Outlining The Resistance
After years of careful market research and legally grey public assets trading, I’m excited to announce the future of tattooing.
Introducing; Ink+.
For one low monthly payment, you’ll maintain uninterrupted access to your tattoos.
The basic plan includes unlimited viewing of existing tattoos, standard black ink rendering, and up to five compliments per month. Upgrade to the Premium tier for unlimited compliments, priority healing, and exclusive access to colors you already suffered through the application of.
Unfortunately, due to rising operating costs and maintaining data center support, traditional Japanese pieces will no longer be available on the Basic plan. Existing subscribers will have a 30-day grace period before their koi and finger waves are replaced with tasteful placeholder silhouettes that may or may not resemble farm animals fucking.
Customers on the Legacy Plan may continue enjoying unlimited access to all tattoos completed before January 2027. New customers should expect occasional feature limitations that will be vaguely referenced up front.
Want your chest piece to wrap around onto your shoulder? We’ve got you all day.
That’s part of the Expansion Pack.
Finger tattoos are now sold separately. Available lettering fonts are subject to licensing wars over your money that you have absolutely no say in.
If you cancel your subscription, don’t worry. Your tattoos won’t disappear. They’ll simply enter Reduced Functionality Mode. You’ll retain outline access, but shading, color saturation, and emotional significance will require reactivation.
Naturally, there will be advertisements.
Your chest eagle now includes a tasteful sponsor message from Procter & Gamble that will materialize as a pop up ad for Tide detergent every 20 minutes.
That memorial portrait of your grandfather? Brought to you by Squarespace.
Sounds pretty ridiculous, right?
And also, very familiar.
We already pay every month to keep watching shows we thought we’d bought. We rent software that used to come in a box. Cars increasingly ask us to subscribe to hardware we already own. Video games disappear when servers shut down. Features become memberships. Ownership becomes a recurring payment.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped buying things and started leasing permission to use them.
Tattooing never got the memo. Or we just put it in the round file.
My younger clients are hunting down eBay tube TVs and buying physical video game discs just to feel the weight of plastic in their hands. They are romanticizing a past they never lived, simply because back then, when you bought something, it stayed bought.
They come to the shop because they are starved for something that can’t be uninstalled. They are realizing what humans have always known: when the world tries to standardize you, you rebel. A great way to rebel is to paint your flesh with pirate patches.
It’s always been that way. Look at the soldiers in World War II. They couldn’t do anything about getting drafted. They couldn't stop the military from shaving their heads, issuing them a number, and throwing them into a vast sea of identical olive-drab uniforms. But they could sit in a cramped shop on Hotel Street in Honolulu or the port in San Diego, pay a few bucks in cash, and make a conscious choice to wear a dagger on their forearm. It was a tiny, bloody act of defiance. It said: You can control my body for a time, but this part is mine forever.
Today, the uniform isn't military canvas—it’s the digital cloud. It’s the endless, invisible terms of service agreements that are designed to slowly strip away everything we think we own.
So let BMW gate-keep the heated seats and let Amazon Prime put mediocre movies behind a paywall on their dog shit interface. When you sit in my chair, the buzz of the machine is real. The paper towel wiping away blood and ink is real. The fucking your mom jokes are real. Getting tattooed is still a true act of analog ownership.
It is a stubborn refusal to lease your identity.
No monthly payments required.
