If you feel like you're gonna be like, birthing a fat one, don't be like grunt pushing while you're on the phone. That's weird. ah Nobody wants that. That's some weird noise. Welcome back to privy potty friends. Privy is a podcast about toilets recorded on a toilet. I'm your bathroom enthusiast and host from the hot seat, Hunter Hoover. ah This week, it's kind of exciting. I was able to get the COVID vaccine today. So we're fresh off that.
And ah yeah, it's exciting because hopefully that will allow ah more things to begin to open up and that sort of stuff. that's yeah, that's exciting. We've been driven indoors this week because it has been rainy and so we're looking forward to some sunshine. I'm hoping for that. That would be that would be just wonderful.
But yeah, so I've had a number of conversations with people this week about some interesting bathroom stories and things pertaining to bathrooms and I will gladly share those with y'all. as time goes on and I of course get permission from them. But this week on Privy, we're returning to the etiquette corner and we are going to talk about a situation and a aspect of life that many of us nowadays are probably pretty familiar with.
And that is this idea that we're gonna see is rooted in both psychology and history. but it's only with the modern day changes that have happened that it has really flourished and become uh what it is today. So I wanna set the scene for you. Most of us are not strangers to this scene, but you stand up and you go into the bathroom and you place ham on porcelain pot and you begin to do your thing and then almost as if instinct, stink, instinct, ah almost as if that has kicked in.
Your phone is in your hand. You have reached for your phone. And what you do on your phone while you're sitting on the throne is your business. But the bathroom has become a space where we take time and can find ourselves checking our phone.
And often we end up spending more time in the bathroom on our phone, then we one, realize and two, probably bargain for to where if you set a stopwatch, first of all, the fact if you set a stopwatch would probably cause you to be a lot faster with what you're doing in there. But if you set a stopwatch, it would probably reveal that you are spending a considerable amount of time pooping aided and increased because you have your phone in your hand.
But There have been times and I have to go to the bathroom and I will walk away from the direction of the bathroom to retrieve my phone where it is usually charging and will then turn and go to the bathroom to do and engage in my biological duty. And I don't need to be in there that long. I shouldn't have to have my phone. If I'm not going to be in there that long, why do I need to take electronics with me to do stuff here in this restroom?
But before we look at whether or not we should be taking cell phones or other things into the bathroom, mostly cell phones we're talking about today, we're going to acknowledge and look at the history and a little bit of the psychology of why folks are taking their phones to the bathroom. And so before humans had cell phones, they would do other things in the bathroom. some of which are bodily functions. But the most famous of this is reading.
People would read in the bathroom and whether it's the newspaper, a magazine, Uncle Tom's bathroom reader, bathroom reading is not only a trope, but it's a reality.
And in the beginning, in the beginning, no, in the beginning, people read on the potty for a practical purpose because as you read, Prior to indoor plumbing and as a result our lovely white sheeted friend, the toilet paper, you could read a piece of the newspaper and then as you finished it, you could tear a portion of the paper off and use it to wipe. And toilet paper is one, softer and two, uh more figure forming than most other types of paper. But newspaper isn't bad.
And so if you're reading a newspaper, while taking a poop and you now have to wipe the situation, uh I don't think a newspaper would be a bad option.
So as you're reading the newspaper, you always go to the funnies first, you hit up the funnies, you read some Dilbert, you read some Garfield, you read some Peanuts, and then sometimes you hit some Baby Blues and Pickles, but whatever, and then you rip that noise out and you reach back and you now have associated that with the least conducive part of bathrooming, which is the removal of waste from yourself. And I don't think that that experience would be terrible.
Toilet paper is not, sorry, not toilet paper. Newspaper is not that coarse, it's pretty soft. It's not as soft as toilet paper unless you got somebody stocking some whack toilet paper that should not be used and that's a heinous crime. But yeah, I don't think newspaper would be a bad option. But began to look at their time. in the bathroom as quote extra time in which people of sophistication and learning were expected to not waste time defecating.
And so to do so you would take reading material to better your mind to consume that material while you are ridding yourself of human waste. Thus not losing a second of the day bettering yourself whatever. uh That to me sounds like one of those weird biohack things where these dudes are like, I'm gonna drink a shake so that way I don't have to eat and take time to eat. And if I just drink this liquid, I won't have to eat. To them I say, I'm glad you're saving time.
