i participated in the very first cover girl contest. it was absolutely a popularity contest & scam to get those paid votes. i now share you video as a warning to others.
Yeah it was totally going to talk about this as an artist who draws and i photography, i know a lot of these magazines for models or artists are just paid to try to participate and get shit that you have to pay to get votes on these magazines or even get in them when you have to pay to like submit to like an art show and you still wont git in the magazine or show because whoever didn't choose you
OH BUT IT GETS DEEPER I have a unique perspective with this, I believe it was 2023 I was in BOTH the inked cover girl competition and a NAIL magazine! I got the ad for inked first and was already in it, I believe, when I got the ad for the nail magazine. I hand paint nail art for my career so of course I thought I have more of a shot at that! What’s crazier… they had the same phone number. Both contests are connected to the same phone number for updates and probably is run by the same company. It went all exactly the same, there was even people who only had a selfie for their pictures and no nails 😂 so some how this does go deeper and there is an entire company just spitting these out scamming so many people. I’m so sad because lots of my clients were voting for me and my dad even paid for votes because at a certain point that’s was you HAD to do!
I (personally) can't get over the "we are the global authority on tattoo lifestyle..." From their email to you. Maybe influence, but authority? Reminds me of Cartman from South Park
I used to work for tattoo magazines when there were a lot more out there than just Inked. When Inked popped up and they started covering artists and events, it was always pay to feature stuff. They've always been this weird shady part of tattoo media and somehow outlasted all the others. I guess it's because they appeal to celebrities and celebrity tattooers.
Would actually be interested in a video diving into this. Wonder if maybe Inked just got bought by a bigger publisher and was able to throw more resources into the magazine or if it was branding or editorial direction or design or some other reason.
All other magazines that have models on the cover PAY those models for their work. Inked is having their models pay THEM for being featured. That's so sus!!!
It's blatantly obvious when magazines are pay to feature. I can look around my town and see better work than Inked features. Not to mention I despise the sleazy stuff they often post on instagram. One of my huge pet peeves in the tattoo community is artists and websites using women's bodies to promote their work. If you're tattoos can't get you views and you've got to use photos and videos where there's more focus on your clients T&A than on the quality of the piece you did, just stop tattooing.
Omg the fact that they're contacting people with talking about how it's a scam with the bait of being an "influencer" is insane LMAO!! Thank you for continuing to talk about this, luckily I think most people are aware of it now but I still see promo for it
ALSO--not shaming anyone with few tattoos--but the past few years have been random women with veryyy few tattoos & coverage, which is odd for a brand who's whole image is heavily covered tattoo enthusiasts
For litigation purposes, everyone remember that it's only a scam if it actually is rigged, otherwise it's just shady and gross. Celle did an amazing job making sure her video didn't contain anything she could be sued for. If you're in the comments and you have a decent sized following, you should do the same.
What, make sure they can't sue us for writing a comment about what we think of them?? Everyone still has a right to an opinion, don't they? No? So long as it's not a big, bold, harmful lie, surely we can say what we feel?... This is RUclips, not the Caliphate of Britain! (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised now, if I found myself in trouble for something ridiculous and harmless! 😳) (Fuckit !!✊🏽😅)
Mo’s right. what’s wild is the 2021 winner BARELY has any tattoos. 😂😂 i work with women who have more tattoos than she has. it’s definitely a ‘who paid the most’ contest. also, a real one - 📚📚📚
That's dodgy as fu*k just for starters! It's a huge red flag. People should not play by those kind of rules, but I think MANY will without even a second thought. 😒
Go for it, girl! I would support that. Although, I am a bloke and I love the female form (I'm an Artist, not JUST a perv!! Actually, I'm not a perv at all. It's not perverse to love the female form, but lots of people think it IS), so I'm not sure I'm the right "target consumer". 🤷🏽
A tattoo RUclips named Justinked tried entering the contest as well, and he has some amazing work, but somebody with hardly any tattoos passed him, that’s when he started realizing something fishy was going on. It would be great if the winner of the contest was based on who had the best ink, but that is clearly not the case.
I participated a few years ago (2020-22 i forget). I'm not social media famous, not skinny, and I have a lot of ink but still have skin showing. I was having a moment where I wanted to try something new and for fun. Anyways, I got 5th place on the last run and there was someone who was in last, but blasted to 1st and won in the final hour. My friend was monitoring it cuz he was excited for me, and he thought it was very odd. But thanks for the video, it definitely verifies the suspicions. Now I'm over it, but hey I got out of my comfort zone for a moment 😁📚
I participated in 2022 and the moment I realized I had to constantly post about voting I knew I wasn't going to win. I don't care enough to constantly bombard people to vote. That to me is embarrassing as it feels like I'm begging ha. The thing that frustrated me the most was the winner was an onlyfans model with only an arm sleeve. Nothing wrong with her profession but she clearly had the upper hand in popularity. It was also upsetting that she isn't heavily tattooed. I feel like there should be a limit requirement for this like "hey you have to have a minimum of this many tattoos to be accepted." People like myself dedicate a lot of time and money to present ourselves as tattood people and that is what I want to see represented on a tattoo magazine cover.
I joined last year's inked magazines competition, and I was so excited. All you said is so true. I saw some ppl with no tattoos saying they wanted their first tattoo from Ryan Ashley. Beautiful, heavily tattooed women were lower ranked than the ppl who had a few small tattoos. My family and I were annoyed at the system and how it worked. It felt like it wasn't a true competition. I felt bad because my family members spent money on me to stay in. I'm glad that people are speaking about this.
She IS definitely real. I've seen her. She's very real. And she can't be bought so easily, she stands up for what is right. She has integrity. And I like her even more for that. She's not just a beautiful face!
