PSA. Don't have a conversation at the urinal!

[MtnMan]

Apples and oranges.

No, I don't put my ass near my mouth/face, the hand I just used to open the restroom door......

But of course your which your phone you used to check facebook while taking a dump probably tops both of them.

 

[CZroe]

No, I don't put my ass near my mouth/face, the hand I just used to open the restroom door......

You must not know what "apples and oranges" means.

 

[Ichinisan]

What does that have to do with the toilet seat? Porcelain is not a particularly hospitable environment for germs, AFAIK, and the water is renewed with each flush... and while I have experienced the water nymph's kiss on my starfish, it's quite a rare occasion for me. Maybe your fudge dragons have a higher take-off velocity than mine.

The bacteria have lovely little specks of shit and piss to live in. Obviously.

 

[Ichinisan]

sure, just don't worry about the dormant nematode eggs that hang out in those desiccated poop particles! and yes--it is there. and yes--those fuckers are survivors.

I promise you that bacteria is the least of your concerns when it comes to the poops! 😀

Oh boy. Another reason to avoid skin contact with those disgusting public toilets.

 

[destrekor]

Oh boy. Another reason to avoid skin contact with those disgusting public toilets.

Want to know a funny thing about those? They don't crawl up - they have to be swallowed to start the infesting/parasitizing process.

How often are you touching your ass before you eat? Your ass cheeks, hole, and balls are the only things exposed to splashback or anything alive on the seats, unless you are one who personally likes to fondle every part of a toilet seat.

Nothing catchable via bathroom is able to crawl up and infect via the anus/rectum.Now if you have all kinds of sores on your ass I'd recommend not sitting down on a public seat, but frankly at that point I wouldn't recommend sitting on anything bare, period, not even at home. Just because it came from your body doesn't mean it can't cause secondary infections of a different circuit. But again, outside of sores, you aren't going to catch anything that might happen to get to stuck to your skin.

Anything picked up short term is hardly ever going to do something, and then there's this thing called showering and, ahem, washing your ass.

But again, generally, I just can't recommend eating after self-fondling after usage of public restroom. Not without some basic hygienic care.

urinals are fine but i ain't talking, and i hate it when other people do

and i never ever ever poop in public

only had to do it a handful of times in my life, and those were emergencies

On this topic, which also ties into the other response:
I used to have this condition, and with it came this ability where my body just never even made it feel necessary to poop in public. I never felt bothered my bowel movement action to actually *need* to go when not at home.

That was, indeed, a magical time. A relatively short-lived spell unfortunately, but I can't deny enjoying it while it lasted.

My body would typically constipate itself while camping to prevent needing to use the bathrooms. But when camping for a week or two, that wasn't happening, it just had to happen.

And then there was Army field training and portajohns, for weeks. That's just how it was.

Now, sometimes it's difficult to convince my body that no I am not droppin a deuce in a client customer's bathroom. Welp, guess we are on occasion.

I've had different constipation issues where now I generally understand it best to just act when nature calls, and to try not to fight it/hold it in for too long.


To also bring it back to @Ichinisan and @CZroe -
In life, it's just not worth getting tripped up on the trivialities.

You just *aren't* catching anything from the toilet seat, not via primary means at least. Gross hygiene combined with what might have come from a toilet seat? Sure. But proper hand washing [and the occasional heinie scrub in the shower/bath] will end the threat that came from the toilet seat.

What you really have to worry about in the end are all the handles, locks, etc. All surfaces that one interacts with especially after hand washing - those are the concerns. Everything else is moot if it is before your wash your hands unless, of course, you are touching everything and then eat something that you have to touch -- at which point, that's lost-cause territory.

So yes, it is Apples v. Oranges, but I think you've mixed up which label belongs where. Poop particles can and do travel, and the worst of the infectious agents carried in them are hardy and can live for hours if not days on exterior surfaces. This is why norovirus spreads so rapidly in hospitality environments: it is super hardy, is infectious both well before and well after symptoms, and is generally passed via innocuous surfaces and, a key point here, *not* toilet seats. Warm seat or not, any fresh bugs are just going to land on a part of your body you likely aren't fondling and then immediately eating. People with poor hygiene regimens, mind you, are the source of these frustrations, because they are just walking biohazards transporting hardy infectious agents from hands to oft-touched public surfaces.

