Wet a Piece of Toilet Paper? It's no subsitute

One of the most common responses we're getting lately is that wet-wipes are unnecessary because wetting a piece of paper is easier. The people who're making these proposals are like our brothers and sisters, because they agree with us in almost every respect. In fact, they are advocating a "wet wipe" too. Though well-intentioned and possibly better than regular dry-TP usage we think their idea still has a few flaws to it. Again, we'd like to stress that fundamentally we are in this together as we recognize that our cultural standards for ass-cleanliness are subpar. Nevertheless, I think wetting your TP is like trying to patch up a pleather vest when you know you need a new wardrobe. It's tough to realize that you need to make a real change, but you'll feel so much better when you do. A few points:

1. Spitting on TP won't get it moist enough to do a good job. Spit, while it will do in a pinch creates an additional problem (I usually don't want spit rubbed on me anyway) as well as being insufficient as an ultimate solution.

2. Doing the awkward shuffle to the sink, pants around your ankles to get to the sink is no fun. It causes your butt-cheeks to rub together as you walk, which spreads the mess and is uncomfortable.

3. When wetting the paper at a sink, there is the problem of achieving the right level of wetness: as anyone who has tried this will know it's easy to wind up with an overly-wet spitwad-thing someone would throw at a chalkboard. If you have to do it over (and especially using a sink that has a high spray volume) you're wasting paper.

4. Toilet Paper is far too fragile to wet and clean with. This is why drying your hands with toilet paper sucks, this is why you use paper towels in the kitchen instead of TP, and this is why you shouldn't do yourself the misfortune of thinking that it's better than a wetwipe. Everyone here can read the subtext, but I'll quote thoughtful commenter Bethany to clarify: "I think the problem here is that wet TP tends to fall apart very easily as it's made to do when you flush it... Wet wipes don't disintegrate when they encounter roughness, whereas wet TP leaves little white linty things all over me." You know what that means- you get wet soggy TP spitballs in your butt-crack.


I think everyone knows the other ingredient that would make those little spitwads 50 times worse.

Finally, think about the difference between cleaning your hands after a big rib dinner at Tony Roma's with napkin dipped in water vs. a packaged wetnap. That's not even a fair analogy because napkins are far sturdier than TP but you'd get bits of napkin on your hand anyway. Furthermore, when you use a packaged wetnap you can really press firmly against your skin because of your confidence in the sturdiness. That allows you to really get clean, and it's the reason Tony Roma waiters don't show up with toilet paper and a dish of water and say "here you go, hope you enjoyed your meal."

Would you even try to clean your hands with a dish of water and Toilet paper after ribs? I wouldn't! If some waiter brought that over I'd laugh and say- "okay good one guys, now bring me the wetnap."