Maxim also does this. When I was a kid, JC Penny’s was offering shoppers to be models in their magazines, but the stipulation was that you had to buy the clothes you were modeling that were $80-100/dress in the 90s. My mom passed 😂
Wanted to enter in 2018 as my boyfriend is my tattoo artist so I figured it would be good exposure for him. Saw that we had to pay for votes and didn’t think it was worth it and that it wouldn’t be fair since at the time I barely had a half sleeve at the time and thought about all the heavily tattooed women that deserved the exposure more. It could be easy for just anyone to win with the small amount of tattoos.
I’m so gone! I was like, your declining FIRST because they have ugly merch?? Not because they’re grimy? Then I saw the merch. Duly noted. This video is deep. You did a grat job breaking down every element. I’m proud of you, sweetheart. ❤
wow this actually makes me so upset for the hopeful women that used their own money & their family and friends & followers who spent money when the winner is absolutely pre-selected IMO. inked makes SO MUCH profit. sad and disgusting. thanks celle for continuing to expose them
Drawing competitions with adobe are kinda similar except it’s your time they take from you that you spent on your artwork. You could have spent 40 hr on an artwork and not win and they would be able to use it as they please, as in the T and cs they hide that they take ownership of every artwork that is submitted to the competition. I haven’t even heard from the girl since she won the one from Billie’s competition so it kinda is similar, at least to me. They also didn’t give her any money from the tshirts they produced that had her artwork on it, just a big sum of 4000…. Young people are like wow that’s a lot of money, but don’t realise that if they don’t win your time and effort was just so adobe could profit off of you.
THAT really IS a scam! It's like theft. I hope many Artists see your comment, I almost fell for one like that myself when I was very young, until I had read the extremely tedious and very SMALL PRINT!
I do agree on the standpoint of how only female influencers with minimal tattoos are now on the mag covers, and how it's wrong. When they're showing the men that are still heavily tattooed but the women that are minimally tattooed, it sends a message. It sends a message that it's only acceptable for men to be heavily tattooed and women aren't supposed to be, or that only hot women have little to no tattoos, and that there's some sort of line between hot and trashy that's exclusive to women. And that's just so sexist and backwards in all the work we've been doing as a community and society. But then again, we're going backwards in the US on so many things so ig this is just joining all of that.
My older sister was in the competition, and she has quite a few tattoos on her arms and in other places, but at the time she was pregnant so her picture(s) didn't really show all of them very well. She really needed the money at the time and she had so many people voting for her but it didn't even look like she was moving spots at all so this really sucks to hear
While inked sucks and what they are doing is horrible and manipulative and scammy most of say majority of magazines wouldn't necessarily want a pregnant woman as a model unless it's specifically pregnancy related. No offense or anything to your sister. Such is life.
I considered it recently before I knew about it being a scam. I was even weirded out with the lack of details they give and the website looked very fake so I didn't even try. And then this video popped up about a week later how ironic
There’s a few big tattoo magazines still around that do a great job at focusing on tattoos….and inked magazine is definitely not one of them 😗 I think of inked magazine as more of a pop culture magazine that includes mostly famous people or people that have a lot of followers on social media that just so happen to have a few tattoos.
This very much reminds me of the cosplay competition contest that had the exact same set up last year. I initially signed up for it before more and more info came out and i and others had our photos used to advertise them with out paying us because they now legally 'owned' the photos we submitted to the contest.
i joined a very similar competition, literally set up the exact same and it was the supreme sneaker head contest smh, seeing this video now puts it all into perspective, so disappointing these people do this smh.
Never this early bc of work but I love your content and have always thought smth was up with the inked cover girl contest! Glad someone is covering it. 🖤
On a slightly unrelated note: This reminded me of how I have been watching your content for a couple years now. You have improved a ton! Still love the old videos too of course. It's been awesome to see your youtuber and tattooing journey. :)
My wife participated in this competition a couple of years ago. She was #1 in her category, but there was one other woman who kept taking the top spot back. The other woman’s social media didn’t even seem like a real person. Her account was generic and didn’t showcase her tattoos, or her as a person. It seemed like a fake account that stayed one step ahead of my wife’s entry in order to get us to spend money to take the lead back. We didn’t spend money and the account that won her category simply vanished after the competition ended.
📚 Celle, I love the way you stand up for what's right, you can't be bought so easily. You have integrity. I hope desperate young people stop falling for these kind of dodgy "competitions". ❤
Another thing I've noticed is inked and a few other big tattoo platforms always choose models who are "conventionally attractive". There needs to be older women, disabled women etc. The focus is on how profitable the bodies are rather the quality of art on the bodies.
That’s the name of the game. They have to make people want to buy or subscribe. It’s a business at the end of the day. They’re selling a fantasy just like every other magazine that deals in art, beauty, or fashion. We’ve seen other companies applauded for your approach but sales slumped.
I am just commenting to hopefully feed the algorithm and get you more views as I love that you are wiling to bring attention to this despite Inked reaching out. Always have to support that integrity from creators. By the way, when are you coming out with your own merch?! I would have bought something just to make sure speaking the truth is always rewarded over bribes from those wishing to silence people.
I’ve seen several contests that do that. There’s a contest to meet Kane Hodder take a picture with him have a small role in a movie and win $13,000 the money that you pay for votes goes to some charity A friend of mine entered a dog contest and it has the same system but The money goes to charity too. Not sure if it actually goes to charity
I had a friend enter a few years ago. She was 2nd in her calgary, and I lost track after that. I remember voting for her and seeing that you could pay for more votes, and that was unfair to everyone and , t made me think that it was a scam.
