The smartest question I have ever been asked

One day, I was speaking with a sibling, and I don’t know what we were talking about but I decided to tell them about a YouTube Short I watched. I had recently seen a short that stuck with me because of the absurdity and the novelty of the information presented. The short is titled You’re Not Shampooing Properly! The short makes the claim that you must wet your hair before applying shampoo among other claims. My initial reaction was “wow, this is a dumb video, who doesn’t know how to use shampoo?” But, upon further consideration, I understand that this video was not made for me, it was made for a different audience and I shouldn’t judge because I’m sure there is a plenty of stuff that is “obvious” to other people that I know nothing about. And after I stepped back to look at the video, I realized, that I don’t wet my hair before applying shampoo. I’ve been rawdogging shampoo my whole life. I usually apply the shampoo straight to my head and apply water afterwards.

So I tell my sibling, “yeah, according to this short, you’re supposed to wet your hair before applying shampoo” and he responds “have you actually changed the way you wash your hair?”

Let me repeat the essence of that question back to you. What ,y sibling had just asked me was Are you willing to change your actions in light of new information or do you ignore information that you find inconvenient to your way of life?

Many people on the internet have searched long enough to find information that they reject, purely out of convenience. I’m not talking about politics and trying to debunk information you disagree with whether or not it is true. I’m talking about hearing a new piece of information, accepting it as true, and rejecting it simultaneously.

An Example. Do you wet your toothbrush before or after adding the toothpaste? What if I told you not wetting your toothbrush at all is the method for best results?

Now, I am not stating as a scientific fact that you should or should not wet your toothbrush prior to brushing. But it has been circulated time after time that for best results you should rawdog that toothpaste because water will make the bristles softer. Upon further research it seems that the answer is more complicated for that, if there is a difference between wetting the toothbrush or not, it is a small difference. The most important thing is that you regularly brush your teeth. But if you check forums and pages such as reddit where this claim is often spread, people revolt at the claim. People have absolute disgust at the idea of brushing without water, never claiming that it must not be true, but instead, stating loudly that they don’t care if it is true. The idea is inconvenient to them, the discomfort too great, so they say I don’t care if that will give you better results.

In reality we are everyday running into new information, whether you are washing your clothes wrong, loading the dishwasher wrong, fueling your car wrong, tying your shoes wrong. It can be difficult to navigate this information, some methods of “properly” completing a task will give you the same end result as the improper method you were taught when you were younger. Some information is flat out wrong. But often time, when listening to a professional give a recommendation, people will choose to keep doing what they have been doing. Maybe they don’t want to admit they have been doing something wrong for half their lives, maybe they don’t want to learn a new way of doing something. Deep down, I think it all boils down to us being creatures of habit.

The claim that you should rawdog toothpaste is dubious so let’s start over with a similar example that is actually true. After you brush your teeth, you should spit out the toothpaste but you should NOT rinse your mouth with water. The remaining fluoride needs 30 minute, or ideally 1 hour, to be absorbed into your teeth to strengthen them. Countless people online are appalled at the idea of going around their morning with the taste of toothpaste in their mouth. But now that you have this information, what will you do with it?

But to go back to the smartest questions I have ever been asked, Yes. I do rinse my hair with water before applying shampoo now.

If you are reading this, I hope you are doing good, and if you are not reading this, I hope you are doing better.

If you enjoyed my post, prove you’re human and leave a comment. Let me know what you want to read next. Likes and views are always cool but if you can prove you are not a bot that would make my day. I know I am breaking my rule of only posting twice a week but I think I’m actually going to increase the post frequency until I get a couple regulars on here. For my next post, I will update you all this Tuesday after I donate blood for the first time.