Endless Thread - Get inked! Or... not!

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

'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 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 our bodies, which has only recently come to be understood.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in health care so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Do you know the meme, fellas, is it gay? No. 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. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson.

And you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR. So look, like so many primordial internet things, the exact origin of fellas Is It Gay amounts to a know-your-meem 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. And the tweet was asking basically, fellas, is it considered gay to do that? Like someone in a coming right next, in the urinal right next to you when they don't need to. 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 a... No, but I think they're so strange. I find it so strange that men go into a bathroom. stand and pee next to each other. And just whip it out and pee next to each other. I mean, it's absurd.

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. I was trying to take a pee.

I was trying to take a pee in this movie theater. No, 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 isn't 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 um thing 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? Right. Like, it becomes this like joke.

of again sort of what are 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 reddors 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 a, you know, it's just like a single color tattoo. I don't have any tattoos. I have one piercing, which we don't talk about because it's the workplace.

But I was not in my salad days. I went for piercing, not tattoo. So I don't know how to talk about tattoos. but this is like it's sort of like a dark blue full sleeve tattoo. Yeah, I'm seeing something giraffe like some flowers. Yes. Big floral. Lots of floral designs.

Lots of floral. Yeah. And so going back to the fellas, is it gay to? Mm-hmm. Apparently, this person who got this tattoo got scared that a flowery tattoo like this might be, quote, gay because his friends told. them so. Yeah.

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. 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 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. 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 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. thing where, you know, we talk sometimes about calling people out versus calling them in, right? 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 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 beautiful 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 sort of supportively be like, 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 on Reddit and wanted to tell you. you about it. Hell yeah. Did I ever tell you about this, this sweatshirt that I had that I got,

I think it had been made in another country. It had a bunch of like weiner dogs on it. Okay. Going across it, like marching across. Love it. And a bunch of phrases in English, but maybe the person who put the phrases on, English was not their first language. Okay. And there was this one phrase that said, every time I move, I feel all right with my own style. And 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. That's good. And 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 just a good reminder to be like, F them. You know? As politely as possible. Yes. You're following your own compass.

And speaking of following your own compass, you should follow your own compass and tell us a story right after this break. Support for this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution, a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. When it comes to the environment, it's easy to focus on doom and gloom, but that's not the whole story, especially when there are so many projects working towards bringing people and nature together. In this moment, optimism isn't naive, it's necessary. Follow Nature is the solution wherever you listen to podcasts and discover stories of impact and possibility. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. Neuroscience, chemistry.

But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing. Or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science,

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Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. Creative Studio. All right. I've given you tattoos.

Fellows, is it gay? You've given me wiener dogs. What else you got? I mean, the wiener dogs were not the important part of that little anecdote that I shared. I mean, when are weiner dogs not the important part? Feeling all right. That's true. That's true. This is a little more science-y.

Okay. So because you don't have it. Hold on. Let me get my beaker and my lab coat. Get your beak. Let me get my beaker. So put her safety goggles on. All right.

So this is from the no stupid questions subreddit. Okay. Someone asked, with skin cells constantly regenerating, how do tattoos not disappear? Huh. 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? That is fascinating. I've never thought about that. Yes.

I was just like, yeah, it goes the needle, it goes deep, and so it doesn't go away. That's been my thinking. So this post has like 3,000 and change upvotes. Okay. The top comment has twice that. And the top comment is just like, chef's kiss. Okay. An incredible response.

The top commenter, the username is Noggin Scratcher. Okay. 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 going to be like, oh, no, intruder, and your immune cells are going to like start fighting it. So 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. 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. Which then locks itself in place and holds the matter inside of it until it dies, and then it just keeps happening over and over? That's the deal. Exactly. So the ink might move around slightly before it gets engulfed again. 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. Yeah. So this is why tattoos appear faded over time is because the skin cells like your skin regeneration process. It's kind of like an upwards conveyor belt. This is 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 beneath the surface. And so we're always seeing new versions of each other. New skin. New dead skin. Yeah.

Does that mean that if we lived for a thousand years, our tattoos would be so blurry, like, would be just be covered? Do you know what I'm saying? I don't think that they would, I don't think that it would spread out. Like, it's not necessarily blurry like it's spreading out. It's not increasing in volume. Oh, man, that was another fun fact I learned. Oh, I've got to find this comment. 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 layer. Your skin is decomposing layer by layer. Someone said that they witness 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. Classic human behavior. Right.

Let's just do this. Oh, well, that works. I just will do more of this. Yeah. It was 2018 when research was published saying, hey, we know why tattoos stick around in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Huh. 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 take it away by yourselves. 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. We're coming full circle. We're back to the stalls. So they say the laser basically acts like a jackhammer. Fellas, is it gay to pee out the ink?

That's just human man, as long as you feel all right with your own style. It can come out anyway. Yeah, so this was, I immediately showed this to Mike, to my husband, because we both have tattoos. He has quite a few more than I do. And was like, did you know that? I don't know this. Did you know this? And he was like, I don't know this.

That's cool. 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. Yeah. So you're just getting stabbed over and over and over again. Yeah. Talk about getting stabby. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. So this makes you want to get a tattoo now, right? I've never really been anti-tattoo. I've just, you know, I'm very conscious of how my body has changed over time. Because I used to be a, I used to wrestle at 135 pounds. And so I'm like, do I really want to be putting up, 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? There are areas that distort less.

Oh, man, these tads get real distorted. If the urge ever strikes, we can talk about placement for you. Maybe what I should get is I should get a tattoo that, like, as it distorts, it will get cooler and different. You know what I mean? That's right. That's right. Like a galaxy that will just keep expanding. It will just keep expanding, man.

A supernova, a star that explodes. Yeah, in slow by little motion. Boca, poca, but it should just be donuts, like everything is donuts. You know what I mean? The donuts are getting bigger. The donut galaxy expands, you know? No, truly, I think getting a tattoo is like running a marathon you have to want to do it or else you shouldn't do it. You do you.

Hashtag. Feel all right with your own. style. And that's all you got to worry about. Cool. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson and me, Amory Siebertson. Mix and sound design for this episode from Emily Jenkowski. Our editor is Meg Kramer. And the rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Franny Monaghan, and production manager, Paul Vikis. If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery that you want us to tell, you can hit us up. Endless thread at WBUR. If you have any tattoo

suggestions, Ben is really looking for some. So you can send those as well. Yep. Yeah, I'm ready. He's ready to get inked. Lower back. I'm ready. It's coming back, I hear. It's coming back. Lower back is back.