Bluey fan outrages parents with 'cringe' tattoo request: 'Just so unhinged'

Bluey will go down in Aussie pop culture lore as one of the most successful shows of all time - not to mention one of the most emotional. Kids love it, adults love it, and moody teens probably love it but we can't know for sure seeing as they would never admit it.

The animated series is not just a smash hit here in Oz, either. It's got a cult international following that has seen fans on Reddit, Facebook, X and Insta all singing its praises and sharing what the show means to them.

Several fans have shown their appreciation for the Heeler family with tattoos over the years, but one fan has got the internet in an uproar after providing some very specific instructions in relation to his Bluey ink - which some people are speculating isn't even real (more on that later).

Tattoo controversy starts on social media

The photo of the tattoo was originally shared on X but was later shared by someone else with a Bluey fan group where it drew over 1000 comments. The tattoo is of Bluey in her signature excited jump pose from the opening credits and she appears to be emerging from a red flower.

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The owner of the alleged tatt wrote on X that it had "hurt like hell" but was "healing like heaven" and I can't help but feel disappointed that he didn't spell it "Heeling", tbh.

However, it all took an odd twist when he continued his caption with the following order:

"But... to any breeders out there, please stop your little seed spawns from talking to me about it? it's giving me the ick."

Bluey fans slam comment about 'breeders'

The supposed fan received a decent amount of backlash under his original post on X, but once it was posted to the Bluey fan group, things really got heated.

"I want kids to stop noticing my tattoo of a children’s cartoon character," one person scoffed in the comment section.

"How can I get attention while also being a complete tool??” I got it!!," another mocked.

"Someone tell OOP that he's entitled to a child-free LIFE, not a child-free world," said a third.

'That entire thing was gross'

Several of the comments also described the post as "yucky" or "cringe" due to the language used by the poster.

"I think referring to people as 'breeders' is more 'ick' than a child approaching someone who tattooed a child's cartoon character on a very obvious spot but...yeah...okay...," one person said.

"That's a wild thing to think - even wilder to say online. I'll agree that's cringe," another added.

"I went from "awh" 😊😊 to "oh"😧😧," someone else added.

"That entire thing was gross. And yes I'm aware it was supposed to be funny. It wasn't," added another.

Permanent ink or pointless rage bait?

Amongst all of the comments that expressed offence and incredulity at the request of the tatted fan, many others were sceptical that the ink wasn't even real and that the poster had used a bit of AI trickery and an Etsy sticker to get some attention and rile up some Bluey fans.

"Man the Internet and AI has me questioning if this tattoo is even real or just shopped to look real and captioned with rage bait to divide us. Not from op [original poster] but whoever originally created it. It's just so unhinged," was one comment.

"That would be a lot of work just to spread hate. People have too much time on their hands," added another person.

"I was sitting here thinking it didn't even look like a real tattoo," a third person said.

"The caption has gotta be rage bait. They can't really be serious," yet another said.

So, was it even a real tattoo?

Speaking to Yahoo Lifestyle, Dr TJ Thomson - a visual communications expert and Senior Lecturer at RMIT - said, "One of the first things to do when you’re uncertain about the context of an image is to run it through a reverse-image search to see where else it might have been published online. Doing so with this image reveals that an identical copy was shared about three years ago, in September 2021, so this suggests that @josiahhughes’s claim last month that the tattoo is his and is new is false."

Indeed, the exact photo was shared by someone in the UK who said that they had gotten the fresh ink at a place called Season One Tattoo.

As for the suspicion that the rage baiter had used AI, TJ says it's unlikely.

"Generative AI through generative adversarial networks has been around for about a decade but it’s only within the last 18 months or so that it has become sophisticated enough to produce photorealistic outputs with high fidelity," he says. "Given this, it is unlikely that AI was used to create the tattoo image, as some users on X suggested."

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Perhaps the whole (seemingly pointless) debate was best summed up by the Bluey fan who wrote this: "That would be a lot of work just to spread hate. People have too much time on their hands."

Amen.

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