AWFUL MODS

Submitters comment: This work comes out of this new tattoo/piercing shop that recently opened up in my town. The “artist” that did this tattoo has a portfolio full of tattoos just like it. They don’t charge very much money at all which gets many people to go in and get tattooed by them. I sincerely feel bad for people that don’t know any better and trust that everyone who works in a shop does good work. I know a few people personally that have this kind of work on them from this particular shop.

What’s awful? The placement is terribly off. Even worse, you can tell that the tattooer severely overworked the skin. I would go as far as saying that he tattooed the skin raw. The linework is terrible and the lack of creativity and depth that went into doing this is astounding. The fact that it’s on someones HAND makes it even more outrageous.

How it can be fixed: Laser tattoo removal. People can avoid making this mistake by looking through artist portfolios and doing research before getting tattooed. 

Emily

Scott

Kirsty

Jess

Missdy

Kat

Petra

Source: My personal Youtube channel

My Youtube

Sumbitter’s Comment: This is just a video I made (click the “My Youtube” link to watch) detailing the awful service and advice I recieved in a local piercing place regarding ear stretching.

What’s awful: The girl working there gave me the wrong size tapers, didn’t give accurate or useful advice, and basically just seemed disinterested. The place itself is know for selling tapers and allowing people to give them back to be resold after use. The girl working there also offered to stretch my ears for me, claiming she could go up to SIX sizes in one go. I hope this helps people and that they are a little more wary in the future if they’re buying tapers that they don’t get taken advantage of.

How It Can Be Fixed: Do your research and go to a more reputable piercing studio.

Submitter story: My ex-roommate’s 10 YEAR OLD daughter was all about having her ears ‘gauged’ and was constantly asking me to ‘gauge’ them, since I’ve got mine ‘gauged’ and she thinks it’s cool because all the other kids are doing it. After correcting her several times that it’s called STRETCHING and telling her what a COMMITMENT it is to stretch, she settled on wanting me to buy her those awful fake plugs, which I wouldn’t because they’re AWFUL. A couple days had passed and she brought one of her 12 year old friends over, who also constantly pestered me to ‘gauge’ his ears. He stated he was getting his ears pierced at Claire’s next week and was so stoked on the fact that he’d be able to ‘gauge’ his ears, or so he assumed, in a week. After I informed him how bad it was to get a piercing from anyone that wasn’t a professional, especially with a gun, I also had to tell him several times that firstly, he’s too young and it’s a huge commitment because the larger you go, the less likely it’ll be the lobes will go back to normal size when he decided ‘gauges’ aren’t cool anymore. Secondly, they’re not fuckin GAUGES and thirdly, YOU CAN’T JUST ‘PUSH’ ANY SIZE THROUGH a hole because there is such a thing as tearing and blowing out your ear. He said his older brother had some ‘spikes’, which I’m guessing he was referring to tapers, and that they were about 1/2” (which is what I’m guessing it was by the size he showed with his fingers) and that it should be fine because he has peroxide. At that point my brain was so fried I said I can’t and just walked away.

What’s awful: What ISN’T AWFUL about this!? KIDS that don’t know a damn thing about how to stretch properly or even take care of their ears when stretched.

How it can be fixed: If anyone under the age of 18, hell ANYONE, notices your lobes and want theirs to be stretched, inform them on EVERYTHING you know about stretching properly and hope they don’t just shove any random inanimate object through their lobes. That’s really all you can do. 

When I was 14, I pierced my own lip with a safety pin. Several hours afterwards, I slipped up on hiding it from my mom, and she forced me to take it out. Other than a fat lip for a couple days, I made it out of the ordeal with no problems. It never got infected and it never scared. I’m 18 now, and as dumb as it was, I’m glad I did it because it was an excellent learning experience. I’m a very lucky person; things could have gone so much worse.

WHAT’S AWFUL: The needle was not sterile, nor was it sharp enough or even the correct size. It took me several tries to push the needle all the way through. The initial jewelry was also not sterile. When the externally threaded, purchased-at-Hot-Topic hoop (buckets of yikes…) wouldn’t fit, I ended up putting in a butterfly-backed stud from Claire’s (also yikes…). My placement was also most likely terrible.

