Sivertson?

  It's coming back, I hear.

• 20:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's coming back.

• 20:21Amory Sivertson?

  Lower back is back.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Support for WBUR comes from the Quiet Tension Podcast with Dr. Sharon Cherben, psychologist, executive coach, and a close listener to what lives beneath high performance. Here she is with Steve Paliuka, who built Bang Capital and helped bring a championship back to Boston on the thing the best leaders do that most don't.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  The best leaders kind of give credit and take blame. When something goes wrong, they're the first ones to take responsibility for it. And they see the good in the other people on the team. They don't immediately try to deflect whatever problem there was, what went wrong. You miss the sales target on the salesperson, they reflect on themselves and what they could do better. Same thing, you know, what Joe Mazzulla does in basketball. If you see his press conferences and the Celtics don't play well, the first thing he says is, you know, I need to coach better. I made a mistake here, I made a mistake there. Not many coaches do that, but that's why the players love Joe, and that's another reason he's a great coach. So there are things like that that you learn.

• 21:49Speaker 05

  There are many, many more things like that I learned from people like Red Auerbach and my classmates from business school and sports and all the rest.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  And really what an array of leaders because leadership is both the same and different depending on the environment that you're in.

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Listen for more of the quiet tension wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 22:44Speaker 03

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