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Friday Fun Thread for June 21, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I don't in fact track in crud off the street. There isn't crud on the street to step in for that matter. So no, it isn't disgusting. My shoes are clean, not dirty.

I suggest an experiment. Buy two identical pairs of white sneakers. Wear the first pair every day. Do not use the other pair. After one week (one month), compare them. Most likely they won't look identical anymore. (It is unlikely but a possibility that you never step outside regularly cleaned indoors spaces, but I find it unlikely.)

There is dust and mud and trace amounts of grime, trash and animal life and occasionally, human life on the sidewalks. Dust is ever present outside where there are cars, despite daily cleaning of streets (which is rare). I know this because of brush my shoes approximately once in a week.

I have sometimes gotten the impression that other people, my neighbors, in roughly the same environment as me, just have a completely different experience with the ground and their shoes than I do.

I run a children's art studio. I wear brown hiking boots there at all times, because there are children stepping on chalk pastels and whatnot. Sometimes a child comes in wearing new white tennis shoes, gets a drop of paint on them, urgently tries to clean them with paper towels, and then cries about it. Every time, I find this incredibly perplexing. These are shoes! That you have chosen to wear to art studio! How is this a surprise!?! And yet it is.

Let's say that there is in fact dirt and dust I don't notice - then is it really a problem? Dirt (as in soil) is not gross, there's no reason to be disgusted if trace amounts get into your house. I don't want my floor to be covered in visible dirt, but an occasional cleaning is plenty to keep that from happening.

Not to attack you, but do you have good vision? I can see house dust, let alone street grit. If I'd just cleaned and a few people walked in straight from the sidewalk in their shoes, I would bet it would be noticeable immediately. Fortunately, my country universally regards shoes in the house as the sign of being born in a pigsty.

Yes and no. My vision is awful without glasses, but it's fine with glasses.

I admit the dry dust is not usually disgusting. When it accumulates, it becomes noticeable and annoying. How annoying, it depends on the choice of the carpets and/or floor material. In a temperate climate, there is usually something else than dry dust, too.

All sort of wet and-or sticky dirt is instantly noticeable and disgusting.

I mean, I don't want mud all over my floor either. But it's not hard to notice if one is stepping in mud and tracking it into the house. In that case I take my shoes off.

There's no mud and dirt on the streets? You never stepped into a public bathroom in your shoes?

I simply don't believe you. It's absurd on its face that your shoes are cleaner than your socks.

Mud and dirt are dirty, but they don't count as "disgusting" or "street crud", and there isn't that much of them on sidewalks or in parking lots.

I do use the bathroom at my office. But that's a single brief visit around the middle of the day. I would expect any residue from that visit to be overwritten by the subsequent hours of dirt from my office's carpet or from the sidewalk and parking lot.

No, there's not dirt and mud on the streets. And public bathrooms are (wait for it) clean where I live. Maybe things around you are just filthy where you live, but not here.

There is obviously dirt on the streets unless the place you live is entirely paved over and there's no cars depositing particles on the street either. Similarly, there is obviously piss on the floor of public bathrooms.

If you truly believe in your heart of hearts that your shoe which you never wash is as clean as a freshly laundered sock you put on that day, I invite you to take a walk around the block a few times in bare feet and see how clean your feet are afterwards.

Neither of those things are obvious, dude.

I've never met someone who doesn't believe in particles before.

Seriously, go barefoot for a day and see how clean your feet are afterwards.