The markings use to be of tribal allegiance, how a dog would mark it’s spot with urine, the human would mark it’s body to display which group he/she is apart of, body/face make it personal, it brings it into realty. These days such markings are trivialized into cultural decorative art usually without any reference to anything… it’s a product of a safe space, where the system creates a comfort zone where you can pretty much look like, represent anything without any real consequences, it’s the equivalent of dress up.
In certain areas of UK, US and especially other parts of the world, you can be simply be murdered for having the wrong markings in the certain places, as certain signs which are tattooed are held in complete seriousness, the same outcome can occur from wearing certain colors.
The reason for why it is the way it is now is because of technology development (ink guns and artists), cultural materialism mixed with an environment that promotes individualism which results in a typical fashion trend that the masses indulge in, the variation of art makes it more appealing, but this also why that have walls of default templates you can choose from to cater to the typical conformity.
Personally, i’m divided on it, i’m against having them for the sake of having them in the conformity context as i described above, I suppose it isn’t that bad if you’re the arty type and use your body for personal decoration, but meh…if it doesn’t connect to reality with a life or death seriousness, or represent a blood line connection, then I don’t think much of it…
IMO, because of genetic memory, tattoos attract certain types that feel it’s necessary to represent their blood, these are usually tough hard types, and use such methods to reconnect to who they once were as a way of maintaining identity. Another thing, tattoos seem to attract those of low IQ, i imagine this is because of mass conformity as i previously mentioned…
it’s difficult to connect those two examples because of reality vs artificially, the first type can be perfectly intelligent, pledge allegiance to a group which represents who they are in reality, this is something that you cannot choose, you are born into it by blood, the other types, the low IQ type is artificial, where they can simply choose whatever they want to represent even if it goes against who they are, the system permits delusion by securing the safe space in which they do it in, this is inline with modernity, freedom and humanity…“you can be whoever you want to be” etc…and all that stuff…which is nothing more that a marketing strategy, and also keeps the being down by having it not realize who it really is.