I hope your shake tastes as good as my pizza, but whatever. um And over time, as more and more folks read and spent time in the bathroom to read the genre, Bathroom reading books and materials that are specifically bathroom reading emerge and essentially the genre refers to any material that is short episodic and lends itself to being able to complete the reading in the amount of time it takes you to finish your deuce.
So you sit down to poop you pull out the reading material you begin to poop you read the reading material you then fold the reading material back up and put it nearby in the bathroom. and you finish your job. First, I never have time to read on the pot. I don't know what my deal is, ah but I'm usually landing the plane as the people are trying to get off, if you know what I'm saying. this is not Hunter's personal experience.
Like I am guilty of taking my phone out in the bathroom, but I do not have time to do a lot on it before I've got to get scooting. So the genre of bathroom reader took off And it seems that whoever Uncle John is saw that the boat was ready and loaded. because to date Uncle John's bathroom readers have sold 15 million copies, 15 million copies of these books that people buy and read while they're pooping. It's crazy.
I mean, you don't have to read it while you're pooping, but like it's literally in the name. So yeah, you can. um But before these bathroom readers, And after newspapers came the introduction of pulp magazines. So pulp magazines were associated with reading in the bathroom or the poop room because they contained racy action packed short stories. That's hard to say. However, they get their name from the cheap uh material that they were printed on.
So they were printed on pretty cheap paper and as a result it had a higher pulp content, which is the like paper or like, I think it's tree pulp that is used to make paper. had a higher count because it was less refined and so they were cheaper to produce, thus pulp stories uh or pulp magazines. Sorry. uh And they are these pulp magazines are a result of their predecessor, the Penny Dreadfuls and Dime novels, which were also printed on uh much less quality of material.
uh Pulp magazines, which often contain fiction, is what lends to the title of the 1994 classic Pulp Fiction, a movie in which John Travolta's character is on the toilet at least three times in the films. And he's there so much that people have wondered why. Why does this movie have this dude on the throne so much? And first, I'll note, he probably has to poop a lot because he uses drugs. intestinal problems can result from drug use. So that's one of it.
But also narratively Travolta goes to and uses the bathroom before something bad happens. So in the film, when we're watching John Travolta's character, he often is getting up and leaving to use the restroom just before something bad or awful happens, sometimes and often to or around his character. And He is seen reading a pulp magazine while dropping a deuce, moments before he is shot to death coming out of the bathroom.
And this scene is a masterpiece and then then zooms in on his pulp fiction and he dead in the bathtub. And so if you haven't seen pulp fiction, ah it's got some profanity and that's saying it lightly, but it is worth the watch. If anything, just to see John Travolta. diet in the bathroom. em not only is there a precedent set for people reading on the toilet, but the habit had entered media. So this wasn't just something that people were doing, but it wasn't in pop culture.
Like now, you know, the trope had entered the movies. John Travolta is reading on the bathroom in Pulp Fiction. So it's a part of the culture as well. But books are different than phones. But they are different in a way that makes them less readily accessible because people carry their phone in their pocket. So it's at hand and easy to get out and get on. And whether you're playing Angry Birds or actually reading a book digitally, people have long sought out something to do on the throne.
That is established. People have been reading on the bathroom for a considerable amount of time since there have been bathrooms. And because phones are so convenient and we can take them in and out and take them with us beyond the confines of the bathroom, people have gravitated toward the smartphone in that convenience.
So now that we've looked at just a brief history of like people doing stuff on the bathroom that is not bathroom-ing, specifically reading, we can see how that lends to the natural flow of like, well, if I can just have my phone. I'm not going to read. I'm going to be thinking around on my phone. But we need to briefly look at the psychology of why our phones end up in our hands. So for a long time, psychology thought we read to compensate for the fact that we were doing something unspeakable.
And I don't know how well I don't know how bad their bowel movements were like 100 plus years ago where they thought that like what you did in the bathroom was unspeakable. But man, they must have been wild because like And maybe I'm just a weirdo. But I have, like I mentioned in beginning, I have countless conversations a week about the things that go on in the bathroom, both with myself and other people. And so the idea that those things are unspeakable is just lost to me.
So either theirs were heinous or they were more cultured, but it's probably the more cultured one. Anyway, but for a long time, they thought that because you were doing something unspeakable, they would read and do something that was considered highbrow and cultured. to compensate for the unspeakable thing that they were doing. And so later it was believed to... uh So you put the good in when you send the bad out. This is hocus pocus hogwash, whatever.
