I don’t think I’m ever going to get a tramp stamp. I might get a tattoo somewhere else, but even then, only if I ever find a design I want for at least a year without changing my mind. (Currently, we’re at American flag where the stars section is an Israeli flag and there’s a silhouette of a girl in jade split on the flagpole.)
But the thing is, I don’t really need a tramp stamp. The only thing they’re really good for is commemorating your formerly questionable judgement, and I already do that right here on the Rib. Yes, that’s right. The Rib is my de facto tramp stamp.
I’ve been writing for the Rib for almost a year now, and I’ve spilled a lot of regrettably personal information on here. My first post outed me as an aggressive Facebook stalker, and since then I’ve boasted about my unhealthy obsession with Miranda Lambert, paraded my worst habits for everyone to see, exposed my unmatched levels of narcissism, and, maybe worst of all, claimed to be the one and only Lorne Michaels. Then I wrote down the URL of that post and gave it to the actual Lorne Michaels. And then I refused to shut up about it for 600 years.
I, as a whole, try to live without regrets. But when I put something on the internet – something I usually procrastinate on and end up less than proud of – it’s there forever. No regrets is easy when even your biggest mistakes can be fixed with time, but the cool thing about the internet is that it doesn’t give a shit about time. Even when something’s removed from the actual web, everything is archived!! Ever heard of the Wayback Machine? The fact that everything on the internet stays on the internet means that even a few months from now, when Trump outlaws education and Brown has to shut down and this site gets removed because we’ve stopped paying for the domain, evidence of my shitty personality will still be around!! My shitty personality will outlast legal education, you guys. Isn’t that terrifying? It’s terrifying.
So who needs a tramp stamp that tells people, “I made a bad choice one time,” when you can have a website that tells people, “I made a bad choice all the times”? Anyway. Hopefully this will motivate me to be a better person. There are only so many designs you can doodle onto your lower backside before they turn into an incoherent blob.
Images via Annie Warner, via.