“Yeah sex is great but Fortnite” – a funny meme, possibly, but would you will have it permanently inked in your skin? For some, the reply is a resounding yes. Because, despite being raised on Kim Kardashian’s forewarning words, ‘you wouldn’t put a bumper sticker on a Bentley’, Gen Z are one in all the most inked generations. And in contrast to the earnest and symbolic designs favoured by Millennials – infinity signs, plant pots, love hearts etc – they’re taking a more ironic approach to their ink, with tattoos that seem like memes lifted straight off your Instagram grid.

The brainchild of brain rot, ironic tattoos resemble the relics of 2009 memes and shitposting spiel you’d find on inactive Reddit threads. Think: the other way up Nike swooshes on forearms, “Berlinciaga” on backs, and Hello Kitties wielding machine guns. They’re birthed from a chronically digital upbringing that has landed Gen Z with a meta-ironic web persona and an absurdist, self-referential variety of humour. One which’s been slowly making its way out of our feeds and into the streets, first through fashion and now onto our skin.

LA-based tattoo artist, Tyler Fertig-Smith was raised on the web. He lists his inspirations as meme culture, movies, Mid-Western mom decor and Y2K older brother nostalgia. “Irony is my best friend in the intervening time,” he tells Dazed. With a portfolio of designs that include a Mr Worldwide Pitbull chest piece, the word ‘ketamine’ over top of a silhouette of a horse, and a fillet minion, he says he at all times tries to push the boundaries. “Hopefully I can stir a visceral response in my audience whether good or cringe.”

Public reactions to those ironic ink are vast, varied and, indeed, at all times strong. “Once I meet people on the road or in my studio it’s normally at all times love, we laugh. More often than not they show me a funny tattoo they’ve hidden on the thigh or upper arm,” says Fertig-Smith. Online, nonetheless, responses could be more polarised, with comment sections hosting rage-induced outcries and disgust wedged between booking requests and adoration.

The negative feedback is, if anything, pushing the designs to be more extreme, nonetheless. Amongst the community of tattooers who take part in this style, the web echo chamber of irony drives competition, with each tattoo endeavouring to be crazier than the last. “The algorithm very much favours shock value,” says Nikolaj, a tattoo artist based in Denmark whose designs range from a fragile kitten neck piece to a Vetements ass tattoo. For his viral Berlinciaga back tattoo, he says he selected an unappealing color and intentionally did the lines horribly “to piss off people.” “I also think seeing all this crazy shit online kinda desensitises us to more crazy shit,” he adds.

Nevertheless it’s not only that we’ve develop into desensitised to those designs. Post-ironic tattoos represent a way of disillusionment and pessimism amongst young people. “If I need a care bear tattoo on my leg, what’s stopping me? Society? We’re all screwed anyway, have you ever seen the housing market?” says Fertig-Smith. His mindset reflects a wider inherent nihilism that plagues a generation who got here of age in a recession, a pandemic and the throes of political turmoil. This coupled with the chronically online upbringing has left a generation with a more lax attitude towards body modification. Perceptions of their bodies have developed in online environments where self-expression is widely known not demonised and because of this, individuals may even see their body art as a mirrored image of their evolving identities fairly than a hard and fast representation.

Ironic tattoos often hold little meaning. “I don’t plan my tattoos almost in any respect, I prefer to walk into the shop with the littlest plan possible and just go along with the vibe,” says Logan from Michigan. Though his ink, which incorporates Dr Phil as an M&M on his arm and a cat with a wizard hat, is usually entirely devoid of meaning, he is definite that he won’t regret them. As is Fertig-Smith who gets asked “on a regular basis” whether he thinks he’ll in some unspecified time in the future regret tattoos just like the Fortnite logo he has tattooed on one side of his head, the INCEL (web celebrity) tattoo on the opposite, and a 12” Rodrick from Diary of a Wimpy Kid on his forearm. “No, but I’m sure as I become old and my art changes my tattoos will as well and I’ll just blast over it with something else to proceed expressing myself,” he says.

But simply because some tattoos might look post-ironic and meaningless from the skin, doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t hold some sentimentality. While Logan’s back piece of a horse with the words, “Live like someone left the gate open,” might look like the standard ironic meme tattoo, there’s a small element of earnest emotion. “I got here across a photograph of my girlfriend’s mother from about 15 years ago who actually was wearing a shirt that had this exact saying, ‘Live like someone left the gate open’ on it and in memory of her and the hilarity of it I made a decision to get it.”