I actually remember some guys doing something similar when I was in grade 4. A couple of the 'tough kids' told everybody that if you cut words into your arm with a razor blade and then rubbed salt on it, you'd get a permanent scar of whatever you wrote. That was in 1978, in Adelaide (the City of Churches) in Australia. A very conservative city overall. They were the only 2 in the class who did it. They also pierced their ears with safety pins. Maybe a punk thing at the time.
I knew both 'tough kids' had pretty bad home lives and I think they both ended up having trouble with the police as they got older. I'm not trying to make a value judgment here. Just noting that this sort of thing may have happened in isolation for longer than we realise and perhaps the media hype every time this sort of thing happens is partly to blame for our concerns that kids these days are so much worse than before.
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