A great many battles have been fought in the world over the years—and nothing comes nearly close to the one where thousands of Redditors come head-on against one another every year. And then, the following year. And so on. With each individual penning hundreds of words in anticipation of another thousand words in response, these battles are difficult to fathom.
The climate change hoaxers come nowhere close. Flat earthers—they are no competition. Ukraine war fades in the background. And even Elon Musk and Donald Trump—and their DOGE bros—haven’t been made aware of their competition.
Each year, as the ritual goes, a quirky Redditor posts a r/unpopularopinion, and a hundred thousand likes and comments follow. Much as the name of the subreddit on which it is usually posted, the opinions are both unpopular and polarising, to say the least. War of words, they call it—and everything over ‘brushing teeth’. No kidding. Everything over brushing their teeth.
Brushing teeth, it seems, is a highly polarising act—both in terms of how it is conducted and what tools such activity entails.
So long ago, perhaps when I was a child, my Indian parents told me that brushing will loosen your teeth soon—and they fall off quickly. But just as I grew older, I dissed it off as a myth. There were other myths, too; I overheard them in school corridors or actively participated in disseminating them. One in particular was how the toothpaste was made by powdering crushed bones. This one, in part, made me repulsive against toothpaste. Recently, I came across this one essay about how people in the olden days cleaned their teeth, and some of those people used wine-soaked toothpicks and urine mouthwash to whiten their teeth. But those days were long gone. Or so I thought.
In recent years, there have been highly sophisticated—all scholarly—debates and disagreements about whether to brush your teeth in the morning, brush them before breakfast, use mouthwash, or even brush at all.
In one Reddit post, the Redditor (who claimed to be ‘a quiet person’ in his bio) wonders: ‘I do not understand why people brush their teeth before breakfast. What are you even brushing off??’ He adds further: ‘The weird sleepy taste in the mouth can be easily rinsed out, and thus is also not a reason, and even so, replacing the sleepy taste with toothpaste is just as bad’. This post has gotten over thirty thousand upvotes and about a thousand comments.
Redditors seem divided on this. Some use one science, and others use another science. Each fighting over which science is scientific. Some Reddit experts claim that brushing in the morning allows fluoride to come in contact with tooth enamel, which naturally helps to form a resistance to acid attacks and tooth decay.
For example, just as a Redditor tells us, ‘When you eat things like candy, crackers or noodles, cavity-causing bacteria starts feasting on the carbohydrates in these foods. This produces acids that attack your enamel… Now, here’s where fluoride is the superhero. When your saliva has fluoride in it from sources like toothpaste or water, your teeth are able to take it in’, making it a more vigorous defence against cavities.
Other Redditors add, ‘but fluoride robs us of our precious bodily fluids’. Another adds: ‘I like to enjoy breakfast without the taste of toothpaste getting in the way’. One brave soul admits: ‘My family thinks I’m crazy! I never thought I would ever meet someone with the same thought process. I always have something to drink first, then eat breakfast, and then brush my teeth’.
In between all this, one conspiracy-creating Redditor adds that ‘dentists use tartar collected from their patients’ mouths to create tartar sauce which they sell to food industry’. Other Redditors outright diss dentists as crooks making money off your teeth—bright, shiny teeth.
With zillions of opinions floating in and another zillion waiting for their turns, it looks like science has gone wild. And, just as we made terms with the post-modern, post-structuralist, post-truth worlds, it is time to say hello to the post-scientific world—we agree to disagree over science now.
And all this was five years ago. And since then, the same question has been asked four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, one year ago, and now recently, to keep up with the Kardashians. There is so much of the same talk about brushing one’s teeth before or after breakfast. I, for one, fall in the ‘before breakfast’ camp. Brushing teeth—the scrubbing sound the brush produces—reminds me of a new day. I brush first, and then the rest of the day begins. But I thought everyone did the same thing when they woke up.
But Redditors do not just disagree on how when they brush their teeth. There is too much variety in how they undertake such a task. One Redditor outrightly calls out brushing: ‘I hate the way my mouth feels after I brush my teeth. It is yucky’. Another one suggests that ‘you don’t need toothpaste to cleanly brush your teeth.’ Another one wonders that ‘people who brush their teeth at work are just…definitely not normal’.
Some are confused about whether to brush their teeth with their mouth opened or closed. Others are forthright about flossing their teeth rather than brushing them. But some Redditors hit back, stating this is factually incorrect. Some suggest that brushing in the morning is ‘uncomfortable and inefficient’ than at night. Again, Redditors say this is wrong. One of the wise folks prefers rubbing a T-shirt on their teeth instead of brushing them.
Some regular folks want to make it socially normal to have yellow teeth. Some of these folks are repulsed that brushing is seen as weird and push forth its normalisation. (I never thought I would have to write this ever that brushing is normal. Well, here we go!) It turns out that the earth has been flattened all this while when I was deep asleep.
Cover Photo by Henrik Lagercrantz on Unsplash