HOW IT CAN BE FIXED: At this point, it has been fixed. My wonderful mother forced me to take it out, and I healed up quickly without complications. More importantly, it was a learning experience that fixed my attitude towards modification. Everything I do now I have a professional piercer who follows all the APP guidelines do for me. I have 10 healthy, professionally done piercings, 4 of which (earlobes) are safely and painlessly stretched. All of my jewelry is clean.

In this case, hindsight is very much 20/20. I am in no way advocating self-piercing; just because I didn’t get hurt long-term does not, in any way, mean what I did was safe or smart. It was dumb, it was a mistake, but I learned from it.

When I was 9, I got my ears pierced at Claire’s. They are uneven (the left hole was/is lower than the right) and took about a year to heal because I closely followed their instructions to spin the jewelry. At one point, my right ear decided to “eat” the butterfly back and infection ensued. Neither me or my mother really knew what to do but to put a different earring in and treat the infection with neosporin and keeping it clean.

When I was 13 I got the bright idea to pierce my lip with a safety pin and wear earrings in it. Of course, being 13, my mother would have flipped out if she knew so when I wasn’t at school, I’d flip the earring around so I could easily suck it under my tongue when in her presence then poke it back through when I was alone. This went on for about a year an a half before I moved in with my sister and she didn’t care that my lip was pierced and bought me proper jewelry and made sure I took good care of my piercing. I was EXTREMELY lucky I never got an infection, nerve damage or MRSA and I still have the piercing to this day (with proper jewelry, of course).

When I was 18, I began stretching my ears. I was pretty smart about it for the most part. I always waited two months+ between stretches and never wore tapers as jewelry (only because I was afraid of them catching on clothing or my pillowcase and getting ripped out). When I was 20 I was getting a little too excited and decided to go to 7/16 after only having been at 00g for two weeks because getting to 00g from 0g was so easy. I must have ripped my left earlobe because it hurt like hell and within an hour, it had swollen to twice it’s normal size and it smelled like celery. I didn’t know about blowouts or anything so instead of immediately downsizing, I just babied it. Luckily it healed after about a week and even now there is no visible evidence of a blowout. 4 years later, I’m just now reaching 5/8 because I’ve been terrified of damaging my lobes any further.

Had I had any inkling of an idea of the danger I was putting myself in, I wouldn’t have made any of those dumb decisions. I would have waited until I was old enough to get the piercings done professionally and I would have IMMEDIATELY stopped and possibly downsized when my ear started hurting. I only discovered this blog about 8 months ago but have since realized what a stupid kid I was and I thank the universe nothing bad happened. I’ve learned from my mistakes and I’ve even begun doing serious research on various local piercing shops and even contacting them to ask how much experience they’ve had with the next piercing I plan to get because after this, I never want to end up on this blog again.

I’m so glad I found this blog! I had my ears pierced in September at 14g. Without doing ANY research, I asked for 10g barbells for Christmas and, of course, my mother got them for me. I just popped them in right then and there. It hurt quite a bit, but I didn’t know any better (see the above note about not having done any research). Thankfully I didn’t experience any negative effects from skipping up a few sizes. I realize now that I could have been in for a lot of trouble and that going straight to 10g was a really risky move. I’ve since ordered a stretching kit that includes stainless steel tapers and tunnels in every size, as well as bondage tape and some good oil for my lobes. I have your stretching guide bookmarked—thanks so much for being a great resource for getting mods right. Keep up the good work.

submitting my very very very foolish.. 14/15 year old self (im now 23) i thought i’d be bad ass and cool and pierce my own belly button.. i was a dumb ass. i used one of those nice big thick safety pins.. put it in some rubbing alcohol and away i went through my belly button. positioning was waaaay off too shallow and too high, it lasted about 3 months before it crusted and oozed a greenish puss. 8-9 years later i STILL have a indented scar on my stomach. at 22 i went and got my nose and tongue done professionally, sure they had a 2 for one deal so i got a bit of a deal but it was a well known shop, i’d asked around looked at his portfolio and it all looked good and they healed wonderfully. lesson of the day? DON’T PIERCE YOURSELF!! you dont know what you’re doing even if you think you do

