I like them fine, don’t mind needles and have a fairly high pain threshhold generally.
But speaking as a guy who compulsively changes my desktop background every 1-3 days, I just figure I’d eventually get sick of whatever I got.
Now when they develop some king of nanobot tatoo that can reconfigure itself periodically - THEN I’ll get one ;).
I’ve done enough things in my life that I’ve regretted later. I am not going to add getting a tatoo to the list.
Only in the sense that everything I’ve ever not done has been a choice. I think people look great naked. They look best naked.
As a massage therapist I’ve seen a lot of body art, some of it very beautiful. But I’ve never seen any that appealed to me more than the skin it was injected into.
Mainly because of the same reason I haven’t learned to play golf – little to no interest; and in the case of tattoos, no perception whatever of a payoff to make it worth my bother. A close second is a certain preference that any piercing of my skin for the purpose of inserting a foreign substance be for medical purposes, and happen as little as humanly necessary.
Well, Frank, you got some splainin’ to do.
Huh – I see silenus had gone right trough to the essentials, indeed.
I think that they are stupid looking.
Why waste good beer money getting a tattoo?
All I’ll say is, I’m glad I only have one and it’s strategically placed on the back of my neck where I can’t see it and usually no one else can, either. I don’t want any more for the one of the same reasons as Tamerlane – I’ll get bored with them! If they invent some sort of nano-tech tattoo that can change every day, I’ll get another one.
(But I have to keep the one I have. I got it with my sister and she has the same one. Plus it sums up our relationship pretty succinctly, even if she changes favorite colors like underwear).
I just think that they are ugly. And common.
I could probably go back through the thread and cut and paste a whole bunch of the reasons that everybody else has given; but instead, I’ll just say, “What they all said.”
Plus, the idea of making a permanent alteration to my body just creeps me out somehow.
What everybody else said, particularly about the needles and the ouch parts, plus I couldn’t be that vain.
Too permanent. I wouldn’t get a tattoo unless I was absolutely sure that I’d stopped developing as a human being. I like tatts well enough, but I had my older brother as an example of how something that seems kick-ass when you’re twenty can seem embarrassing in a few short years.
The only designs I ever seriously considered seemed relatively unique and “hip” (n a “nerd” kind of way) in the early nineties – but I’m glad that I never got 'em, because they’re already passe.
I’m confident that my tastes and self-identity will change enough in the decades to come that I wouldn’t want to drag around a permanent testiment to their current incarnation on my skin – that sort of stuff is better kept in an album, or sommat. 
Also, I fear spelling errors.
The wife wants one, part of rediscovering life after parenthood. I’m seriously considering getting one at the same time. I think it’s probably a lot like virginity: A biger deal before you cross the line. Both our planned designs have been months in the planning, so I doubt it’s anything we’d regret afterwards.
Pretty much my response too when some friends suggested that we should all get one. I just think they’re gross.
I just have no interest in it.
What everybody else said, except for the pain thing. not that I have a high pain tolerance or anything, but I’m not particularly afraid of needles.
I have my ears pierced three times each. Nowadays I only wear a small hoop in one hole in each one. And I have my nose pierced, for the cultural value. That’s it. I’m done.
I’m not bugged by needles and I think tattoos (can) look very nice. I just know myself well enough to kow that just about anything I think is cool or clever now is going to seem pointless, ridiculous or just embarrassing in five years.
Pretty much my answer.
I think tattoos look fine, even great, on some people. I think I’m not the kind of person it’d look good on; rather, it’d scream “trying way too hard to be hip.” I’m also a major wuss about pain.
I can’t even be bothered to keep my hair dyed often enough to avoid roots showing, or to apply sunscreen as often as I should even though I’ve had a precancerous growth removed from my skin (note that I don’t go out in the sun intentionally, but I am outside about 20 minutes a day while on my commute), so a tattoo would end up being a very expensive and soon ugly and faded money sink for me.
Plus I just don’t care for any kind of physical adornment on my body. I still regret getting my ears pierced when I was a teenager - and the unused holes still haven’t grown shut, for that matter, plus one regularly gets infected.