WHY DRY PAPER IS A WAR CRIME, EXPLAINED.

A brief, angry survey of a hygiene product that has been failing you since the invention of the flush toilet.

Take a moment. Really sit with this. Right now, at this very second, hundreds of millions of adults — grown people with jobs and mortgages and opinions about mattresses — are attempting to clean their own asses with a dry piece of paper.

This is objectively insane.

You would never wash a dish with a dry napkin. You would never clean a countertop with a dry paper towel. You would never approach any other cleaning task on Earth by grabbing something dry and hoping for the best. And yet, when the substance in question is human waste, in the most sensitive area of your body, the accepted global protocol is: dry paper. Rub. Hope.

A brief history of the crime.

Toilet paper as we know it was invented in 1857 by a man named Joseph Gayetty. He sold it in flat sheets, treated with aloe, marketed for its medicinal properties. In other words: the original toilet paper was WET. It was already medicated. Joseph Gayetty understood.

Somewhere between 1857 and 1890, someone — we don’t know who, but we would like a word — removed the medication, wound the paper onto a roll, and shipped it as the finished product. This has been the standard for 130 years. This is what your great-great-grandparents used. This is what you use.

A hundred and thirty years without a serious upgrade to the most-used cleaning method for the most-used part of your body. That’s the crime.

The physics.

Dry paper works by mechanical friction — it drags residue off skin. The problem is that residue is not evenly distributed, dry paper isn’t particularly absorbent, and skin isn’t flat. What actually happens: dry paper smears, tears, and leaves ~40% of what you’re trying to remove behind. Not our numbers. Look it up.

Water and mild surfactants dissolve residue instead of dragging it. That’s just how cleaning works. Every other cleaning task in your life uses this principle. Only your ass is being asked to make an exception.

Why nobody talks about it.

Because it’s awkward. Because acknowledging the problem means acknowledging you have a butt, which for some reason is still a controversial position in polite conversation. Because the toilet paper industry is a $10 billion machine that would prefer you keep buying.

Meanwhile, most of the world has already moved on. Japan has bidets. France has bidets. Half of Europe has bidets. Americans are out here in 2026 dry-rubbing themselves clean and wondering why they don’t feel great.

What to do about it.

The good news: you don’t have to remodel your bathroom. You don’t have to install a bidet. You just have to switch from dry paper to a wet, flushable wipe. Every study on this comes back the same way. Wet cleans better. Every plumber will confirm.

The bad news: you’ve been walking around dirty for years. That part’s on you now. But you can start fixing it today.