Millennial Man Gets Wife to Tattoo Him, No One Can Believe Result

A man has gone viral for showing off a tattoo with a joke that has no “meaning,” only for viewers to find a wholesome meaning behind it.

Tattoo artist Alissa showed off her husband Shawn’s new tattoo on her TikTok page, @alissajungink, along with the quote: “Tattoos are permanent. They should have meaning.”

She then zoomed in to Shawn’s fresh ink, introducing “my husband” and revealing his new tattoo was of a cartoon from an IKEA building guide.

The cartoon, which warns customers their item should be built with two people, shows a sad-looking figure looking at the disassembled piece of furniture, with an X over him, followed by two smiling figures ready to get to work together on the furniture.

Alissa, 34, who owns the Seattle tattoo studio At The Waverly, told Newsweek that despite the humorous introduction, her husband’s tattoo does, in fact, have a sweet meaning behind it.

“When we were dating, we were long distance after he moved to L.A. to pursue animation, and I was in Chicago at the time,” she said of her husband, also 34, who is a senior animator at a game studio in Seattle.

“He would always send me the photo of the instruction with the two people, the tattoo, wishing I was there to help,” she said, adding it became an “inside joke.”

“After starting my business, my husband built a lot of the furniture for me—which a lot were from IKEA—so I told him I’d give him a tattoo after he built it.

Shawn had “always said he wanted it tattooed, and now that I’m a tattoo artist, it was only fitting for me to tattoo the IKEA people on him.”

About 41 percent of millennials in the United States had at least one tattoo in 2024, according to data from Statista. The number drops when it comes to Gen Z, where 23 percent reported having at least one tattoo.

And while Shawn’s tattoo was introduced as having no meaning, viewers in the comments were quick to find their own.

One commenter on the video, which has more than 1 million likes and close to 9 million views since being posted on March 3, said it’s a “reminder to ask for help,” while another declared it was a “deep statement about the male loneliness epidemic and our need for community.”

“He wants to build a life with you knowing he can’t do it alone,” one wrote, and another described it as “actually beautiful. It’s visual poetry.”

One user kept in with the light-hearted introduction to the tattoo, as they joked: “Don’t stare at a pile of wood alone. Stare at it with another person.”

Alissa told Newsweek she shared Shawn’s tattoo to TikTok with the joke about it being meaningless as she had seen similar tattoos trending, and “at first look, it seems so unserious.”

“We definitely didn’t expect to see so many people to relate to it. I was also so surprised and happy to see how wholesome the comment section was. It’s been so fun to read everyone’s comments!”

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