Later on, it was believed to be a symptom of childhood trauma. And I will tell you, I am not a psychologist. No, I'm not. So I think this has more, but if I would venture a guess... I would guess that this has more to do about the amount of control a person has while in the bathroom. But what do I know?
Like if you don't have a control about a lot of the things in your environment, but you can control your time in the bathroom, maybe you take that time to read and do the things that you wish you could do outside the bathroom. I don't know. More pertinent to the psychology of phones on the throne is the human capacity for being very bad at being bored. We want something to occupy ourselves in books and newspapers and magazines and now our phones fit the bill perfectly.
Because, God forbid we go a few minutes without doing something. You know what saying? Like, how dare us not be engaged and occupied mentally with something all the time. and that, you know, you can see that trends back to this idea that like, we don't wanna waste time, we don't wanna lose time. When am I going to play Candy Crush? I don't know if people still play Candy Crush, but when am I going to play that if not while I can't do anything else?
So phones being readily more accessible from the bathroom and more addictive, I would argue, than books find their way into our hand when our cheeks find their way to the plopper. And so in the context for where it came from and context for why it came, from there, a study by Verizon Wireless done in 2015, which not that long ago, showed that at least 90%, 90%, nine zero percent sign of cell phone owners admitted to using their phone while on the pooper. 90%, that's a passing grade.
But this is not something that we should have a passing grade on. And I know that there are some who are not going to admit that noise. That's the crazy thing. Like if you walk down on the street with a clipboard and said, Hey bud, uh, Hey friendo, do you use your phone while you're defecating in your toilet? I would guarantee you 90 % of people are not going to say yes to that. So the fact that they got 90 % as a finding. I guarantee you that number is higher.
I guarantee you that that number is higher. But anyway, so people are doing it, obviously. People are on their phones while they're on the bathroom. That much is clear. It's been done in history with books and other things. It has psychology of like, we're addicted to our phones, so why not use it when our brain isn't focused on something else? The stats are in. It's happening. But now the question is, should we be on our phones when we're on our thrones?
And there are some guiding principles of phone use etiquette for when we find ourselves with the urge to purge. So as far as etiquette goes, phones while you're in the bathroom, first things first, it's pretty well assumed that you should not be on your phone while shooting brown. Mostly, This can be rude to the person you're on the phone with. People don't want to hear that. It's rude to others in the bathroom.
If you're in a public multi-stalled bathroom, other people are not going to want to hear your conversation while they're trying to get rid of their brown. So they want to do their business in peace and that's perfectly acceptable. But here's what I'll say. I have been on the phone while... Sorry, yes. I have been... on the phone talking to somebody while I am using the bathroom. And if you're going to do it, as with most things, get consent from whoever you're on the phone with.
Just say, hey, I gotta go to bathroom. it like I can hang up and call you back or we can just keep this rolling? And, you know, I don't think you'll hear anything. It'll be fine. But wait until it's a quiet moment of the experience. Like, don't flush while you are on the phone, just like. I mean, man, if you're still talking after that, I guess flush and just say, hey, sorry, but like, yeah.
And if you, if you feel like you're going to be like birth in a fat one, don't, don't be like grunt pushing while you're on the phone. That's weird. Uh, nobody wants that. That's, that's some weird noise. But the other etiquette piece here is the fact that using your phone while pooping or being in the toilet or being in that space makes you stay seated longer.
And there's been, there's been findings that like, people have actually developed hemorrhoids because they spend too much time on the phone sitting while they're supposed to be pooping and they forget they're there and then the position, I don't know, it's weird, but it can cause some trouble downstairs. So just be mindful of the amount of time that you're spending doing that.
And if you're gonna be on the phone while you're in the bathroom, be mindful if somebody else is waiting to get into the bathroom, especially if you're in public bathrooms. Because you don't want to be the guy that's just chilling trying to get the whatever figured out on his phone while homie's doing the potty dance outside. That's not great. Seems shady, but there are two other etiquette pieces that are less etiquette and more just public service announcements.
So, the first, if you use your phone in the premises of a toilet, you're running the risk of having that noise slip and take a swim. So if you've got your phone out, And you are, especially if you are standing while peeing, but you can still manage this when you're sitting doing whatever you need to do. You could drop your phone in a place that you do not want your phone, whether that's in the toilet or drop and slide under to the other, like divider. You don't want that.
