Motivation for extreme body modification

Support
1

Hi there,

I need help for the study of my master’s thesis and asking you to participate!
It is about different motivations for extreme body modifications (like scarification, branding, cutting etc.), but also for biohacks. Everyone with or without extreme or rather “usual” body modifications can join!
It is an online questionnaire, which takes about 30 minutes. You can also start and stop the questionnaire and continue another time by reopening the link on the same device! It is important that you finish the questionnaire, otherwise I can’t use the data.
Here is the link: Umfrage

I hope that you join and help me out to get a good sample and findings for the thesis.
Thanks in advance!
Fiona :slight_smile:
(26 year old student from germany, also modified myself)

1 Like
2

i couldent finish it

it wants me to check a lot of stuff about tattoo removal, i never got any tattoo removal - not checking it is not possible and checking something wrong seems not the right way

also some of the questions seem very “generic” and are not really easy to answer - but the thing that annoyd me the most was that you couldent just not check boxes.

so people that never had any tattoo removal for example are forced to lie or dont finish the questions^

4

Hey, do you really need current place of residence? Also there seemed to be some repeated questions, and the text length restrictions on some of the boxes were an issue (and I only have 2 implants in me + 2 to be installed, some people have 20+)

1 Like
5

yes i got it - i thought i have clicked no on the tattoo one but still got the questions - i have used the german version.

let me try again :smiley:

6

lol - i just saw that its from

grafik

Thats the professional payd murdererers of germany^

(everytime i see bundeswehr i go like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA) :smiley:

10

More than happy to give suburb / town / country, just not street etc. :rofl:

2 Likes
11

I think this is something @coma may be interested in

:speaking_head: :loudspeaker: @Coma

2 Likes
12

No worries, we definitely didn’t mean that! I change that in the description as a hint - thank!

1 Like
13

I definitely was, thanks for calling :wink:
Though, @FionaF , the questionnaire was pretty dubious in several cases… (used the german version as well, so I might translate not-so-literally here)

The reasons for modding were insanely superficial, I think… no, I don’t want to “feel unique”, I know I am, like every living being. I don’t want to “feel special”, I know I am. I don’t want to differentiate / distinguish from others, I do anyway.
Or the point “I think bodymodifications look good” - well, I obviously think that, but that’s not the reason I did them at all. As well as the point “because I think it is art”. I think it is, but that’s not the reason for doing it. None of the reasons you stated applied to me.

Later, you asked if I think it is dangerous to get piercings, tattoos or bodmods done - without any clarifying, if you’re adressing professionally made mods of selfmade stuff. Well, pretty hard to say, that way…
Same with the questions about spreading diseases, and especially the point “are the places and instruments always safe and hygienic” - are you asking about the places I visit, the places I know or all places worldwide? :flushed:

The bodies, where I should mark where my piercings etc. are, are incredibly unsuitable for piercings… you know that tons of piercings are in the facial area, and there is exactly one number covering them all, while I could possibly say I have a piercing in my toe with those pictures? That doesn’t look professional at all.

With the removal-topic (yep, I had several piercings removed), you state a lot of - sorry - superficial reasons for removing piercings (like no longer belonging to a special group or to get better chances at a job or because “I no longer have to impress someone” - goddamn, that’s biased!), but not the easiest and probably most common reason - things growing out. And having to take them out for operations was missing as well, so I couldn’t state any reason for removing my piercings.

Last thing, you asked for my sexual orientation - why does that have any thing to do with that topic?
And you asked if I practice any sexual practices like “injuries” (hell, what practice is that???) or “sado-masochistic” (correct term in any close-to-scientific field should be BDSM, I would have ticked that box, but I don’t feel sadistic, so the former one doesn’t apply…).