 

[CZroe]

Want to know a funny thing about those? They don't crawl up - they have to be swallowed to start the infesting/parasitizing process.

How often are you touching your ass before you eat? Your ass cheeks, hole, and balls are the only things exposed to splashback or anything alive on the seats, unless you are one who personally likes to fondle every part of a toilet seat.

Nothing catchable via bathroom is able to crawl up and infect via the anus/rectum.Now if you have all kinds of sores on your ass I'd recommend not sitting down on a public seat, but frankly at that point I wouldn't recommend sitting on anything bare, period, not even at home. Just because it came from your body doesn't mean it can't cause secondary infections of a different circuit. But again, outside of sores, you aren't going to catch anything that might happen to get to stuck to your skin.

Anything picked up short term is hardly ever going to do something, and then there's this thing called showering and, ahem, washing your ass.

But again, generally, I just can't recommend eating after self-fondling after usage of public restroom. Not without some basic hygienic care.



On this topic, which also ties into the other response:
I used to have this condition, and with it came this ability where my body just never even made it feel necessary to poop in public. I never felt bothered my bowel movement action to actually *need* to go when not at home.

That was, indeed, a magical time. A relatively short-lived spell unfortunately, but I can't deny enjoying it while it lasted.

My body would typically constipate itself while camping to prevent needing to use the bathrooms. But when camping for a week or two, that wasn't happening, it just had to happen.

And then there was Army field training and portajohns, for weeks. That's just how it was.

Now, sometimes it's difficult to convince my body that no I am not droppin a deuce in a client customer's bathroom. Welp, guess we are on occasion.

I've had different constipation issues where now I generally understand it best to just act when nature calls, and to try not to fight it/hold it in for too long.


To also bring it back to @Ichinisan and @CZroe -
In life, it's just not worth getting tripped up on the trivialities.

You just *aren't* catching anything from the toilet seat, not via primary means at least. Gross hygiene combined with what might have come from a toilet seat? Sure. But proper hand washing [and the occasional heinie scrub in the shower/bath] will end the threat that came from the toilet seat.

What you really have to worry about in the end are all the handles, locks, etc. All surfaces that one interacts with especially after hand washing - those are the concerns. Everything else is moot if it is before your wash your hands unless, of course, you are touching everything and then eat something that you have to touch -- at which point, that's lost-cause territory.

So yes, it is Apples v. Oranges, but I think you've mixed up which label belongs where. Poop particles can and do travel, and the worst of the infectious agents carried in them are hardy and can live for hours if not days on exterior surfaces. This is why norovirus spreads so rapidly in hospitality environments: it is super hardy, is infectious both well before and well after symptoms, and is generally passed via innocuous surfaces and, a key point here, *not* toilet seats. Warm seat or not, any fresh bugs are just going to land on a part of your body you likely aren't fondling and then immediately eating. People with poor hygiene regimens, mind you, are the source of these frustrations, because they are just walking biohazards transporting hardy infectious agents from hands to oft-touched public surfaces.

We can't just hand-wave the possibility of MRSA and other skin infections that don't require ingesting anything with the simple acknowledgment that people can shower, and the idea that norovirus is somehow less virulent on an imperceptible poop smear on the seat than it is on the door or desk is just the same rampant pseudo-intellectualism we already vehemently disagree with.

People never skip a beat to remind you that toilet seats generally harbor fewer bacteria than your desk phone but they have to bury their head so deep in the sand to take comfort in it that it often isn't even worth reasoning with them. Still, here we try. How many times do we have to hear that the microscopic holes on a toilet seat cover are much too large to prevent the passage of viruses or bacteria but that it's OK because toilet seats are somewhat sterile? Seriously: how many times have you heard that? Now, how many times has the person telling you that addressed the obvious reality of there often being fresh deposits of unsanitary waste on public toilet seats? In my experience: NEVER. They act like every toilet seat is a home toilet seat that stays generally clean, doesn't get used for hours at a time (gives things time to dry/die), and doesn't serve nearly as many potentially infectious people as a public toilet would.

