Sean has done two “big” things while on YouTube that have changed his appearance, besides aging and changing his facial hair: dying his hair green and getting a tattoo. 

Him dying his hair was a few months before my time, so I don’t have a good understanding of how people really reacted back then, but if it’s anything like how some people are reacting to the tattoo, then…

It’s his body.

And the response to that is probably, “[insert obvious statement about the permanence of tattoos; personal opinion on the aesthetics of them, or lack thereof; probable, but not likely at a well-established and professional parlor, health risks that are present when getting a tattoo; and, my personal favorite, some ignorant comment about ‘the kinds of people that have tattoos’]”

Stop. 

He’s 26 years old and knows to think something like this through thoroughly. Also, don’t stereotype people based on how they look. Come on now.

I get it, this can happen sometimes: we have an image of how someone looks in our minds, and a lot of the time it’s associated, consciously or subconsciously, with certain feelings and personality traits that were present at the time we formed that image (thinking that the person is the way they are or we feel the way we feel about that person BECAUSE of how they look), so when that person deviates from that look we’ve ingrained in our minds, it can feel like they are also leaving behind that previous persona and becoming someone else and our feelings towards them are no longer supported. 

But that’s not the case. 

Dying his hair doesn’t get rid of his humility, and getting a tattoo doesn’t change his character. Those types of things change how you look, not who you are.

The only person this truly affects is Sean. It’s on his skin. It does absolutely nothing to anyone else, how could it. It’s ink. 

Let him do what he wants to his body. His views on the matter don’t have to line up with anyone else’s, and you can’t force his to realign with yours.

If you think that this is a sign of him “changing”, rethink your definition of that word because most people use it incorrectly and just throw it around. First, people are always changing, that’s life. And second, just because you may have heard about the tattoo recently doesn’t mean he only recently started thinking about getting one. His thoughts may have “changed” to you, but to him, it’s something that was a long time coming. You didn’t know that because you aren’t in his head. 

Let him enjoy his snazzy tattoo. Please.

(FYI: I love the tattoo personally. It’s a really cool design, and I like the placement, but even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered…because he loves it.)