Six months after I got my Ephemeral, a latest brand of tattoo that was designed to vanish in nine to fifteen months, it began fading. After which, the fading just type of stopped. It’s been 25 months since I showed up on the brick-and-mortar shop in Williamsburg and got a Joan Miró monster on my left bicep, and a yr past its expiration date I’m still taking a look at a splotchy, faint outline. Some lines are nearly gone, while others remain darker and more defined, and I’m left with little hope or guidance for the remaining of the method.

After I first got my tattoo, I used to be excited to clarify Ephemeral to some sceptical but mostly intrigued admirers of the concept: the tattoo that disappears. But because the fading has been awkward and inconsistent, I grew exhausted and embarrassed when asked what happened to my tattoo, deciding on a curt response of “it’s identical to that.” 

I’m not alone. On each TikTok and Reddit, you’ll find people bemoaning their long Ephemeral fades. After I got my Ephemeral in March 2021 the projected fade time for the tattoo was one yr, but the corporate has since released a latest statement that 30 per cent of tattoos will last more than one yr (that’s one in three tattoos).

Miho Common, 26, wanted an Ephemeral tattoo “in an obvious place and a design [she] didn’t must think an excessive amount of about given the temporary nature”. 22 months later she’s annoyed it looks like “the photos they used to point out” a five-month fade. “I didn’t commit to this a few years,” she says, “but I’m also not upset about it, since I do know it’s going to go away sooner or later.”

Dan Bernstein, co-founder of superfood retailer We Are The Latest Farmers, has similar feelings. His Ephemeral is an illustration of what microalgae appear like under a microscope, and he got it for work 15 months ago. “I don’t regret it so long as it does eventually disappear”. He thinks he probably has a yr until it’s fully gone, though he’s not tracking the fade as much as his mother is.

After I first spoke to Ephemeral cofounder Josh Sakhai, two years ago, he was emphatic in regards to the ink that chemical engineers, Brennal Pierre and Vandan Shah, had spent six years researching and developing: “50 plus iterations, 200 plus tattoos, and eventually, it looks like we’ve created something the world will really love.” 40 of those tattoos were on himself, 20 on CEO and Tesla alum Jeff Liu, and the remaining on the small team who took the brunt of the testing, which seems to be a really small “clinical trial”.

In an email with regard to this piece, Dr Brennal Pierre told me the longest fade that they had of their research and development was 24 months and that they didn’t find yourself using this ink formula for purchasers, nevertheless, on a Reddit thread Pierre mentions that very same tattoo taking 30 months to fade. Further vagaries persist of their messaging. Pierre wrote the ink comprises “bioabsorbable polymers the ink breaks down over time into sufficiently small sizes on your body’s immune system to remove.” While among the components of the ink break down on their very own, others “are removed by the body naturally through excretion.” Dr Jesse Boumhela, an immunologist at Mt. Sinai, points out to Dazed that if Ephemeral relies not on the product to vanish but our own body’s mechanisms to vanish it, namely the immune system which is a mystic web of its own, “it makes it hard to invest why it’s taking longer in some people.”

Disappearance is a tough thing for a tech company to sell. When the online surfaced within the 90s it enticed users with the premise of impermanence and anonymity. Even today, social media’s hottest functions centre around the thought of an ephemeral presence: Instagram Stories, Snapchat, a swipe left on a dating app. As more of our lives moved online, our web presence – our data – garnered market value, and our anonymity was not profitable for tech giants. Suddenly, every second we spent online was surveilled.

The Ephemeral tattoo was sold with the logic of early web naivete; the need for impermanence, of with the ability to chop and alter our appearances (and, by extension, our selves). Ephemeral marketed its business to the extremely online, promoting itself through influencers and online journalists like me. They offered those outside of the traditionally counter-culture tattoo world a temporary buy-in, a possibility to go to and see the way it feels. A slogan on the web site even reads “own what you’re not.” The opposite language is that of social justice movements, to make their target market of young Instagram users much more explicit: “move away from binary boundaries”, “take control of your identity”, “break down barriers”, “stand for self-expression.” Meanwhile, they raised thousands and thousands in funding from Techstar, whose other investments include a polygraph detector app developed by an Israeli security company.

Ephemeral’s slogan is “Regret Nothing”, nodding to people’s lifelong tattoo regrets. While I’m sure some individuals with Ephemeral tattoos do have regrets (one Instagram commenter calling mine a “dickhead fish with a watch within the asshole” actually raised some concerns), I’m wondering what the corporate’s are. Investing 27 million dollars into opening eight shops across the country and never into more research on their product? Flying too near the industry disruptor sun?

Hopefully, my tattoo goes away soon. Unsurprising, this whole process has put me off the thought of getting a everlasting one. At the very least with Ephemeral, it’s a reasonably nice feeling to realize it won’t be there ceaselessly, and three years is nothing in comparison with a complete lifetime (or excruciatingly painful tattoo removal). I suppose this experience has jogged my memory to yield more caution with regards to my body – and that it truly is inconceivable to “regret nothing”.

Join Dazed Club and be a part of our world! You get exclusive access to events, parties, festivals and our editors, in addition to a free subscription to Dazed for a yr. Join for £5/month today.