To have found this a red flag?

[Marinasummers]

Spoke to a guy on a dating site who's a Tattoo artist.
Joked to him that I have a couple of small, very bland/uninspiring tattoos I've had since my early 20s.
He said he'd like to see them and asked if I'm on Instagram. I told him I was but that my tattoo pictures were not on there.
He insisted that I could still send him pictures of them via Instagram messaging.
I didn't get a good feeling, so unmatched.
Not sure if I was overreacting but I felt that he was pressuring me a little to send him the pictures/give him my social media.
My profile on Instagram is set to private and I didn't want a total stranger having access to it.

So you have a thing that is literally his job but when he asks about yours you bin him?

He probably just wanted to make suggestions to improve them as you said they were boring & uninspiring.

Possibly I overreacted, he just seemed quite insistent. Ahh well, we exchanged all of 2 messages and I'm sure he's already talking to the next one!

If he was a tattoo artist and you had been discussing your tattoos, then I don't think it's unreasonable in itself.

YANBU. If he wanted to see the tattoos he would have just asked you to take a picture.

He was trying to be clever and get your Insta by stealth. And then to insist is a red flag.

Good you unmatched him.

That doesn’t sound in any way untoward to me. He does tattoos for a living, you mentioned you had them, he asked to see them. If you said they were ‘bland and uninspiring’, he probably had his professional hat on and was thinking about potential improvements/embellishments.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it felt uncomfortable to you, and that's all that matters.

surely you could have taken photos of the tattoos?

Insistence at such an early phase is a definite red flag. Ignore the minimisers.

but he wanted via instagram messaging?
you will feel better about blocking and moving on and i dont blame you if he was so insistent.

I personally wouldn’t have found this a red flag, unless he was massively persistent about it, because tattooing is literally his job and you brought the subject of your tattoos up. However, you are fully entitled to set whatever boundaries you like and you clearly felt a bit uncomfortable, so it was absolutely fine to block him. You don’t ever need permission or validation to block someone for any reason.

Sounds like general chit chat to be honest, he probably wanted to tell you they were nice or something.

But bin off if you feel uncomfortable obviously

Exactly. Fortunately most women are not so desperate for male attention that they switch off their instincts, minimise red flags and shift their boundaries.

I can understand feeling a bit uneasy if you felt like he was insisting you show him pictures of them but I think if you talk about something like tattoos then it's generally assumed you can show them in some capacity.

Would he have understood you were joking? I don't really understand why you say you were joking, you have them and you feel they're uninspiring...fact. or you don't have any so why bother saying you do. Or you do and they're amazing...?

It's his job.

You said that yours were uninspiring.

He wanted to see them. You could very easily have taken a photo and sent them over.

He's trying to get to know you.

If you'd met in actual real life, say in a bar, you would have just shown your ankle or whatever as part of a normal conversation.

A mix of replies, I guess as PP said it's down to what we feel at the time, and I suppose my OP was a little pointless in retrospect as it won't change how I felt at the time.
However it'll be good to keep in mind for the future.

you set boundaries that is your choice op

Most tattoo artists I know (and yes I do know a few) reply on social media as a way of drumming up business. So I wouldn't necessarily see it as a red flag as such. More that he probably has a different attitude towards social media than you do.

I'm not quite sure why I would've jumped to blocking him before offering to send them on WhatsApp. But that's just me.

The thing is as well OP, you are allowed to block or bow out of a OLD chat for whatever reason you want.

Sending them on Whatsapp would give him her number.

To a man she has exchanged just a couple of messages with.

Are you for real? Do you follow your own bad advice in your own life?

How can you be insistent in two messages? I mean seriously?

Yeah, not really pressuring, just asking, as someone who does and fixes tattoos for a living.

I’m a tattoo artist. That’s really odd, yanbu, I wouldn’t pester people to see their tattoos.

I'd probably just have said "maybe later" and changed the subject

”hi, I’m a chef. What did you have for your tea?

”hi, I’m a tax inspector. Eggs.”

”Eggs what? Omelette? Scrambled? Benedict?”

“fuck off you pervert.”