Thank you so much for doing this! I’m in my second contest and it was feeling so ick, so I found your video, let’s keep talking about it and sharing this so women don’t fall into the trap 📚
If you think about how they probably make revenue most likely you're threatening their cash cow, sow be careful! So much respect for this video, these kinds of contests exist all over the internet in so many different flavors, there has to be more awareness. And comeuppance for those companies who have intentionally, happily misled their patrons for years.
Wow. Just Wow. There were several women here locally that asked for votes. On one, I was able to give one vote for free. However, with two others, I was asked for my credit card info and I just clicked out. I was not going to give any money for a vote or give my financial info. I'm glad you are digging into this.
Your content is so good, I always look forward to when you post! I swear I click so fast 😅 it's so nice to see young confident women talking about being heavily tattooed and proud. Unfortunately in my life none of my family are supportive and really hate my tattoos and make it blatantly clear which is quite upsetting. You're videos make me feel like I belong ❤
I participated the past 2 years & got to "2nd place" this year...5th place year before. It was completely a scam & the only reason I did it again in 2023 was because I forgot I actually did it the year before. As a seperated DV survivor & sahm single mother 3 starting over with my 2 youngest & one special needs this would've been my new beginning. However I feel completely lied to, stolen from, embarrassed, & sorry for anyone who supported me in the competition. Smh also in the beginning when you gave the big FU to them & decided to dive deeper into it I was like yassssss 😂🖤
This reminds me of the Alternative Model Of The Year contest that used to run here in the UK (looks like it no longer exists as they’ve vanished off the face of the planet). You paid a fee to take part - I think it was mainly to cover costs of photographers, the building, things like that, which was fair and it wasn’t like it was extortionate amounts of money at the time. Started at about £20 and went up to about £50 or so (you paid more if you wanted to come away with more photos etc). But I always noticed it was conventionally attractive, slim, white women that always got through. And many of them were barely goth/alternative to begin with. In later years there was the token man or black woman that would get through to the finals. But it would literally be, like, one maybe two at most. Always thought it was a bit shady especially when the winner would get signed to a modelling agency then would never be seen or heard from again. They never seemed to do anything of note after winning.
I entered and the first time I posted about voting I had five different friends reach out about how the contest was a scam. I immediately stopped promoting anything for it and still managed to get pretty far in my group??? I’m glad people are getting more aware and it encourages people to not waste their time/money but it’s so sad at the same time.
Charly's lack of followers is due to the fact that she has only 19 posts and clearly isn't really putting any work into her social media, so it's hard to assess if the 1800 follower bump can be attributed to winning the contest or not. IF (and to your point, this is unverifiable) she spent $24K to win that contest, she would still be $1K ahead upon winning, and that would seem like enough of a buy-in to a win a contest of that limited size. Lacking transparency and charging for entries makes them a target for class action and federal oversight for sure. Good, informative video!
One of the many things that bothers me about the contest is that theres not a Cover Boy version. Men have tattoos too and lots would wanna be on the cover!
A friend is doing this and I want to support her... but I also want to tell her not to sweat this thing without being negative as I've seen this same exact voting scam elsewhere =/
Yes this is a scam. It's just a contest to see who has the most money and it looks like Inked doesn't deliver on their promise! Inked is crazy to think their emails are going to make them look good.
I am heavily tattooed and African American and actually did professional photo shoots as well. I did the contest several years ago and had family voting etc. didn’t win of course but then my “friend” who’s Caucasian did the same contest a few years back and I tried to tell her it was rigged especially for women of color and she thought I was jealous , ignored me…then created a group me to spam her other friends and me to vote everyday 🙃🙃🙃 ignoring my suggestions and seeing her friend who’s black being treated differently by the company, I digress. She didn’t win and I could tell she was embarrassed we barely speak now and she stopped talking about the competition after that.
I participated in the most recent one, told me I was ranked 12, then never heard anything again. I hope none of my friends or family paid for any votes. I’m a single mom, about to begin another battle with brain cancer, winning that would’ve been HUGE. I was kinda surprised that I was ranked that high because I didn’t have any professional pics to enter. They were all phone pics. I hope no one gets screwed over too badly.
Reached out to Ink through email. They were transparent on how many groups but could not be transparent on how many votes per contestant due to "privacy policy". They had way more than 10k contestants from the start. In what they call, "final group" that ends today there are 2016 groups with 5 people in each competing for # 1 in their group. 2016 GROUPS. And this contest has been going on for weeks. There were over 50 people per group at the start. 2016 x 50 people, that 100,800 people. Now take that x $100 average/person probably bought votes=$10,080,00 minus the 25% donated to musicare that leaves them with $7,560,000 just in the first round. And Winner gets $25k plus some perks maybe = to$50k???
One of my friends entered this comp a couple years or so ago. I started getting suspicious when we all got a winner’s high off her moving up the ranks for a while and then her movement plateaued and she didn’t make it despite the community she had voting for her. I remember there being a payment option and it thoroughly annoyed me because I’ve signed up to vote for plenty of friends in competitions before and inked was the ONLY one that had a payment option. The only other one that had a booster was one where if you made an account with the website you could vote an X numbers of times per day more than the once a day.
Celle est you have so much ink now wow! It's been a min since I've had time to watch your videos. You look amazing as always. Better slow down or you are going to run out of skin for more ink soon at your rate! Nice work busy body. Stay on it. You are such an inspiration. 📚
I can speak for the girls that said they were only there for the money and tattoo: I came across an ad that only said, "Enter to win a tattoo by Ryan Ashley!" and I thought that was rad. After I started the entry, it then revealed itself to be the Inked Covergirl competition, and once I realized it was a pay-for-votes deal, I was out. 📚
any voting by the public contest is scammy. it doesnt matter if you deserve it, it matters how many ‘friends’ you have. to be real, only inked mag execs/experts should vote period.
