Why are body modifications always towards the nasty side?
Yada yada yada I was looking at penis bifurcation and lots of weird shit came up. Sure there was a picture of a bifurcation. But there were pictures of people who have ruined their faces by inserting bearings, cutting and tattooing all sorts of weird things.
I saw an interesting one where a guy had a ring with the hole pointing vertically right through the penis. And it made me think...hmmm bifurcation and this ring thing are actually pretty mild compared to the other weird mods to the face.
And practically none of the mods are actually making the person better looking. In my biased point of view, where I don't actually have any mods of my own or want any. But wouldn't it be cool to make useful mods?
Like chop off your pinky fingers and re-attach them on either side of your mouth. I can see how that would be useful for eating. Ants and other bugs have something like that. But could it be done in a faithful to normalcy way? Minimize scars, make the fingers actually connected and functional via neurosurgery and motion therapy. Don't tattoo fangs and such.
But okay let's say you had an accident and your pinky fingers fell off..why waste the opportunity? Okay so your entire arm got chopped off, you got no shoulders anymore, why not keep the arm by attaching it to your back? Or maybe it's attached to your hip bone and points up... Or down as a third leg!
And again we are talking functional and normal looking mods. Why not? Why does it have to be weird dragon face?
I recently saw a cool mod where if you loose your leg they re attach your foot as a knee. That's what I'm talking about here. I've seen some people from India who've had their fingers chopped and they get a toe reattach and functional as fingers.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some of the things you describe turn my stomach too. But it’s not my place, or yours, to decide for everyone else what’s “nasty” or “normal” or “acceptable”.
Body mods that look good in the traditional sense are generally called plastic/cosmetic surgery. Breast implants, face lifts, hair implants, etc. are the same idea as body mods, just with the goal of achieving a more mainstream idea of beauty.
Haven't you ever heard of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? Some people love the look and get laid. You also don't get mods to make yourself look better, you do it because YOU like it, simple.
I recently saw a cool mod where if you loose your leg they re attach your foot as a knee. That's what I'm talking about here. I've seen some people from India who've had their fingers chopped and they get a toe reattach and functional as fingers.
That's not really body modification. I mean, sure in the strictest definition of those words, but that's just medical science repairing damage as best they can, using cutting edge techniques.
Piercings, tattoos, tongue splitting, cornea dying, shoving ball bearings under the skin... That's body modification. I agree with you that it's not attractive a lot of the time but that's just my opinion; I'm sure others find it very attractive. I am waiting for the day I can replace parts with better, stronger, faster robotic parts or add more useful functionality to my body with cybernetic body modification. We're not quite there yet, though.
Op: {Searches for weird things people do to themselves.}
Op: {Gets confused why other weird things people do to themselves comes up in the search}
(edit because apparently I triggered some weird markdown. Also... I get it, it's not weird to people who have it done, and I'm not trying to judge, but yeah. getting your penis split in half... is not exactly normie behavior.)
what you are proposing isn't really reasonable. Your pinkies work because of huge tendons that start up at your shoulders and require muscles and leverage to operate, they aren't just individual little sticks you can sew on anywhere and have them function. You would have to have paths for all the tendons to follow somehow buried in the muscles of your face and then figure out what back or chest muscles to attach them to to make them functional, a ridiculous amount of surgery in life critical areas.
Chopping a hole in a little meat or stuffing a ball bearing under some skin is trivial by comparison.
If you are really interested in this subject look up transhumanism and you'll find folks doing more 'useful' body mods. People who have embedded neodymium batteries in the fingertips claim it gives them an extra sense after adjusting to it, as an example.
I second whoever said body modification aiming towards standard beauty is called plastic or cosmetic surgery.
As for piercings and the more fringe stuff you mentioned, there are many reasons. Some people like the look of a lot of piercings, but many do it because of how it feels (especially in genitals, mouths and nipples) and not so much to achieve aesthetic beauty. Others like it because they find it fascinating, not necessarily beautiful but instead so exciting or interesting that they prefer it over vanilla or standard.
A useful mod? Get a battery pack inside your arm, with a couple of usb port openings neatly located on the skin. Use one to recharge your phone, or use the other one to recharge the battery pack itself while working at your desk.