I feel like a broken record

I know I keep saying this over and over, but I really really want to emphasize that people should strongly consider being more discrete about the source of their heavy mods (tongue splitting, implants, subincision, hood splitting, and so on). Every update I get photos that could in theory get people tossed in prison. I know everyone wants their credit and their name, but please realize: in most areas these activities are illegal.

Time has shown that if a practitioner maintains a low profile, the authorities tend to leave them alone, but they will be forced to prosecute you if you show up too much in the media (including BME) by name, or have someone walk into a hospital (and that happens to even the best eventually).

In the olden days, practitioners tended to be word-of-mouth and did no advertising and made very sure that their name never hit the public. If someone wanted to get in touch with them, former clients would act as stage one “screeners”, keeping away both fools and feds. That is, the practitioner is unknown, but the client is not. If someone wants a subincision, they track down a client, and get a referral. This protects the practitioner without making the work inaccessible.

The fact is that if you do good work you'll become well known in the subculture even without ever speaking your name in public. When you speak your name publicly, you face becoming well known in the mainstream, and that's when the whims of the mainstream start to put you at risk. All it takes is the wrong doctor or politician seeing it, and suddenly two hundred practitioners are arrested with a rock-solid case against them.

I'm not removing names if people insist on them being included, but I really would strongly urge people to consider the needless risk they may be putting themselves at when their name is emblazoned in public. We may well be criminals in the eyes of the law — in that case, best not to advertise our crimes!

Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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