You don't want that because if somebody is over there doing their business and your phone slides through now, do you want them to pick it up? Do you want them to kick it back to you? Like you have a problem on your hands. It's just safer to like make sure you got a good grip. And I understand there's like pop sockets. I don't use a pop socket, but if that helps you hold on, I guess whatever, but you can still drop it. Those things are not foolproof.
I guess you could get like one of those Wii remote wrist strap things for your phone, but then you're just going to look like a nerd. And I think if you're going to be dragging that around, it's going to be getting pretty gross if you're going into the bathroom with your phone anyway. So don't do it. You have to be careful. because you don't think it can happen. Nobody says, I'm not gonna drop my phone.
Everybody thinks that they're gonna be able hold onto their phone pretty well until they don't. And then it's too late. But if you are likely going to get some fun, this is the other public service announcement, number two, you are likely going to get some fun, new bacterial friends on your phone. And the idea that we bring bacteria out of the bathroom, on our reading material has always been a concern.
However, what they have found is that paper products, such as books, hold bacteria much less than say, I don't know, a shiny metal or glass surface, such as a foam. So the biggest problem is a lot of times our bathroom reading material stays in there. If you have a magazine or a book or whatever it is that you want to read in the bathroom, a lot of times you are not dragging that piece of printed material out of the bathroom with you when you leave.
Usually you're leaving it there, sitting next to the toilet, ready and eagerly awaiting for your next visit to go. Not so with phones. Like, we tote that back, whatever bacteria hops board onto our phone, we tote that bacteria out of the bathroom, riding on the sweet vessel, the SSI phone, ready to do know what's. even after washing your hands, You touch your phone, you were used while pooping, and now your hands are dirty again.
So, use your phone, you're pooping, you use your phone, you do your thing, you put it in your pocket, you wash your hands, you put your phone in your pocket. You're back to square one. but again, 90 % of people use their phone while they're using the bathroom. I am currently in the bathroom with my phone and computer, which don't get me started, I get it, but. despite it being considered possibly rude and despite it being possibly hygienic, 90 % of people are doing this.
So, if those barriers don't seem to be able to produce a change, how do we go on? People are gonna use their phones in the bathroom. So, how do we proceed knowing they will do so? First, use your phone. before you begin the wipe job. So do your business, blast your business, and once you've wiped, do not then grab for your phone again. You're setting yourself up for bacterial failure. This will also keep the scrolling to a minimum. So you do your business while you're pooping.
While it is being ejected from you, you can be on your phone. Then when it is time to begin the cleaning process, your phone should go away. It should. End. Also, even if you follow this, get a Clorox wipe at some point and wipe your phone down after coming out of the bathroom. Because unless you talk on the phone on speaker all the time or have headphones that are make you not have to have it. If you call somebody, you're going to put your phone up to your head.
Inches away from your mouth and nose holes. No. So we want to be courteous. We want to be hygienic, but we also want to take potty shots and play Pokemon Go on the can. So we have to adjust for safety. There's one last, there's one last etiquette piece that should need to be said, but we will. You do not need to share an image or something from your phone to someone else, bathrooming near you while you are bathrooming. You don't need to do that. Share it later. It can wait. Send it as a text.
Do whatever. And if it's somebody that you don't have their number and you can't text it to them, I would argue you didn't need to be sharing that with them in the bathroom anyway. So stop it. No more. Share later. Not while you were doing that. It's whack. Just cut that out. No one wants you to shove your phone into their face while you're doing your thing. In the words of the very wise Dr. Anderson, stop it! Stop it!
Because what do you do if you drop your phone into the other person's journal? You can't come back from that. That's not your pee. That doesn't belong to you. And I would argue that you don't want your phone to belong to you now either. You can't come back from that, so just don't do it. Cut it out. Get some help. That's just general guidelines for phones in the bathroom. And today I wanna share with you another Hunter's Anecdotes to Keep You afloats, brought to you by Phone Use in the Bathroom.
you This week is a story, as I said, about cell phones and bathrooms. Who'd guessed? So, we were, when I was in college, we, in the dorm I was in, we had a communal bathroom. Communal bathrooms are cool. Some people don't like them, whatever. Communal bathrooms are cool. And in the communal bathroom, we have this like stereo where you could plug your phone in if you wanted and listen to music while you were...
