Let me explain this slowly, because if you blinked for five minutes in June, you might’ve missed the moment humanity officially gave up pretending it had standards.
An actress, Sydney Sweeney, famous, attractive, very online-adjacent, partnered with a men’s grooming company called Dr Squatch to release a limited-edition bar of soap. Five thousand bars. Eight dollars each. And the marketing hook, the thing that made the internet lose its goddamn mind, was that the soap allegedly contained her bathwater. Not metaphorical bathwater. Not “inspired by.” Actual, maybe, possibly, wink-wink bathwater.
And before anyone starts screaming, here’s the important part: there was never any proof. No lab results. No verification. No sacred Bath Certificate of Authenticity. Just implication, suggestion, and a horny internet filling in the blanks like it always does. The soap dropped, the websites crashed, the bars sold out in seconds, and immediately started reselling online for anywhere between a hundred bucks and numbers that suggest someone should be evaluated professionally.
That’s the story. That’s it. A bar of soap, a rumor, and millions of people collectively short-circuiting.
Now, if you’re asking yourself, “Why the fuck did this happen?” congratulations, you’re still conscious. Because this wasn’t about hygiene.
Nobody bought soap to wash their ass.
They bought it to wash their imagination. To own a story. To feel one inch closer to a fantasy they’ve been renting in their head for free.
This is what we do now. We don’t have sex culture, we have horny culture. And horny culture isn’t about pleasure. It’s about consumption. It’s about turning desire into a product, stripping out the human messiness, and selling it back to people in neat little boxes with tracking numbers.
See, sex used to involve another person. Risk. Rejection. Conversation. Now? You can just buy the idea of intimacy with neither eye contact nor accountability. Just a credit card and a quiet little fantasy that nobody’s allowed to question because it’s all “just a sick fucking joke.”
That’s how this shit survives. Everything’s a joke. Irony is the condom we put on bad ideas so we don’t catch responsibility.
And here’s the real punchline: it doesn’t matter if the soap actually had bathwater in it. It could’ve been regular factory soap with celebrity vibes sprayed on top. Half the bars reselling now could be fake. Some guy in a garage could be pouring a pile of human shit into molds and laughing all the way to the bank. But horny culture doesn’t care about truth. It never has. It runs on implication. On “maybe.” On plausible fantasy.
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As long as the perverted little hamster wheel in the brain spins, the transaction is complete.
And don’t act surprised. We trained ourselves for this. Years of scrolling thirst traps. Years of influencers monetizing “access.” Years of pornified everything, ads, fitness, cooking videos, weather forecasts, probably fucking tax tutorials by now. You marinate a society in that long enough, and of course they’ll line up to buy soap that whispers, “Someone hot once existed near this.”
What really cracks me up is the fake moral outrage. People yelling about “the decline of society” like this came out of nowhere. Like we didn’t build an entire economy around attention, arousal, and scarcity. Like we didn’t reward the dumbest, loudest, horniest shit with the most visibility.
This isn’t degeneracy sneaking in through the back door. This is degeneracy walking through the front entrance with a brand deal and a fucking barcode.
1And the companies know it. That’s why it was limited. That’s why it sold out instantly. Scarcity turns stupidity into urgency. You don’t even have time to ask, “Why am I buying this?” You just panic-buy and figure out the justification later. That’s modern consumer psychology in a nutshell.
Here’s the saddest part: nobody was shocked. Not really. There was laughter, sure. Memes. Think pieces. But deep down, everyone went, “Yeah. That sounds right.” A bar of soap caused more cultural conversation than most elections. That tells you everything you need to know about where we’re at.
This isn’t about Sydney Sweeney. She didn’t invent this. She just held up a mirror and let the internet scream at its own reflection. Replace her name with anyone else and it still works. Because the system doesn’t care who you are, just how badly people want you.
So no, humanity isn’t doomed because of soap. Humanity was doomed when it decided intimacy was easier to buy than build. When desire became something you outsource instead of understand. When we stopped asking questions and started clicking “Add to Cart” instead.
The bathwater didn’t corrupt anyone.
It just confirmed the diagnosis.
And if you think this is the bottom?
Oh, you sweet, optimistic bastard.
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