I thought we could start up a little section called: What went wrong?

Where I grab a picture from the internet and we go through the reasons why that piercing went wrong.

Today’s edition: This failed industrial

Now let’s see, what went wrong?
First some basic information on industrials: industrials are two piercings connected together with a bar. Most common one connects the front part of your helix to where a standard helix piercing would usually go. But there are others like conch to conch, rook to conch, top helix to conch, etc., but whether they can be done safely and if they will last will depend on your anatomy.

Industrials are extremely anatomy dependent: for the “standard” one you’ll need enough ridge on the front and on the back of your helix to be able to get pierced, and the flat part of the ear needs to be, well, flat enough that the bar won’t rub against it.
Industrials need to be pierced with the bar in, you cannot do the two piercings and connect them later on, because you need the angles to align from the get-go.

So, what happened to this poor fella?
• For starters, this looks too tilted for an industrial. While I did tell you there are many configurations for industrials depending on your anatomy, you usually want piercings to lay 90 degrees from your skin. If that can’t be achieved with the standard straight bar, then your piercer can custom bend it to sit right, but right now the “back” part of this industrial is exiting at a very weird angle, meaning irritation bump city (if not straight away migration like you see happening here).
• Then there’s the part about anatomy. If this person got pierced like this because the bar otherwise bumped into their flat, it means they shouldn’t have walked out with a (standard) industrial to begin with (more on this later in the "how to fix" section).
• So, instead of putting the bar horizontally, this person got this angled thing. The bar may not rub now on their flat, but they were pierced in a place where they don’t have enough of a ridge to support the piercing.
• Consequently, they are facing migration and rejection. This is one snag away from ripping out.
• Even if this were done right, which we established its not, that bar is way to long, even for swelling. And even if the piercing did swell that much, it should have definitely been downsized by now. This probably made everything worse, by making the piercing more prone to movement and snagging, accelerating the rejection process. DOWNSIZE PEOPLE PLEASE.

How to fix it?
There is more than one way to go about this, but one thing is for sure: the bar needs to come out before it rips what’s left of that cartilage.
The owner of this piercing could opt to keep the top part as a single piercing if that’s not giving them any trouble. But what if they really want an industrial?
Well, two possible solutions:

1- Get two different piercings, wait for them to heal, then join them together with a chain (look up chain industrials to get an idea how it looks, very cool in my opinion). This one is a relatively easy fix because it only requires patience when healing the two, and then you no longer have any issues if your flat is not flat enough for the usual bar.

2- Other solution is, get a custom industrial. Either by custom bending a bar to fit your unique anatomy, and/or making the piercing come out from an alternative location (you can look up “floating industrials” to see industrials that come out from the scapha instead of the helix). That could be really useful if, for example, you don’t have enough of a ridge in your helix.

2.2-There’s also all the different industrial configurations we mentioned at the beginning of this post, some of them don’t even go through the helix at all. While these are all, as well, very anatomy dependent, who knows! You may have the anatomy for one of them, or you could work with your piercer to find a unique industrial placement that’s the right one for you. The only downside to custom industrials, is that not every piercer is willing or knowledgeable enough to do them, you need to find someone who specializes in that kind of work and has the equipment to either custom bend jewerly or buys quality brands that sell custom industrial pieces.

My final advice when it comes to industrials is to always go to professionals with (well executed, good quality) custom industrials in their portafolio, even if you are only looking to get the standard industrial. Why? Because then you can be sure that, in the unfortunate case you don't have the anatomy to get it, this person will try to work with you to find alternatives instead of just doing it and taking your money for something that will not last.

REMINDER: For now, I’m using this magazine to gather some nice resources that helped me as a pierceé, to research and advocate for myself and get quality piercings done by proper professionals. IM NOT A PIERCER, but I did take my time to research and ask piercers on different issues.
If you are a piercer migrating from reddit (or just came upon this page) and want to take over this space, you are more than welcome, you probably know more than me!