Youre so right! I can't think of any of the winner's names or what they look like. 😮 What a wild ride this video was. I was thinking of entering someday but 😬😬... naw. Thank you for making this video!
OMG, I don't feel bad for anyone who tries to win a contest by buying votes, I dont feel bad for anyone person who enters a contest and gets butthurt when they don't win, and at the end of the day Inked IS a privately owned magazine who doesn't "represent" anything or anyone other than its shareholders.
I’ve seen many different contests like this before also. One of my friends collects sneakers and I guess he is part of the community, and somehow he was put into a contest formatted exactly the same way. If he won he would get to help design some sort of sneaker. Another friend of mine is also growing his name as a pianist and participated in another contest… formatted exactly the same way… but for piano artists. I’m starting to see a trend here and I think this is something much larger than just Inked.
First time seeing one of your videos, and this is both interesting and informative, although I would suggest you take up the Inked President on his offer to "talk about the contest," although not on his offers. I think it would be interesting to see if he would be willing to be interviewed by you on this topic as well as what he would be willing to say about it. Yes, more than likely he only wants to get you to stop criticizing them, but who knows, it couldn't hurt to try
I wouldn’t want to win if I had to ‘ buy ‘ the win. Sad. Women and ALL people are “ who “ you are. Not how you look. Love and accept your inside self first. Blessings 🙏🙏🙏🕊🕊🕊
So I'm a part of the competition now. And this is really interesting. The woman who won last year is from my state so I thought it was legit. My husband kept telling me that he was really skeptical. Now cousin paid for some votes. I ended up being in 3rd for the last two weeks and the other day dropped to 4th. What's frustrating to me is the girl in 1st in my group seems to be a fake person. She has no posts on her social media or on her Inked profile but has remained in 1st the whole time which to me makes no sense. I don't know how to feel about all of this. I'm really hoping God keeps giving me clarity. 😢 📚
We have a similar situation in our country. Not moneywise, but I did the first photoshoot for an alternative online magazine back in the day. Now it is almost soft p*rn page when girls often do not have any tattoos, just when they show more skin, they are in. DUH.
Inked magazine has become pretty terrible even before the competition. Its more about modeling than ink. There is a reason i havent purchased the rag in years. This just confirms my bias. Thank you for bringing it to the public.
A recession? We've been in a recession for so long it technically classifies as a depression. The money from this competition would help so many people, and letting anyone pour their money into it is such a sad thing. This really isnt a "competition" in the first place.
I have a theory that one company runs all these cover girl (people) scams. Bartenders, best baker, best hair dresser, etc. I tried maxims and have an entire script for a video on my experience. Just haven't filmed it yet.
There's should not be any paid vote. PERIOD. You are essentially buying a spot not knowing if you will win. Sadly this is not the only one. There is a competition called "Americans Favorite Pet" competition. It is a competition where they choose one cat and one dog and they will get featured on the magazine and $5k award. They also take paid vote. The more you "donate", the more votes you got. You need get a certification to certify that your money had went to a specific shelter. Ended up many people may hundreds or thousands of dollars just to be dumbfounded that they fell off the top ten list. It boggles my mind that there's no laws against it. It is absolutely morally incorrectly though.
i participated in the very first cover girl contest. it was absolutely a popularity contest & scam to get those paid votes. i now share you video as a warning to others.
There are also contests like this that scam people all over the Internet including art and music competitions were you still pay to play
Yeah it was totally going to talk about this as an artist who draws and i photography, i know a lot of these magazines for models or artists are just paid to try to participate and get shit that you have to pay to get votes on these magazines or even get in them when you have to pay to like submit to like an art show and you still wont git in the magazine or show because whoever didn't choose you
yeah like that forbes 30 under 30 one
33@@BelindaShort
All contests about preference are nothing but popularity contests, meaning they're all a scam.
OH BUT IT GETS DEEPER
I have a unique perspective with this, I believe it was 2023 I was in BOTH the inked cover girl competition and a NAIL magazine!
I got the ad for inked first and was already in it, I believe, when I got the ad for the nail magazine. I hand paint nail art for my career so of course I thought I have more of a shot at that!
What’s crazier… they had the same phone number. Both contests are connected to the same phone number for updates and probably is run by the same company. It went all exactly the same, there was even people who only had a selfie for their pictures and no nails 😂 so some how this does go deeper and there is an entire company just spitting these out scamming so many people. I’m so sad because lots of my clients were voting for me and my dad even paid for votes because at a certain point that’s was you HAD to do!
Trying to help get this more attention
Bumping!
WOWWWWW 😢
Thx for sharing. This should become common knowledge
Whoa....
Props for not letting them sway you into taking down the video. I always have respect for ppl whose voice can't be bought
Absolutely!
Me too. Celle is great, can't be bought.
It's a little wild that no winners are... Identifiable as having won at all.
I (personally) can't get over the "we are the global authority on tattoo lifestyle..." From their email to you. Maybe influence, but authority? Reminds me of Cartman from South Park
I think that’s their tagline kind of thing, I’ve seen it in the magazine, on their website and on merch before
RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAHH
@@Dravasky makes me wanna get a circle a tattoo. Lol
I used to work for tattoo magazines when there were a lot more out there than just Inked. When Inked popped up and they started covering artists and events, it was always pay to feature stuff. They've always been this weird shady part of tattoo media and somehow outlasted all the others. I guess it's because they appeal to celebrities and celebrity tattooers.
Would actually be interested in a video diving into this. Wonder if maybe Inked just got bought by a bigger publisher and was able to throw more resources into the magazine or if it was branding or editorial direction or design or some other reason.
All other magazines that have models on the cover PAY those models for their work. Inked is having their models pay THEM for being featured. That's so sus!!!
