Looking at the first extremely graphic video above — showing the draining of some sort of swollen mass located underneath a person’s tattoo by medical staff — may steer you away from ever getting a tattoo, lest it ever end up like that.

Whether it’s actually a common depiction of a tattoo infection is a different story, though, since the person’s tattoo doesn’t appear to be recent, meaning the infection might not even be a result of the tattoo itself. The video’s obscure origins, from a 2013 posting on LiveLeaks , don’t offer any clarity as to the person’s unfortunate circumstances either.

But that isn’t to say that tattoo infections don’t happen, especially with tattooing becoming increasingly popular, nor that other, almost as equally disturbing, videos showing these infections don’t exist, such as the second video shown above.

As Medical Daily has previously reported, one in every five Americans have at least one tattoo to their credit, often times on their arms, and the risk of infection, while slight, is still ever present. Just last year, the FDA warned consumers to steer clear of certain home use ink kits marketed by the company White and Blue Lion, Inc after they discovered bacterial contamination in several of their unopened ink bottles — that contamination eventually led to a recall of their bottled inks by the company.

Even without direct contamination, no tattoo is ever infection-proof, seeing as tattooing is essentially the equivalent of wounding your skin repeatedly with colored ink. But there are definitely steps you can take before and after you get a tattoo to lower the chances of infection.

As the FDA advises, you should make sure to obtain your tattoo from a licensed professional who only uses inks that have identifiable brand or manufacturers’ names and expiration dates, and who sterilize their needles.

But what about afterwards? How can you tell if your tattoo has become infected? As tattoo artist Brandon Bond explains in the third YouTube video shown above, there are some simple tell-tale signs of infection, including hot to the touch skin where the tattoo lies, redness that extends past the tattoo site, and a (sometimes smelly) discharge of oozing pus.

One thing that isn’t a sign of infection is a clear or whitish discharge from the tattoo; that’s actually just the plasma expelled by the body in an attempt to heal the wound. Routinely washing your tattoo dry, airing it out, and applying aftercare ointment will prevent your skin from excessively scabbing over.

Should you suspect an infection, the most prudent thing is to simply visit your dermatologist to be safe, though visiting your tattoo artist can also help you figure out if it’s really something to worry about.

And though it should go without saying, you shouldn’t probably try to drain any infected tattoos on your own and put a video of that on YouTube. You’d only make everyone else who watches it just as miserable as you.