Shh, shh. It’s okay, internet. Don’t feel badly. This is what I’m here for.
To remind you about proper cell phone etiquette – from public life to pinching a loaf.
So, let’s review the latter today:
Things that are acceptable to do with your phone on the toilet:
– Check email with your horned rimmed glasses on.
– Post a status to facebook about those super-cerebral ideas you get mid shiz.
– Like photos in your IG feed (more to validate the friends you follow than ’cause the pic’s good)
– Listen to terrible news to feel comparatively better about your life as you sit in traffic fumes.
Things that are NOT acceptable to do with your phone on the toilet:– Use it to wipe yourself (mostly because: ouch.)
– Throw it in the water and flush it (tempting though it is.)
– Call into a business meeting and forget to press mute.
(So the conference call’s punctuated by the sounds of poop grunts and log plunks.)
– Take a picture of your pantless self and upload it online.
You know, out of all the four points on that latter list, I’m going to have to say the last is the worst. Which is awful, because it’s an actual trend now, apparently. The former three I listed deal with things that can be replaced and humiliating human moments exposed to a select few people who – yes, they matter – but they aren’t the entire world. As my favorite go-to quote goes (in that movie about Facebook that Zuck says is total fabrication), the internet’s written in ink, not pencil. So, you upload a picture to yourself to digital oblivion and you’ll never get it back. If it’s just an ugly or embarrassing snap, that’s one thing. That’s another “human” element. But if you make the conscious decision to share something coming out of you (unless you carried it for nine months and it’s sentient), that’s a different thing altogether.
Which leads me to the gender split on this issue: I think that the dudes who do it are coming from a place of “look what I can do!” Because they can’t make babies, it only seems fair that you’d be really proud about the closest thing to labor and delivery you’re ever gonna do. And want to share the whole process with your friends.
(Darling, I say this with love because I care: your eyeballs look like the war vet teacher from Daria from all that straining you’re doing. Calm down. Breathe. Surrender. Let it come to you.)
For chicks, though, it’s less forgivable because it doesn’t feel honest. If you’re gonna share a private moment, then go butt-balls to the porcelain-wall – don’t use it as an excuse for a narcissistic photo-op. The end result is like when pretty girls gurn (make an ugly face) and don’t go full retard because they want to look Tyra level ugg-mug and still get told they’re pretty no matter what face they pull. Similarly, I feel like these girls are showing up in full makeup and giving a false impresh of how to do the deuce, and sharing it with the world.
In a way, that’s a lie that’s almost worse than photoshop.
As for the ick element? Eh, part of me wants to say “why not?” I mean we all take pictures of ourselves making the food go in. Why not capture it’s expulsion into a watery grave as well? Why are we being racist against some bodily functions and not others? It’s not like the actual poop’s being captured. Plenty of people take “suggestive” photos that leave stuff up to the imagination.
While that makes sense logically, I still can’t seem to agree with it.
It’s like my brain and soul are waging war against eachother.
And I’ve tried my hardest to understand why it’s offensive, but the best I can come up with is that while other suggestive pictures usually hide something sexy under their Victorian veil, we all know that the great reveal hiding behind the hashtag of #poopingselfie is something that would make us gag even if we were the ones producing it. And we all know every odiferous body function is exponentially worse when it’s coming out of someone else. So, basically, your picture is an imagination violation – forcing me to experience a hypothetical fetid scent by making my brain fill in the blanks against my will. That’s just egregious.
No matter how sexy you look doing it.