Usually showering, but oftentimes you were doing it like, yeah, when you were showering. Rarely people plugged it in when they were pooping, but it would have been a good solution. Yeah. So you plug your phone in while you're showering and you listen to music. Just an FYI, I'm not too terribly big of a fan of like country Western music. It's some people's thing and that's okay. It's not mine. But we have this kind gentleman that lived in the dorms with us.
For the sake of the story, we're going to call this person... Jeremy. Yeah, that seems safe. So Jeremy is using the shower and he plops his phone into the little dock and it starts to play. And my roommate and I, to give you a lowdown, and this, you're going to find that the coming description of where our dorm room was laid out in relation to the bathroom plays a big role in many of the bathroom stories that I gathered from this year of living there.
But our dorm room was directly across the hall from the bathroom. And when you hear that you think, well, I mean, probably not. No, like if I popped our dorm room open and the bathroom door open, which happened frequently, I could look directly back into the showers. Like I could see the back shower where people were showering. Yes. Also, don't, yeah, we'll revisit that because there's another Hunter's Anecdotes that that comes into an awful, awful play for my roommate.
So my roommate and I are in our room and we're doing our homework and we're doing our thing. And Jeremy goes into the bathroom, he plops his phone down into the thing and he turns this country western music up louder than any country western music has ever been played indoors ever before. It is so loud. And so we go in there and we're like, hey Jeremy, like. Can you turn this down a little bit? Like we're directly across the hall and cannot move our room.
Yes, we could have gone somewhere else to study, but we're already set up. Can you turn it down a little bit while you're showering? And he's like, no, it's like he doesn't turn it down to my recollection. He did not turn it down. um That is probably my memory justifying what we did next. So because he did not turn down, we went back to the dorm room and I was like, okay, watch this. So I call Jeremy on my phone and in doing so, it shuts his music off.
And as it's ringing, his music completely fades out and you just hear the disgruntled like, oh, oh, oh, oh, and he's trying to like check and see who's calling him, doing that thing. right as, remember, we can see where the phone is plugged in from our dorm room. Right as he gets out of the shower and just gets close enough to where he's gonna be able to read it, we hang up so he can't see it's us. And he gets in, it's like, oh, missed call, runs back.
doesn't check who called, just goes and gets back in the shower. We do this three times. Call, call, and it just, you know, just cycles to the point where he is just losing his mind because he is trying to have a nice shower with his very loud country western music and we are just calling him over and over in order to stop his music and keep him from playing his music loud and keeping us from getting our homework done. And so...
After we gave this kid grief, he got out of the phone, he dried himself off, he got himself dressed, he sees that it was us, and he just comes into our room all disgruntled, all upset, because we have so rudely called him, he's like, why'd guys do that? And I said, man, you know, we asked you to turn it down, so we handled it the way we did. And that's Hunter's being a jerk. But that's Hunter's anecdotes for keeping you afloat.
If he would have had a CD and not his phone, he could have avoided this, but he didn't. So, tough. As always, yeah, you know, yeah. Don't play music. If somebody asks you to turn your meters down, it's fine. Just be courteous. Whatever. Also, don't disrupt people showering. Hunter, in the past. Don't do that. That's Hunter's Anecdotes to keep you afloat. This is the end of our episode of Privy. um As always, would welcome you. Yeah, listen to Privy while on the throne, it's fine.
um Take those moments before you wipe to leave us a rating or review on iTunes or if your podcast service of choice allows you to. And we will try to read some of those reviews and comments on the show and ratings help get the name of the show out and all that stuff. Take a few minutes to say hello, leave us a comment. or shoot us an email privycast at gmail.com or we're at social media at privycast.
I'd love to hear from you as we continue to try to build this community of people who are just thankful and interested in and enjoy their time with on and around toilets and bathrooms. It's been our pleasure sharing privy space with you today. I'm Hunter Hoover. Thank you for listening. We want to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of Bar Room Ballet. You can find his music at incompetech.com and his music is licensed under copyright Creative Commons 4.0. Thanks Kevin.
We'd also like to thank Pottington Bear for all the colors of the world. You can find Pottington Bear's music at pottingtombare.com. Thank you, Pottington. And now, as always. We say goodbye. Don't forget to flush.