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/s720x720/484433_168419216623487_2044896422_n.jpg

This showed up on my Facebook feed the other day along with her status which read “Sitting here putting Med on the new tat it amazed me that I finally got one not drunk lmao.” She was also quite defensive when on the picture comments, saying that she doesn’t care about anyone else’s opinion and “yes it needs to be touched up but I love it the way it is thanks.” A scratcher friend of hers did it. 

What’s wrong? Really wonky lines, bad shading, and the “18” is going to disappear pretty quickly.

How it can be fixed: Uh, go to a real shop and talk to a professional about getting it fixed. 

SUBMITTER’S COMMENT: I saw this on my facebook feed. Apparently he did this on his own arm, and is VERY proud of it. He also tattoos his friends out of his house for cheap. 

WHAT’S AWFUL: The lines are shaky and uneven, the notes don’t even line up, and in a few places it looks like he messed up and tried to fix it.

Mod comment: Not sourced, but we could help to post this.

the source is me, it’s my story, this is a personal account.

i got my snakebites [i know it’s not the “proper” name for them] pierced at an APP place in hawthorne, called Pleasurable Piercings, the only place associated with APP in a 50mi radius of my town. they’re an awesome place, clean, organized, the piercers are awesome and fun to talk to, and great at what they do. they were even friendly enough to accept my friends’ and my request on Facebook after we had good conversations with them. they gave me labret studs as initial jewelry, the usual.
about three weeks later, one of the backs fell off, and i lost it trying to get it back on. so, temporarily, i got new stainless steel circular barbells for both of them, not from a /chain/ place, i don’t remember the name. then, a ball from each of them fell off, and i was like well, shit. i was at the mall so i said “yolo” and got hot topic rings for them VERY temporarily, for about an hour, until i was able to get to a piercing place close by to me. i got there, at a place called Lola’s, and explained to the guy what had happened. i also tried to explain to him that i research body modifications, and i knew hot topic sucked, everything else, etc., but he gave me such attitude and treated me like shit. i was gonna assume he’d give me labret studs since it still wasn’t fully healed, but he gave me captive hoops, saying he’d feel more “comfortable” with those instead of labret studs. not only that, he was getting the jewelry out of a dirty-looking plastic case with his bare hands, and then put the jewelry into a cup, sprayed saline on them, made me gargle mouthwash, put on gloves, and put them in. i don’t think they were autoclaved, and even if they were, they’d be in a packet, and he had his bare hands all over them! i’m never going here again, for anything. they were rude, and very unprofessional. 

…asked me to pierce her ear. Yes, I know. Horrifying.

I wrote a 10-page paper on the dangers of piercing guns (because I’m cool like that) towards the beginning of the year, and my professor came to me one day and told me this story—she said she was at Claire’s, ready to get her third hole repierced, but remembered my paper at the last minute and decided not to. I was so very proud of her, that is until she asked me to pierce her ear for her :I 

I’m not licensed to pierce, as you might have guessed, so I politely declined to do so. I gave her my piercer’s card (which I carry around with me for situations such as) and told her that he did a first rate job. She went on to fry my brain with questions such as “Will he give me a discount if I bring my own jewelry? Don’t worry, it’s silver,” and “Can I still use the Claire’s antiseptic to clean it?”

Her ears were in quite a state, by the way. REALLY bad cheese-cutting going on with her first piercings, to where you could probably fit like a 4g something in there. She only wore jewelry in her second holes, and it’s my understanding that her thirds got yanked or something.

Anyway. Just thought you guys might get a kick out of that. :p

I’m not sure how it was broadcast across the world apart from in England and France, but what did you think about it? Personally, I was quite impressed with my silly little country, but what did you think?