Every Bad Tattoo Has a Silver Lining (or an ICP Logo)

April 29, 2013— -- intro: Anyone who has a tattoo can attest to the fact that there's a weird little shuffle, etiquette-wise, that takes place when sporting an image that can be both highly personal and very public. You'll get asked "what does it mean?" or sometimes even "what is it?" more often than you care to answer, or you'll end up hearing all about how someone's friend's cousin's boss' sister happens to have the same tattoo that you do.

And then, of course, there are the people who feel completely OK critiquing the marks and designs you paid to have permanently inked into your body, letting you know that they don't like it or would change a few things about it.

So let's take a moment and celebrate some objectively "bad" body art that also happens to be great. There's always a little bit of awesome, you just have to search a little harder sometimes. So we went through Reddit looking for posts about the "worst tattoo ever" and tried to see the good in them. Here we go...

quicklist: 1title: Nickelback. Twice.text: I mean, really. Who cares if your musical tastes will eventually change between 1994 and 2008 -- at least you'll always have a souvenir of those fun times you had at the Gwen Stafani concerts in '05 and '07. No idea who she is, but we trust that she puts on an amazing show. Also, as one Redditor put it, "Pretty epic if its a list of 'people I've had sex with'." True. Ish.

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quicklist: 2title: CTRL+ALT+DELtext: Look, if you love restarting computers, we don't judge. Love is good. Love sustains. Love heals. Love creates anew. We must all love something.

(I love hate.)

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quicklist: 3 title: Fanilytext: What's more important than Family? Absolutely nothing. And we're sure lots of people have family-inspired tattoos -- portraits of their parents, their spouse's initials, their kids' birthdays. This is just a more literal version of those, and we can respect that.

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quicklist: 4title: Fun.text: It's positive. And uplifting. And colorful. And Fun. But dumb (slash phenomenal) jokes aside, it must be really nice to identify so strongly with a lyric that you want to see it every single day of your life, even while, like. Tying your shoes. Or getting change for a dollar. Or performing any of various adult activities.

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quicklist: 5title: Faygoing text: By worst tattoo, Redditor, did you mean best? People tend to forget that some fandoms are more than just about liking a particular show or band. Juggalo isn't just a group of people with a similar interest, it's a lifestyle. And this woman understands that. She's living her life and adorning her body with the images and symbols that not only mean something to her, but that are already part of her daily life.

Also, points for matching your ink to your bra straps. If my tattoos were in color, I'd be all about that.

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