So all in all, this looks like a very superficial view on that topic. I would happily tell you all of the various reasons for getting modded, since this is a topic close to my heart, but this questionnaire is just… lacking, at best. Sorry, not meaning to be rude, but that’s just going in the direction of every yellow-press-y text about bodmods. edit: and yep, that triggers me… I am aware of that :smile:

1 Like
15

yeaaaah… that’s kinda obvious! :wink:
Just kidding, people without mods can ask great questions as well.
Thing is, if you’re having very visible mods and a bit more unusual stuff as well, those are the exact questions you get asked on a regular base by people having no clue about it all.
“Do you think you look special that way? Do you want to stand out? Do you love pain? Didn’t you think about how ugly your tattoo will be when you grow old? Ah come on, you just do it to be cool!”. All that stuff, every time… it gets annoying after a while, especially if people don’t ask out of curiosity (and to actually get answers) but just to state their own prejudices. And it’s always those questions, so they kinda trigger me.
And the answers you possibly get are not very helpful that way - I actually couldn’t tick any box for “strongly agree” for the reasons for modding, but just lots of “don’t agree at all”.

That’s a good idea, I think. And in the existing textfields, it would be really nice to be able to use punctuations - I tried to list my implants, and it reads like I was a moron because I had to do it without commas! :stuck_out_tongue:

First advice for the guys who made this questionnaire - don’t be guided by your own prejudices! :wink:
Especially the reasons for modding vary wildly, so it might be better (though a lot more work, I know) to use only a textfield for that - “state the reasons why you decided to get this or that modification”. The reasons vary a lot for every mod, at least for myself.

Yep, this looks far too much like “oh, those strange people with tons of mods will surely be insanely exotic in their bedrooms as well”. There might be some correlation, of course, and I’m totally okay with talking about any sexual activities, I just don’t think there is much causality, and I don’t want it to look like there is.

1 Like
17

Would you tell me maybe? I could use your statement in the discussion to question the way of research in this field, to question this questionnaire and maybe propose a solution for further research?

18

All I thought of when I read that was Bielefeld…

1 Like
19

Sure - if you like to, you can send me a message here, and we can talk that through in german as well :wink:

Doesn’t exist.
:stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
20

As a scientist, I would say that this is wrong.

Science should be about developing a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test that hypothesis, conducting that experiment and then using your results to refine your hypothesis.

Asking the same, badly worded, questions as everyone else, gets you the same inaccurate answers.

I guess I should go and complete your survey to see what I make of my answers.

2 Likes
22

Enjoy my answers. I am unmodified yet, am in my 50s, and wonder what you consider “old”.

The motivation questions seem to be geared towards three reasons, “it’s fashionable”, “peer pressure” or “to be different”. You could even argue that fashion and peer pressure are related.

Given the quality of the questions can I assume that this is a study in Confirmation Bias in surveys?

1 Like
23

I’m always a bit surprised about that one - getting piercings and stuff “to be different”. One could assume that you have to be a bit “different” already to consider getting bodymods :wink:
One friend of mine said that mods are a way to express what’s already inside you, and another one said that he just drives away those people with his looks whom he wouldn’t like to have around anyway, because they wouldn’t like his mind / personality as well.
I think both are quite right :wink:

3 Likes
24

But I don’t have any, so that makes me “Different” from most of the people here.

I like the looks of some modifications I have seen, but not all. I haven’t had a tattoo yet simply because I am not sure what I would have tattooed or where.

As for the questions like “Are the places that do any of these things unsanitary” I know that there are places that are (Amal has posted a video of someone performing an implant while being sloppy with cross contamination). That doesn’t mean that I would go to anywhere that did not appear sanitary.

25

Are you thinking about getting an implant, @Zwack ? I’m honestly kind of surprised you’ve lasted this long. People don’t hang around in this crowd very long before they start getting stabbed.

6 Likes
26

I can’t get “stabbed” in Oregon.

It’s also something I am still unsure about. The Vivokey Apex is interesting.

As for why I am still hanging out here it is because it seems like a nice community. I am interested in the technology. I am not sure I have a use case for an implant at the moment.

1 Like
27

I’m pretty confident tons of people are getting bodymods in Oregon (there’s a reason it’s a grey market) but yeah if you don’t want to dive in then that’s totally fair. Everybody is welcome here. I was just curious