Pay to play is more profitable than honest journalism
It's blatantly obvious when magazines are pay to feature. I can look around my town and see better work than Inked features. Not to mention I despise the sleazy stuff they often post on instagram. One of my huge pet peeves in the tattoo community is artists and websites using women's bodies to promote their work. If you're tattoos can't get you views and you've got to use photos and videos where there's more focus on your clients T&A than on the quality of the piece you did, just stop tattooing.
Omg the fact that they're contacting people with talking about how it's a scam with the bait of being an "influencer" is insane LMAO!! Thank you for continuing to talk about this, luckily I think most people are aware of it now but I still see promo for it
ALSO--not shaming anyone with few tattoos--but the past few years have been random women with veryyy few tattoos & coverage, which is odd for a brand who's whole image is heavily covered tattoo enthusiasts
I'm afraid their gonna come out with a cease and desist to her channel.
As she said in the video all of their merchandise is so ugly or cheesy, like I’d be embarrassed to wear it.
I had no idea abt this. Ig the attempt to stop ppl talking abt this failed then...
For litigation purposes, everyone remember that it's only a scam if it actually is rigged, otherwise it's just shady and gross. Celle did an amazing job making sure her video didn't contain anything she could be sued for. If you're in the comments and you have a decent sized following, you should do the same.
What, make sure they can't sue us for writing a comment about what we think of them?? Everyone still has a right to an opinion, don't they? No? So long as it's not a big, bold, harmful lie, surely we can say what we feel?... This is RUclips, not the Caliphate of Britain! (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised now, if I found myself in trouble for something ridiculous and harmless! 😳) (Fuckit !!✊🏽😅)
Mo’s right. what’s wild is the 2021 winner BARELY has any tattoos. 😂😂
i work with women who have more tattoos than she has. it’s definitely a ‘who paid the most’ contest.
also, a real one - 📚📚📚
All competition like this are a scam. There is a similar one in the baking community ran by a baking magazine. And hundreds of ppl fall for it a year.
Saw this for the first time this year!!!
It's also new to me
People need to wise-up about these things. If not, in no time, ALL competitions will be the same.
Just to clarify, the "one free vote a day" also requires that you enter your credit card details "just to verify". Seriously 😒
No it doesn't, I do the one free vote a day through Facebook login
That's dodgy as fu*k just for starters! It's a huge red flag. People should not play by those kind of rules, but I think MANY will without even a second thought. 😒
Thank you so much for exposing this scam. Tattooed women need to stick together and maybe start a mag for us, by us!!
that would be lovely! ❤️🩹i rarely see other tatted women where i live
That would be so cool! It’s long overdue imo
Maybe make a Kickstarter?
Yes 🙌
Go for it, girl! I would support that. Although, I am a bloke and I love the female form (I'm an Artist, not JUST a perv!! Actually, I'm not a perv at all. It's not perverse to love the female form, but lots of people think it IS), so I'm not sure I'm the right "target consumer". 🤷🏽
A tattoo RUclips named Justinked tried entering the contest as well, and he has some amazing work, but somebody with hardly any tattoos passed him, that’s when he started realizing something fishy was going on. It would be great if the winner of the contest was based on who had the best ink, but that is clearly not the case.
I participated a few years ago (2020-22 i forget). I'm not social media famous, not skinny, and I have a lot of ink but still have skin showing. I was having a moment where I wanted to try something new and for fun. Anyways, I got 5th place on the last run and there was someone who was in last, but blasted to 1st and won in the final hour. My friend was monitoring it cuz he was excited for me, and he thought it was very odd. But thanks for the video, it definitely verifies the suspicions. Now I'm over it, but hey I got out of my comfort zone for a moment 😁📚
How much did you spend to get to 5th place? It's such a shame, money shouldn't come into it at all, it should be about the tattoos.
I participated in 2022 and the moment I realized I had to constantly post about voting I knew I wasn't going to win. I don't care enough to constantly bombard people to vote. That to me is embarrassing as it feels like I'm begging ha. The thing that frustrated me the most was the winner was an onlyfans model with only an arm sleeve. Nothing wrong with her profession but she clearly had the upper hand in popularity. It was also upsetting that she isn't heavily tattooed. I feel like there should be a limit requirement for this like "hey you have to have a minimum of this many tattoos to be accepted." People like myself dedicate a lot of time and money to present ourselves as tattood people and that is what I want to see represented on a tattoo magazine cover.
Yes!
I joined last year's inked magazines competition, and I was so excited. All you said is so true. I saw some ppl with no tattoos saying they wanted their first tattoo from Ryan Ashley. Beautiful, heavily tattooed women were lower ranked than the ppl who had a few small tattoos. My family and I were annoyed at the system and how it worked. It felt like it wasn't a true competition. I felt bad because my family members spent money on me to stay in. I'm glad that people are speaking about this.
📚 They tried to buy you off, and you just exposed them more, lol. You're so real for that.
She IS definitely real. I've seen her. She's very real. And she can't be bought so easily, she stands up for what is right. She has integrity. And I like her even more for that. She's not just a beautiful face!
Maxim also does this. When I was a kid, JC Penny’s was offering shoppers to be models in their magazines, but the stipulation was that you had to buy the clothes you were modeling that were $80-100/dress in the 90s. My mom passed 😂
Looks like people are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking if it's a scam, ask if it's even a competition.
Thank you for talking about the recession. It's so majorly important and bringing attention to it can bring change!
The fact that they tried to dissuade you from exposing this - says a lot. An admission of guilt lol thanks for making this!
Wanted to enter in 2018 as my boyfriend is my tattoo artist so I figured it would be good exposure for him. Saw that we had to pay for votes and didn’t think it was worth it and that it wouldn’t be fair since at the time I barely had a half sleeve at the time and thought about all the heavily tattooed women that deserved the exposure more. It could be easy for just anyone to win with the small amount of tattoos.
