Actually the motivation of my comment ultimately stems from the political. It is a critique not just of tattoos or hipsters but of what postmodernism in general has done to the political left and to meaningful cultural and political resistance. Getting a tattoo is a purely superficial act, as is the embrace of irony…

Tattoos are for people who cannot muster a sense of individuality in any way other than the superficial. Whatever makes hipsters inauthentic makes the highly overlapping tattoo set inauthentic. That's the point. There is nothing rebellious about it any more. No matter what tattoo you get, you're painting yourself as a…