3
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by worbx@sub.wetshaving.social to c/wetshaving@sub.wetshaving.social

And here is the July edition of the Lather Log, the monthly report from the Wetshaving community (!wetshaving@sub.wetshaving.social) and r/Wetshaving on the soaps, creams, and occasional other stuff we use in our shaves of the day. If you like this sort of thing, please check out r/sotdreports for previous iterations of software & hardware SOTD reports, all the way back to December of 2018.

As always, the data in this report comes from our daily SOTD posts, excluding duplicate and deleted posts. If you used more than one soap/cream/whatever, only one gets noted in my data. Usually it's pretty clear, but every once in a while nobody knows what you used, and I put it down as unknown.

With the Lather Games pushed back a month, July was a relative flurry of SOTD posts. And with the Games encouraging people to bring out the odd ones out, we saw well over fifty new brands used this month. Of course, not all those brands intended their products to be used in a shave. Others, maybe, but surely not as lather.

So we saw a total of 2,697 shaves posted in these two communities in July; 2,649 on Reddit, and 48 on Lemmy. That adds up to 956 more shaves than were posted in June, albeit from 13 fewer authors. So each author posted a mean of 18.35 shaves over the month, which is 7.47 more than May, and 87 shaves per day (28.97 more than May's mean per day).

Category Jul. 2023 Change from Jun. Jun. 2023 May. 2023 Apr. 2023 Mar. 2023 Feb. 2023
Total Shaves 2,697 +956 1,741 2,156 2,188 2,487 2,271
Unique Authors 147 -13 160 164 179 187 186
Mean Shaves per Author 18.35 +7.47 10.88 13.15 12.22 13.30 12.21
Unique Soapmakers 249 +98 151 167 162 134 146
Unique Scents 1,037 +401 636 688 660 617 641
Single Use Scents 597 +266 331 335 333 278 302

The most shaves posted in one day was 99 on Sunday, July 2nd, 72 of which were in the Lather Games thread, 24 in the regular old Reddit thread, and another 3 were unique to the Lemmy thread. The fewest shaves posted in one day was 56 on Sunday, July 31st, I guess as everyone was pooped after the Games, where 54 of these were in the Reddit thread, and only 2 unique to the Lemmy thread.

Weekday Mean July Shaves for Weekday Mean June Shaves for Weekday Mean May Shaves for Weekday Mean April Shaves for Weekday Mean March Shaves for Weekday Mean February Shaves for Weekday Weekdays in July Total Shaves in July
Sunday 86.20 52.25 59.00 70.40 72.50 71.00 5 431
Monday 83.60 60.50 71.00 75.75 84.50 83.75 5 418
Tuesday 88.50 51.25 73.00 75.75 82.75 87.00 4 354
Wednesday 87.75 66.75 75.20 72.75 84.20 90.75 4 351
Thursday 89.75 60.40 72.00 72.50 83.80 78.25 4 359
Friday 88.25 61.00 72.00 75.75 77.60 85.75 4 353
Saturday 86.20 52.75 62.00 69.20 75.00 71.25 5 431
Overall 87.00 58.03 69.55 72.93 80.23 81.11 31 2,697

Thanks in part to Almonday, Cella tops the charts for July.