I’m so gone! I was like, your declining FIRST because they have ugly merch?? Not because they’re grimy?
Then I saw the merch. Duly noted.
This video is deep. You did a grat job breaking down every element.
I’m proud of you, sweetheart. ❤
wow this actually makes me so upset for the hopeful women that used their own money & their family and friends & followers who spent money when the winner is absolutely pre-selected IMO. inked makes SO MUCH profit. sad and disgusting. thanks celle for continuing to expose them
Drawing competitions with adobe are kinda similar except it’s your time they take from you that you spent on your artwork. You could have spent 40 hr on an artwork and not win and they would be able to use it as they please, as in the T and cs they hide that they take ownership of every artwork that is submitted to the competition. I haven’t even heard from the girl since she won the one from Billie’s competition so it kinda is similar, at least to me. They also didn’t give her any money from the tshirts they produced that had her artwork on it, just a big sum of 4000…. Young people are like wow that’s a lot of money, but don’t realise that if they don’t win your time and effort was just so adobe could profit off of you.
THAT really IS a scam! It's like theft. I hope many Artists see your comment, I almost fell for one like that myself when I was very young, until I had read the extremely tedious and very SMALL PRINT!
Good work! Your hard work and effort are very evident. Brave stance and I fully agree . 📚
Yoooo new Celle vid dropped 🔥🔥
🤗
Haha I love you stood up to it and even called it out. I saw the first 30 seconds and I knew you had integrity
I do agree on the standpoint of how only female influencers with minimal tattoos are now on the mag covers, and how it's wrong. When they're showing the men that are still heavily tattooed but the women that are minimally tattooed, it sends a message. It sends a message that it's only acceptable for men to be heavily tattooed and women aren't supposed to be, or that only hot women have little to no tattoos, and that there's some sort of line between hot and trashy that's exclusive to women. And that's just so sexist and backwards in all the work we've been doing as a community and society. But then again, we're going backwards in the US on so many things so ig this is just joining all of that.
My older sister was in the competition, and she has quite a few tattoos on her arms and in other places, but at the time she was pregnant so her picture(s) didn't really show all of them very well.
She really needed the money at the time and she had so many people voting for her but it didn't even look like she was moving spots at all so this really sucks to hear
While inked sucks and what they are doing is horrible and manipulative and scammy most of say majority of magazines wouldn't necessarily want a pregnant woman as a model unless it's specifically pregnancy related. No offense or anything to your sister. Such is life.
Oh you ate them up, i love this
I considered it recently before I knew about it being a scam. I was even weirded out with the lack of details they give and the website looked very fake so I didn't even try. And then this video popped up about a week later how ironic
There’s a few big tattoo magazines still around that do a great job at focusing on tattoos….and inked magazine is definitely not one of them 😗 I think of inked magazine as more of a pop culture magazine that includes mostly famous people or people that have a lot of followers on social media that just so happen to have a few tattoos.
This very much reminds me of the cosplay competition contest that had the exact same set up last year. I initially signed up for it before more and more info came out and i and others had our photos used to advertise them with out paying us because they now legally 'owned' the photos we submitted to the contest.
This form of "competition" in general seems really outdated and really... icky to me 😅
I feel like we haven't made any progress sometimes. We just keep foolishly stepping backwards into the same old exploitative roles.
Inked mag has always seemed skeezy and exploitative.
Also, a lot of artists they featured were wildly arrogant about tattooing.
i joined a very similar competition, literally set up the exact same and it was the supreme sneaker head contest smh, seeing this video now puts it all into perspective, so disappointing these people do this smh.
Never this early bc of work but I love your content and have always thought smth was up with the inked cover girl contest! Glad someone is covering it. 🖤
On a slightly unrelated note: This reminded me of how I have been watching your content for a couple years now. You have improved a ton! Still love the old videos too of course. It's been awesome to see your youtuber and tattooing journey. :)
My wife participated in this competition a couple of years ago. She was #1 in her category, but there was one other woman who kept taking the top spot back. The other woman’s social media didn’t even seem like a real person. Her account was generic and didn’t showcase her tattoos, or her as a person. It seemed like a fake account that stayed one step ahead of my wife’s entry in order to get us to spend money to take the lead back. We didn’t spend money and the account that won her category simply vanished after the competition ended.
I have NO tattoos but wanted to comment that your integrity is exceptional and refreshing to see
The Face of Horror does the same exact thing. Almost the same layout as well.
📚 Celle, I love the way you stand up for what's right, you can't be bought so easily. You have integrity. I hope desperate young people stop falling for these kind of dodgy "competitions". ❤
If somebody is selling you a shortcut to success, aka being an influencer, they're selling you a scam.
Another thing I've noticed is inked and a few other big tattoo platforms always choose models who are "conventionally attractive". There needs to be older women, disabled women etc. The focus is on how profitable the bodies are rather the quality of art on the bodies.
Some mentally disabled, tatted women would be wild!!!
That’s the name of the game. They have to make people want to buy or subscribe. It’s a business at the end of the day. They’re selling a fantasy just like every other magazine that deals in art, beauty, or fashion. We’ve seen other companies applauded for your approach but sales slumped.
While I want to agree because it’s suppose to be about the tats, their subscriber base is mainly males.
Their focus is on profitable bodies bc they are a business and those bodies sell magazines.
@@jessicahay9305 well yeah no shit. It's just frustrating cause the demographic of people who read those magazines wanna see cool tattoos, not porn.
don’t have much to add right now but thanks for another great video, yours are always so chill, free of judgement and calming whatever the topic 📚
Love your videos. I feel like I started getting tattoos around when you started postings and you have given me such a good crash course.
