Yes, this article is exactly about what you think it is about. If you are a human being with a rectum, please read on.

🏗 Challenging foundations

We tend to optimize only at the edges. We take foundations for granted and rarely challenge them. That’s exactly the point Peter Thiel is making with the US constitution: “after ratifying the Bill of Rights in 1791, we’ve amended the Constitution only 17 times […] Another constitutional convention is unlikely; today we debate only smaller questions”.

Some things are older than states or countries though. And the older and deeper engraved they are, the more taxing it is for our brains to challenge them.

One of these things that we do begrudgingly almost every day is wiping. And I put it to you that we are really not challenging it.

🧻 The elephant in the (bath)room

Dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, washing machine… these appliances made our life better: they saved us time on unpleasant things (your mileage might vary, of course).

Time being our most valuable asset. Wasting it on unpleasant endeavours is downright grotesque.

In most of the western world, one action that we do more often than any other, is yet to get its modern replacement: the gruelling toilet paper cleaning ritual. And when I say “we” I mean everyone, whether you’re at the bottom of the food chain, a crypto-millionaire with 5 Autoglyphs or an Elon Musk.

It’s so outrageous that I can barely put my thoughts in order… We clean our butt manually the same way pharaohs would do it with papyrus… This is akin not only to not have a dishwasher for dishes, but also cleaning plates with DRY paper — not a single person would think of it as a reasonable idea.

And yet… Here we are in 2021… Still using these dry rolls, attempting to wipe our popotin, never enjoying the process and with obvious poor results:

• Paper wasted
• Water wasted (more stuff to get rid off)
• Irritation
• Dirty hands and/or underwear
• More water wasted to clean them
• Bad hygiene
• Reducing self-confidence
• Nasty things like haemorrhoids
• Useless for constipation cases
• Overall grimness…

Can you imagine when humans finally settle on Mars and in the planet basecamp you have these toilets with toilet paper? Really?!

I’m still haunted by the images of last year when people were fighting to get the last packs of toilet paper during lockdowns… How dumb can these people be? Clearly that should have been the last thing they worry about if they had a shower at home!

💦 Experience reports

It was the sweet pre-pandemic summer of 2019 and I was staying at a friend’s Airbnb in Palo Alto. In the main bathroom there was this toilet add-on called Smart Bidet. What is it? I’m European so I don’t have to sugarcoat: it’s an adjustable nozzle shooting pressurised jets of water right into your anus.

First reaction of a typical dumb man: “lol what is this? i don’t need it, that’s useless!”.

Then, one day, the aforementioned dumb man tries it… And like driving a Tesla for the first time, after 5 seconds he becomes an evangelist. A smart bidet evangelist.

Wow this liberating feeling of washing away even your darkest toilet sins with a stream of water, followed by a whizz of air to dry it up… NO. WORDS.

🕵️ Who killed the bidet?

Before meeting with this smart bidet, I had previously been introduced to normal bidets at my grand-parent’s houses. I remember using them to clean my feet, but never for their main purpose.

We almost had it, but somehow bidets were rejected, deemed useless, or old-fashion, de mauvais gout… There must be a reason…

The bidet was allegedly a half-baked solution: not comfortable, still requiring manual work, and took more space in the bathrooms for little added value compared to showers. And somehow it progressively disappeared.

Or did we just unearth the biggest conspiracy of all?! 👹

The toilet paper industry is apparently moving billions: “The global toilet paper market size was USD 26.14 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 38.34 billion by 2027”.

Forget about 5G or chemtrails: evil companies made you believe you needed toilet paper, not bidets, so they could make billions of legacy fiat currency on your ever-dirty rectums! (and accelerating deforestation in the meantime).

💩 Let’s get shit done

Okay, let’s get serious. It’s high time we changed our foundations, and made an amendment to our hygiene constitution.

We cherish being on the toilet, it’s the one moment when other people cannot (or should not!) disturb you. We do various things like reading, sudokus, and most of all playing with our smartphones. So we want to keep toilets, but replacing partially or completely the bloody rolls. What are our options?

Progressive enhancement

It’s about installing a new layer on your toilet seat, and plugging it to the water system of the flush. This option will take us mainstream, maybe the same way hybrid cars paved the way for electric vehicles.

Pros: easy to install, easy to use, cheap (depending on the features).

Cons: basic, add-on design (one-size-fits-all inconvenients).

Fresh start

Let’s say you have the luxury to build a new bathroom from scratch. Then you can go with more integrated solutions.

Pros: looks nicer and more legit (efficient jets and dryer).

Cons: new installation required, pricey.

Japanese madness

One picture to say it all.

Pros: madness.

Cons: madness.

🥌 Bonus: embrace slippery slopes

As you can imagine I discussed this topic with many people, since everybody can rightfully have an opinion on the matter. What I realised is that the entire funnel of the turd is full of friction. In this article we touched on the “toilet paper” step, but there are two things that can be disrupted as well:

Butt hair

Empiric data suggests that a hair-less rectum is way easier to wipe. Butt how? A friend of mine (who asked to remain anonymous) took the time to classify in three ways of doing so. In his own words:

• Russian way: stuff your rectum with depilatory cream
  • pros: efficient
  • cons: headaches caused by chemical products absorbed by the mucous membrane
• Finnish way: use a razor blade
  • pros: no headaches
  • cons: requires extreme precision or external help
• Slovakian way: go with scissors
  • pros: simpler
  • cons: less clean

The shrewd reader might point out that this sadly need on-going maintenance, meaning more time taken away from us. The laser could be the obvious fourth option here. DYOR.

Toilet bowl

I could write another article just on this one, because toilet bowls might be at the epicenter of another conspiracy: how on earth some toilet bowls have a flat part, basically getting dirty 90% of the time?!

But fear no more, this company (that I discovered at YC that same summer of 2019) is manufacturing coating for toilet bowls that make them super duper slippery: “sludge-like materials” slide down the bowl without leaving a stain. Get it here and let them drive the turd home:

👽 Feature request: gut-less humans

We fixed this toilet paper farce, but this is still suboptimal: we still have to go to the bathroom to produce human waste. Please evolution, do something! My suggestions:

1. Inspired by wombats, we could accumulate cubes of dry and compact poops for easy disposal once in a while (making the tough compromise of not having these pleasant toilet private moments anymore)
2. While I’m writing this and trying to think deeply about the simplest option: what about putting everything in the micturition? This would be great. Peeing is great.
3. Maybe we cannot just optimize at the edges and we have to go crypto style, rethinking foundations with a new paradigm: gut-less humans!

🚽 Think about it every day

I hope you’re reading this while defecating.

I hope the ensuing wiping session to be a toilet paper fiasco.

I hope you immediately research one of these smart bidets options.

You will thank me later.

PD: if you’re a startup working on this, please let me know, I want to invest.

PD2: if you’re still sold on toilet paper, I want to hear your points, I want to know the enemy better 😜