Here's a big reason I don't mind touching the door knob as much as sitting on the same toilet: I can wash my hands whenever I want. I don't have to wait until I get home to take a shower. It isn't stewing in my moist neither-regions. It's also decidedly less direct and every step removed is an order of magnitude less concerning than sitting directly on something that has potentially fresh poo on it. If there's a reason we naturally find these smells repulsive it's probably because natural selection leads us to avoid it for our health and safety. I won't blissfully ignore this because people keep repeating the "toilet seats are clean" factoid. Yeah. Part of the reason they don't build up as much living bacteria is because they get cleaned and disinfected a lot more on average... and that's because they need it, making the solice you might take in that factoid a form of circular-reasoning. Generalizations about cleanliness mean very little when you will inevitably use a freshly soiled one if you have no aversion to them.

Again, out of necessity I sit on public toilets almost daily... bare. I just don't delude myself about it.

 

[destrekor]

We can't just hand-wave the possibility of MRSA and other skin infections that don't require ingesting anything with the simple acknowledgment that people can shower, and the idea that norovirus is somehow less virulent on an imperceptible poop smear on the seat than it is on the door or desk is just the same rampant pseudo-intellectualism we already vehemently disagree with.

People never skip a beat to remind you that toilet seats generally harbor fewer bacteria than your desk phone but they have to bury their head so deep in the sand to take comfort in it that it often isn't even worth reasoning with them. Still, here we try. How many times do we have to hear that the microscopic holes on a toilet seat cover are much too large to prevent the passage of viruses or bacteria but that it's OK because toilet seats are somewhat sterile? How many times have you heard that? Now, how many times has the person telling you that addressed the obvious reality of there being fresh deposits of unsanitary waste on public toilet seats? In my experience: NEVER. They act like every toilet seat is a home toilet seat that stays generally clean, doesn't get used for hours at a time (gives things time to dry/die), and doesn't serve nearly as many potentially infectious people as a public toilet would.

Here's a big reason I don't mind touching the door knob as much as sitting on the same toilet: I can wash my hands whenever I want. I don't have to wait until I get home to take a shower. It isn't stewing in my moist neither-regions. It's also decidedly less direct and every step removed is an order of magnitude less concerning than sitting directly on something that has potentially fresh poo on it. If there's a reason we naturally find these smells repulsive it's probably because natural selection leads us to avoid it for our health and safety. I won't blissfully ignore this because people keep repeating the "toilet seats are clean" factoid. Yeah. Part of the reason they don't build up as much living bacteria is because they get cleaned and disinfected a lot more on average... and that's because they need it, making the solice you might take in that factoid a form of circular-reasoning. Generalizations about cleanliness mean very little when you will inevitably use a freshly soiled one if you have no aversion to them.

Again, out of necessity I sit on public toilets almost daily... bare. I just don't delude myself about it.

Skin infection is different, but it isn't even hand-waving so much as just pointing to the absurdly low risk levels in most walks of life. From when you were strongly pointing to moist nether-region concerns for infection, to me it more sounded like the worry of motile pathogens. For most things you are likely to find in a public restroom that isn't in a hospital -- where likelihood of skin infection is highest -- the nether regions aren't exactly a hot spot of activity for both the common and worst threats. Do note that yes, I'm purposefully saying "most" for a specific reason here, and not resorting to what you who presume to be some kind of pseudo-intellectual BS. Are there concerns? Yes. But again, the worst of the concerns you *may* find in a public restroom aren't specifically any worse than any of the other worst infectious concerns elsewhere in life. It's just not worth worrying about the million or billion in one odds for those.
Again also consider that you can still generally rely on your immune system (and if immuno-compromised for some reason, then I suggest you strictly follow doctors orders on this topic and not general public forums). It may be that we have all actually come across something, be it on a toilet seat or a surface at a restaurant, and our body promptly dispatched the threat. Think about how many opportunistic bacteria can be found on our body at any time, and we all get small nicks, scratches, and cuts from time to time, some of us more than others. My dog's nails have drawn blood. Whatever was on her nails and also whatever was on my skin would have had a chance to invade but not so fast my friend.