I am just commenting to hopefully feed the algorithm and get you more views as I love that you are wiling to bring attention to this despite Inked reaching out. Always have to support that integrity from creators. By the way, when are you coming out with your own merch?! I would have bought something just to make sure speaking the truth is always rewarded over bribes from those wishing to silence people.
I’ve seen several contests that do that. There’s a contest to meet Kane Hodder take a picture with him have a small role in a movie and win $13,000 the money that you pay for votes goes to some charity
A friend of mine entered a dog contest and it has the same system but The money goes to charity too.
Not sure if it actually goes to charity
I had a friend enter a few years ago. She was 2nd in her calgary, and I lost track after that. I remember voting for her and seeing that you could pay for more votes, and that was unfair to everyone and , t made me think that it was a scam.
Thank you so much for doing this! I’m in my second contest and it was feeling so ick, so I found your video, let’s keep talking about it and sharing this so women don’t fall into the trap 📚
If you think about how they probably make revenue most likely you're threatening their cash cow, sow be careful! So much respect for this video, these kinds of contests exist all over the internet in so many different flavors, there has to be more awareness. And comeuppance for those companies who have intentionally, happily misled their patrons for years.
I know someone in the top 20 in this competition. This just makes me sick.
I would looove a jewelry collection video! Particularly your barbed wire heart hoops and your heart/sword linear earrings are gorgeous
Wow. Just Wow. There were several women here locally that asked for votes. On one, I was able to give one vote for free. However, with two others, I was asked for my credit card info and I just clicked out. I was not going to give any money for a vote or give my financial info.
I'm glad you are digging into this.
The blank photo. 🤦🏽♀️
You're awesome for speaking out about this
Your content is so good, I always look forward to when you post! I swear I click so fast 😅 it's so nice to see young confident women talking about being heavily tattooed and proud. Unfortunately in my life none of my family are supportive and really hate my tattoos and make it blatantly clear which is quite upsetting. You're videos make me feel like I belong ❤
I participated the past 2 years & got to "2nd place" this year...5th place year before. It was completely a scam & the only reason I did it again in 2023 was because I forgot I actually did it the year before. As a seperated DV survivor & sahm single mother 3 starting over with my 2 youngest & one special needs this would've been my new beginning. However I feel completely lied to, stolen from, embarrassed, & sorry for anyone who supported me in the competition. Smh also in the beginning when you gave the big FU to them & decided to dive deeper into it I was like yassssss 😂🖤
This reminds me of the Alternative Model Of The Year contest that used to run here in the UK (looks like it no longer exists as they’ve vanished off the face of the planet). You paid a fee to take part - I think it was mainly to cover costs of photographers, the building, things like that, which was fair and it wasn’t like it was extortionate amounts of money at the time. Started at about £20 and went up to about £50 or so (you paid more if you wanted to come away with more photos etc).
But I always noticed it was conventionally attractive, slim, white women that always got through. And many of them were barely goth/alternative to begin with. In later years there was the token man or black woman that would get through to the finals. But it would literally be, like, one maybe two at most.
Always thought it was a bit shady especially when the winner would get signed to a modelling agency then would never be seen or heard from again. They never seemed to do anything of note after winning.
I entered and the first time I posted about voting I had five different friends reach out about how the contest was a scam. I immediately stopped promoting anything for it and still managed to get pretty far in my group??? I’m glad people are getting more aware and it encourages people to not waste their time/money but it’s so sad at the same time.
Feels a bit like what happened with SuicideGirls. Just got increasingly mainstream looking and costly to take part.
Came for the scam, stayed for the tattoos, subbed for the ASMResque voice!
me super confused on how I wasn't subscribed to you- I subed now lol
Love your videos you have such a soothing talking voice
Charly's lack of followers is due to the fact that she has only 19 posts and clearly isn't really putting any work into her social media, so it's hard to assess if the 1800 follower bump can be attributed to winning the contest or not. IF (and to your point, this is unverifiable) she spent $24K to win that contest, she would still be $1K ahead upon winning, and that would seem like enough of a buy-in to a win a contest of that limited size.
Lacking transparency and charging for entries makes them a target for class action and federal oversight for sure.
Good, informative video!
One of the many things that bothers me about the contest is that theres not a Cover Boy version. Men have tattoos too and lots would wanna be on the cover!
A friend is doing this and I want to support her... but I also want to tell her not to sweat this thing without being negative as I've seen this same exact voting scam elsewhere =/
Yes this is a scam. It's just a contest to see who has the most money and it looks like Inked doesn't deliver on their promise! Inked is crazy to think their emails are going to make them look good.
Well done having the integrity to refuse.enjoy this channel as so relaxing.💙uk
YESSSS CELLE!!!! 👏 clap back at ‘em!!! My fav video of yours to date 🥰✨
Great video! I am a musician in a metal band. There are many similar scams in the indie music scene 📚
I am heavily tattooed and African American and actually did professional photo shoots as well. I did the contest several years ago and had family voting etc. didn’t win of course but then my “friend” who’s Caucasian did the same contest a few years back and I tried to tell her it was rigged especially for women of color and she thought I was jealous , ignored me…then created a group me to spam her other friends and me to vote everyday 🙃🙃🙃 ignoring my suggestions and seeing her friend who’s black being treated differently by the company, I digress. She didn’t win and I could tell she was embarrassed we barely speak now and she stopped talking about the competition after that.
📚📚📚 wow just found u and I’m in love w you and your videos 📚📚📚
I participated in the most recent one, told me I was ranked 12, then never heard anything again. I hope none of my friends or family paid for any votes. I’m a single mom, about to begin another battle with brain cancer, winning that would’ve been HUGE. I was kinda surprised that I was ranked that high because I didn’t have any professional pics to enter. They were all phone pics. I hope no one gets screwed over too badly.
