make it stop wrote:
Why are middle-class white people getting more tattoos than a Russian gangster?
Why is this happening?
On tattoos: It's a reflection of our decaying civilization's continuing decline into tribalism. As the financial elite have hollowed out the middle class, these white people you observe are now, economically speaking, much closer than ever before to the lower classes: gangsters, hustlers, sailors, prostitutes, etc.
They are distracted by television and the internet, but their sub-conscious knows they are the first American generation in quite some time (ever??) who will have it worse than their parents. So they stoop to self-mutilation and degradation. Result: tattoos everywhere.
The beard thing: similar to the economic reasons noted above for tattoos--because they sub-consciously know their prospects are worse than their parents' (and with the looming Trans-Pacific agreement, about to get worse) the ironic facial hair becomes a defense mechanism against looming socio-economic failure. When the failure inevitably comes, they get to say, " welp, it was all a big joke anyway. Hell, I went around with that ridiculous beard, I wasn't trying my best."
The beards are not as tragic as the tattoos because they are not as permanent, but they come from the same mental space.
To actually try one's hardest--i.e. not disgracing one's body with tattoos and jokey facial hair--and to still suffer failure would be too mentally crushing.
As runners, we should be familiar with this phenomenon, as encountered by idiots who run races in costumes--"ya I ran a 50 minute 10k, but I was in a costume, so it's funny!"
The tattoo/beard thing is the same thing, just applied to life in general.