sarapressey

As long as Kev brought up Rock of Ages tattoo in Austin, I like Jay Chastain's back pieces over there too.

I saw this thing recently by a fellow named Judd Ripley. Check out how soft and buttery those blends are! Pretty impressive.

@SailorClaire welcome and think you just got your Community Research 101 course on going into a community todo research without doing research ahead of time and how that can backfire therefore excluding you from being able todo actual research. Consider it a gift very few grad schools could teach their students. A researcher needs to be more humble. The only thing we know is nothing and we are always students. There is no master!
Unfortunately this hierarchical thought process that grad schools give their students who are accepted and/or graduate is historically how many researchers have tried todo research and it is almost like colonialism thus leaving a bad after taste on the community long after the researcher has left the community...i.e. what did the community actually gain from partaking? Or, how factual is this researchers work if they didn't actually enter the community? Amongst many other things, any good person questioning your thesis would ask then leaving your research irrelevant. Or even worse drawing a BS (yes that is a clinical term, haha) research study that influences others who care not to actually learn about a topic or community, i.e. mainstream news or books. These are thoughts to help you better defend your thesis when the time comes.
As a professional who does lots of work in communities and research internationally your pitch to do the research is what I fight not to do. May I suggest a book for you? Research Methods for Community Change; A Project-Based Approach by Randy Stoecker. I am just one of many people who work with many exploited populations so I write this as a polite offering.
Lastly, as was suggested by many LSTers take a look around the site and I think you will find lots of good pre-research to your research....consider it a Lit Review. I had one of my old staff actually join the site for her thesis on Tattooed Professional Women in Social Work and she got some impressive results from LSTers. So check out that search feature and put it to use and maybe reintroduce yourself and maybe the community will re-welcome you.
LSTers, thank you for voicing your concerns politely and offering constructive criticism so this site is not exploited!!! As well as an opportunity to teach the ones who unfortunately get into positions to teach about others when they are not a part of the other and/or truly know about the other(s)
EDIT: oh yeah as one of the site owners you may want to contact us first or if you're trying this on other forums as well the mods.....

Maybe I'm just sensitive to stuff, but it seems a bit presumptuous... shouldn't it be phrased in the form of a question? Something like "Hi, blah, blah, blah... I would like to use this forum to interview you guys on your opinions of your tattoos. Is that ok?"

@SailorClaire Margo DeMello was my first wife ,I helped her write that shit. 20 yr old boring crap.If you don't believe me research who I am.
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f#ckin vampires....this is about research for the sake of research. So you can finish a useless degree....and then you become an authority on something you truly know nothing about. life experience has lead me to hate this academic BS.
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If I package a bunch of shit someone told me as facts,how does that make me an authority?
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Oh yeah Margo Demello claimed she spent alot of time in a tattoo shop with GTC and I, Bullshit ,your following bullshit. Sorry for the truth. Hope this helps with your research...remember publishing bullshit doesnt make it true. You don't look like a Sailor. A trade many are proud of ,monikers are supposed to mean something. When did everyone start giving themselves nicknames?

As an academic who does interview-based research, and who spends a lot of time teaching people how to do qualitative research, I have to agree with many of the concerns raised in the last thread, and question the logic of trying to do this online in this rushed way. I did my own masters in the UK and I know masters courses are short there and make it difficult to engage in sustained, profound research.As this seems to be the case for you, that doesn't mean you can just do the same research project, but accelerated. It means you need to think about what you can accomplish with the time/restrictions you have, and what knowledge you can genuinely generate from that. Thinking you can ask fairly complex questions and answer them through message board focus groups is like the opposite of rigour. You need to find a research question that can be answered in the time and with the resources you have.. At my university, we strongly encourage our students to do literature based masters projects as it is unfair to both researcher and potential subjects to take on something so ambitious is so little time.
Message board research feels lazy. The only time I have seen it done effectively has been when that's the subject of the actual research- I.e. how social media is used in x community. IT CANNOT BE A REPLACEMENT FOR DEEP QUALITATIVE RESEARCH just because you don't have time. Focus groups are great for gathering easier-to-access info--you want to talk about identity? Meaning? Gender? You need to sit down with people. If you have read all of this research literature, then you know that qualitative research is about building trust, relationships, etc. And that there is no research without it.
I am a total self-hating academic so I get why so many folks in the tattoo world are so skeptical of researchers. We can be a really tonedeaf bunch. Many researchers take without giving back. But I just want to be clear that as someone who is very much embedded into this world, the above would not be ok with me, either. In fact, much of my career has been spent trying to push people to rethink what it means to work with people, similar to the stuff @Lochlan has been talking about.
And to the OP: I get that as an MA student this may be some of your first attempts at doing original research, and so this strong reaction may be really painful. I encourage you to listen to it carefully; I have learned some of my own important lessons about how I present myself, why I do what I do, what I hope to gain from my work, and what I'm asking of other people, in these kinds of tense encounters. I encourage you to think about what the goal of this project is beyond it being interesting to you (you want others to share personal moments of their lives with you? That's not enough.) and think especially about what useful, respectful, rigorous research can actually be done with the time and resources you have. If a message board conversation is all that you are able to do right now, it's not enough to credibly try to answer the questions you are asking with the depth that they, and we, deserve. Research with people takes time.
I empathized with how painful such a strong reaction like this must be for you, especially as your supervisors clearly signed off on this plan and no one appeared to realize the problems with it, but I have to say that this:
Pretty much removed any good will I felt for you. The above is basically a threat. If you do, indeed, believe in "ethics", then such a nasty statement would never have appeared in your message. Whether or not our posts are publicly available, threatening us that you could use them if you wanted to, but you're just too nice not to, is a dirty, dirty thing to say. Think about what ethical means.

Sorry if I'm bringing back a dead thread, but this one was interesting.
I've been getting tattoos since before me and my wife were dating. We've been married 8 years, together 10. She actually JUST got her 1st and 2nd in the last 2 months. I never thought she would. Not that she's against them. She usually said "I like them on you, not on me."
Anyway. Now we have all sorts of new conversations that we just never had. When are you getting one? Do we have the money for us BOTH to get one now? What are you getting? Haha that's stupid, you're such a goon! All things we each hear or say now.
I know it's trivial but it does add a new dynamic to our relationship.
Our next plan is to go in and pick out one another's tattoo based on the classic wall flash, making sure to choose something the other would probably not think to choose themselves. Risky, yeah (because my wife's an asshole and I'll no doubt walk out with Tweety Bird holding an AK-47) but fun and just kind of part of who we are anyway.

Bad news - I'm 54 and they still treat me like that. I love my mother and sister but when it comes to my tattoos then can A) like them or B) shut the fuck up about it. Unfortunately, they pick option C, which is to NOT like them and NOT shut the fuck up about it. :-)

Stitch626, how lucky for you to not be in a relationship with a fickle, small minded little man anymore.
Sounds like he just released you from what could've been a long and lengthy suppression of your true self, I'm willing to bet he was vacillating and thoughtless in other areas as well.
Maybe you should send him a thank you card every year on the anniversary of your independence?

I grew up in a hippy ass section of Minneapolis called the West Bank, and there were a few biker bars on the south end of the neighborhood. I remember I was about 8 years old when I really noticed them and thought they were rad as shit.
On another note, I remember when my son first noticed tattoos as something unnatural on the body. When he was 3, he was sitting on my lap when his eyes locked onto my arm. He grabbed my arm firmly and scanned it over with intense focus...then let out the words "cool, dad"