Jul. 2023 Top 10 Scents Uses (People) Jun. Uses May. Uses Apr. Uses Mar. Uses Feb. Uses Change in Ranking from Jun.
Cella - Cella 42 (40) 13 (9) 14 (9) 10 (7) 5 (3) 8 (6) ^ 18 (back in the top ten)
Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Sea Spice Lime 39 (31) 35 (15) 29 (14) 41 (25) 17 (14) 27 (17) -
Martin de Candre - Vetyver 35 (5) 27 (1) 33 (2) 6 (4) 3 (2) 2 (1) -
Proraso - Sandalwood 29 (22) 19 (8) 17 (6) 15 (11) 12 (5) 16 (9) ^ 1
Tabac - Original 25 (19) 37 (19) 45 (14) 37 (16) 14 (10) 40 (18) v 4
Arko - Arko 22 (20) 4 (3) 16 (5) 6 (6) 6 (4) 16 (8) ^ 86 (back in the top ten)
Barrister and Mann - Le Grand Chypre 22 (22) 17 (9) 7 (7) 14 (9) 8 (5) 11 (7) ^ 3
Barrister and Mann - Seville 22 (15) 13 (11) 38 (20) 47 (18) 40 (13) 44 (16) ^ 13 (back in the top ten)
Catie's Bubbles - Tonsorial Parlour 21 (1) 0 (0) 2 (1) 2 (2) 0 (0) 1 (1) ^ 592 (new to the top ten)
Barrister and Mann - Adagio 20 (10) 8 (5) 2 (2) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) ^ 22 (new to the top ten)
Noble Otter - Orbit 20 (16) 8 (7) 11 (8) 7 (6) 6 (6) 10 (6) ^ 22 (back in the top ten)

Dropped from the top ten since June:

  • Barrister and Mann - Figarose
  • House of Mammoth - Alive
  • House of Mammoth - Shire
  • Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Black Watch
  • Summer Break Soaps - Rope Swing
  • Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag

While the Lather Games shake up this list a little, it's mostly diluting the top ten by encouraging the use of less often seen brands.

Jul. 2023 Top 10 Soapmakers % of Shaves % of Jun. Shaves % of May. Shaves % of Apr. Shaves % of Mar. Shaves % of Feb. Shaves Change from Jun. Total Jul. Shaves Using This Soapmaker
Barrister and Mann 8.8% 14.1% 13.4% 16.3% 9.9% 15.0% - 238
Stirling Soap Co. 7.7% 9.4% 9.0% 9.4% 44.2% 13.1% - 209
Declaration Grooming 4.8% 4.1% 4.4% 5.3% 3.9% 6.1% ^ 2 129
Noble Otter 4.5% 5.0% 5.3% 5.2% 3.4% 6.7% - 122
Catie's Bubbles 4.0% 2.3% 2.0% 2.0% 0.9% 2.3% ^ 8 (back in the top ten) 107
House of Mammoth 3.8% 6.5% 9.6% 7.2% 3.7% 7.4% v 3 103
Southern Witchcrafts 3.7% 2.6% 2.2% 2.0% 1.5% 2.2% ^ 3 101
Chiseled Face 2.8% 2.9% 1.7% 2.6% 2.0% 2.5% ^ 1 75
Spearhead Shaving Company 2.7% 3.8% 3.5% 5.0% 2.3% 3.6% v 3 74
Zingari Man 2.6% 2.4% 1.7% 1.5% 1.0% 1.2% ^ 2 (back in the top ten) 69

Dropped from the top ten since June:

  • Ariana & Evans
  • Summer Break Soaps
  • Proraso

Black Ship Grooming makes the most prolific list for the first time!

Jul. 2023 Top 10 Most Prolific Scents used in Jul. Scents used in Jun. Scents used in May. Scents used in Apr. Scents used in Mar. Scents used in Feb. Change in Rank from Jun.
Stirling Soap Co. 62 59 66 56 96 71 -
Barrister and Mann 51 53 48 52 50 52 -
Declaration Grooming 49 35 37 38 32 42 -
Catie's Bubbles 35 21 19 20 13 23 ^ 2
Ariana & Evans 32 34 38 32 29 26 v 1
Noble Otter 25 17 18 19 18 18 ^ 3
Talent Soap Factory 25 23 23 24 21 10 v 1
Zingari Man 24 18 16 13 14 12 -
Wholly Kaw 23 19 18 16 16 15 v 2
Black Ship Grooming Co. 22 4 3 5 3 5 ^ 17 (new to the top ten)
Southern Witchcrafts 22 14 12 14 15 14 ^ 3 (back in the top ten)

Dropped from the top ten since June:

  • Chiseled Face
  • House of Mammoth
  • Grooming Department

Nobody dropped from the top ten since May.