Reached out to Ink through email. They were transparent on how many groups but could not be transparent on how many votes per contestant due to "privacy policy". They had way more than 10k contestants from the start. In what they call, "final group" that ends today there are 2016 groups with 5 people in each competing for # 1 in their group. 2016 GROUPS. And this contest has been going on for weeks. There were over 50 people per group at the start. 2016 x 50 people, that 100,800 people. Now take that x $100 average/person probably bought votes=$10,080,00 minus the 25% donated to musicare that leaves them with $7,560,000 just in the first round. And Winner gets $25k plus some perks maybe = to$50k???
One of my friends entered this comp a couple years or so ago. I started getting suspicious when we all got a winner’s high off her moving up the ranks for a while and then her movement plateaued and she didn’t make it despite the community she had voting for her. I remember there being a payment option and it thoroughly annoyed me because I’ve signed up to vote for plenty of friends in competitions before and inked was the ONLY one that had a payment option. The only other one that had a booster was one where if you made an account with the website you could vote an X numbers of times per day more than the once a day.
Celle est you have so much ink now wow! It's been a min since I've had time to watch your videos. You look amazing as always. Better slow down or you are going to run out of skin for more ink soon at your rate! Nice work busy body. Stay on it. You are such an inspiration. 📚
I can speak for the girls that said they were only there for the money and tattoo: I came across an ad that only said, "Enter to win a tattoo by Ryan Ashley!" and I thought that was rad. After I started the entry, it then revealed itself to be the Inked Covergirl competition, and once I realized it was a pay-for-votes deal, I was out. 📚
any voting by the public contest is scammy. it doesnt matter if you deserve it, it matters how many ‘friends’ you have. to be real, only inked mag execs/experts should vote period.
Youre so right! I can't think of any of the winner's names or what they look like. 😮 What a wild ride this video was. I was thinking of entering someday but 😬😬... naw.
Thank you for making this video!
OMG, I don't feel bad for anyone who tries to win a contest by buying votes, I dont feel bad for anyone person who enters a contest and gets butthurt when they don't win, and at the end of the day Inked IS a privately owned magazine who doesn't "represent" anything or anyone other than its shareholders.
Always enjoy the videos 📚
Thank you for sharing researched information that gets the truth out and helps peers make better informed decisions. 📚
I’ve seen many different contests like this before also. One of my friends collects sneakers and I guess he is part of the community, and somehow he was put into a contest formatted exactly the same way. If he won he would get to help design some sort of sneaker. Another friend of mine is also growing his name as a pianist and participated in another contest… formatted exactly the same way… but for piano artists. I’m starting to see a trend here and I think this is something much larger than just Inked.
First time seeing one of your videos, and this is both interesting and informative, although I would suggest you take up the Inked President on his offer to "talk about the contest," although not on his offers. I think it would be interesting to see if he would be willing to be interviewed by you on this topic as well as what he would be willing to say about it. Yes, more than likely he only wants to get you to stop criticizing them, but who knows, it couldn't hurt to try
I wouldn’t want to win if I had to ‘ buy ‘ the win. Sad. Women and ALL people are “ who “ you are. Not how you look. Love and accept your inside self first. Blessings 🙏🙏🙏🕊🕊🕊
"Endorsements" for sorta hush money, now surely it's INKpossible it's not a scam. Good on you for saying no!
So I'm a part of the competition now. And this is really interesting. The woman who won last year is from my state so I thought it was legit. My husband kept telling me that he was really skeptical. Now cousin paid for some votes. I ended up being in 3rd for the last two weeks and the other day dropped to 4th. What's frustrating to me is the girl in 1st in my group seems to be a fake person. She has no posts on her social media or on her Inked profile but has remained in 1st the whole time which to me makes no sense. I don't know how to feel about all of this. I'm really hoping God keeps giving me clarity. 😢 📚
We have a similar situation in our country. Not moneywise, but I did the first photoshoot for an alternative online magazine back in the day. Now it is almost soft p*rn page when girls often do not have any tattoos, just when they show more skin, they are in. DUH.
Inked magazine has become pretty terrible even before the competition. Its more about modeling than ink. There is a reason i havent purchased the rag in years. This just confirms my bias. Thank you for bringing it to the public.
A recession? We've been in a recession for so long it technically classifies as a depression. The money from this competition would help so many people, and letting anyone pour their money into it is such a sad thing. This really isnt a "competition" in the first place.
The person who said she was embarrassed for not winning, that's literally every competition ever made, only one person wins
Id find it embarrassing that people paid for this on my behalf or if I had paid money
Thanks for sharing ❤ This is the era of authenticity, let's keep talking. I do not have THAT emoji here 😢 I'm not real.
Great post. Love your tattoos!
I appreciate this because she is a woman who stood up for her rights and don't need a man's opinion on her video or a female opinion
I have a theory that one company runs all these cover girl (people) scams. Bartenders, best baker, best hair dresser, etc. I tried maxims and have an entire script for a video on my experience. Just haven't filmed it yet.
There's should not be any paid vote. PERIOD. You are essentially buying a spot not knowing if you will win. Sadly this is not the only one. There is a competition called "Americans Favorite Pet" competition. It is a competition where they choose one cat and one dog and they will get featured on the magazine and $5k award. They also take paid vote. The more you "donate", the more votes you got. You need get a certification to certify that your money had went to a specific shelter. Ended up many people may hundreds or thousands of dollars just to be dumbfounded that they fell off the top ten list. It boggles my mind that there's no laws against it. It is absolutely morally incorrectly though.
I don't have any tattoos, but I enjoy the tattoo culture. I also enjoy the content on your channel. ✌🏾📚
- inserts book emoji but is watching on a desktop (surprisingly) lmfao.