Listen, I'm not saying it's some safe space, I'm just speaking to the concern that it should be worried about any more so than any other surface. If you are worried about not being able to immediately wash your heinie, again remember that the *most* concerning bacteria are *not* exactly motile, and not infectious via "moist nether regions." Let it be noted that I don't recommend grinding your taint and especially not any vaginas against everything you see, but note that the physical contact is minimal with toilet seats. MRSA being such a significantly small concern in the general population (where it's not even hygiene or actual location dependent - just outright bad luck, a bad roll), I'm just not associating it with the toilet because it so rarely is. Hands and arms are the predominant vehicle for MRSA and similar skin infections, and I believe feet are next up on the risk/occurrence, based on communal/gym showers where for some reason people *still* go into barefoot and not on shower sandals. Being it is where hands and feet most likely touch, the odds of finding it on toilet seats is far lower than finding it anywhere else.

Yes, I am willing to stand corrected if wrong, but I swear I have read research that fit my above vague comparatives. I just cannot be bothered to hunt those articles down.

 

[zinfamous]

...but smears and drops on the porcelain ARE particularly hospitable environment for it. Ever waited in line to use one or found the seat was still warm from the previous user? Well, the fact that porcelain isn't very hospitable doesn't comfort much when it didn't even have the time to matter.


That's why I made it a point to say "bacteria and parasites" earlier.

You know where nematoade eggs and other particularly-hardy parasite eggs, fungus spores, viruses, and bacteria are even more likely to persist and find their way directly to your neither-regions? A public toilet.

Most eggs aren't airborne.

Again, I work long hours and have to use the public restroom almost daily. Just being real about it.

Just today at work my co-workers and I noticed some guy carry a loaded shopping bag in the public restroom and come out with nothing. Yesterday we noticed this guy was in there for over an hour. We also noticed him a few times last week where he'd come in wearing a hi-viz jacket to use our rest rooms, so I figured he was just a landscaper or something for the business park who wanted to get out of the rain for his lunch break. We checked with park security and I was right but they wanted us to let them know more if we saw him again. Since they asked, we checked behind him today and found that he had eaten his lunch in the restroom (found the discarded bag).

Dude was EATING in a public restroom. However you feel about toilet seats, surely we agree that it's gross to eat there... right? I mean, what: Did he eat off the baby changing station or set his food on his bare legs while sitting on a lidless public toilet seat?! Did he sit on the lidless public toilet seat with his porous pants on?! Gross, no matter how you think about it.

All I'm saying is that nematodes are everywhere, and they are constantly trying to kill you from the ass-end and up. It's like...human life truly is nothing more than a gigantic bag of cells, always trying to defend itself from all of the nematodes of the planet that exist only when they can eat you and spawn off your tissue. ...I mean, it just is.

I dunno. I work with a bunch of nematode people. They do this crap all day and it's a bit disturbing, but that doesn't make it untrue.

 

[skull]

Depends on the conversation. "Man, the Giants suck" is okay, but don't lead with "Are those red spots normal?".

I'm leading with the latter next time I'm next to someone at the urinal, like goddamn it she told me to wear a condom that her herpes was flaring up. True story from last night wish me luck.

Y'all stuck up I'll carry on a conversation while I'm using the restroom don't bother me a bit. I'll also piss pretty much anywhere as I work construction generally no toilets. So you might be talking to me one sec and the next my dicks getting whipped out with little to no warning to piss in the floor drain or a bush. My new helpers a little shy I whipped it out the one day and he didn't look away fast enough hes like oh oh so your just ok. I'm like dont worry nothing much to see I'm a grower not a shower.

 

[olds]

I would say that the answer to that is that you are mentally disturbed if you can't name anything you enjoy more than listening to someone take a shit. I think that might be the strangest thing I have ever read on ATOT, and that is saying a lot.

Well, he is a "RearAdmiral". "

 

[CZroe]

I've been watching Daria since I never finished it in my youth. Last night I saw this in Season 3:

Seems relevant.

 

[CZroe]

Depends on the conversation. "Man, the Giants suck" is okay, but don't lead with "Are those red spots normal?".

What if you say "Man, the Giants suck" and someone who doesn't want to talk counters with "Are these red spots normal?"