Only thirty four every day shavers in July 2023.

Every Day Shavers for July 2023:

  • u/35048467
  • u/alg82
  • u/chronnoisseur42O
  • u/Crisp_Mango
  • u/djundjila
  • u/el_charminman
  • u/EldrormR
  • u/Environmental-Gap380
  • u/Eructate
  • u/gcgallant
  • u/glink48
  • u/hairykopite
  • u/Impressive_Donut114
  • u/InfernalInternal
  • u/jeffm54321
  • u/jwoods23
  • u/loudmusicboy
  • u/Madflava81
  • u/Marquis90
  • u/OnionMiasma
  • u/oswald_heist
  • u/partyman97_3
  • u/pridetwo
  • u/Priusaurus
  • u/rebdoomer88
  • u/RedMosquitoMM
  • u/sahenders
  • u/scribe__
  • u/souleater7173
  • u/Tetriside
  • u/tsrblke
  • u/USS-SpongeBob
  • u/whosgotthepudding
  • u/worbx
[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 1 points 1 year ago

Also, thanks for making the questions thread weekly! Otherwise I might have missed this entirely since I'm not on the community every day anymore. :)

[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 2 points 1 year ago

Hah, thanks, yeah, I'm still around. Just busy enough that I haven't written up the next reports. The daily SOTD threads help because not everyone puts a date in their SOTD posts. A lot of them are backdated after the fact; people may go a week or so without posting then post a bunch all at once. Daily threads mean that's organized in such a way that I can count someone as an every day shaver even if they didn't actually post every day, on that day.

[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 1 points 1 year ago

Probably not any dumber; maybe just less experienced! :)

Configuring these bots can also get pretty complicated!

[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 3 points 1 year ago

While it added to the time spent, that was the most fun part of this.

But it didn't help that I started writing my own client from scratch, then reverted that in favor of a third party library... then decided I wasn't happy with it after all, and dropped that in favor of rewriting my own client from scratch all over again. :)

8
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by worbx@sub.wetshaving.social to c/wetshaving@sub.wetshaving.social

In the words of djundjila, "where did July go so fast?"

But here we are with another edition of the Lather Log, the monthly report from sub.wetshaving.social and r/Wetshaving on the soaps, creams, and occasional other stuff we use in our shaves of the day. If you like this sort of thing, please check out r/sotdreports for previous iterations of software & hardware SOTD reports, all the way back to December of 2018.

As always, the data in this report comes from our daily SOTD posts, excluding duplicate and deleted posts. If you used more than one soap/cream/whatever, only one gets noted in my data. Usually it's pretty clear, but sometimes you just won't tell us what you're using, and I end up recording it as unknown. Sometimes you're guessing, and you know what? I'll take it. And the sometimes, if you not only don't mention anything in the post, but also include a picture with no lather product, I'll take your word for it that you used nothing, not even water.

So, June. It was a month for meeting up, and blacking out. Hmm, that might sound bad, out of context. Of course I mean the Maggard Meet at Maggard Razors, and the r/Wetshaving blackout to protest Reddit's new API terms. There was also the creation of the Wetshaving community on sub.wetshaving.social, and a bit of a breakup in the community: some people even after the blackout are posting there exclusively.

So I included SOTDs from Lemmy this month... this took far longer than it should have. I also want to not count duplicates, and on top of work to pull data from Lemmy in a compatible format, this month at least I sunk in a lot of time manually checking, reconciling usernames, and removing duplicate entries. I'm sure I missed some, especially amongst people who posted on both but with completely different usernames not obviously connected. Even for those obviously connected, I dunno that I'm going to keep building a custom map between platforms... well, it's already time to start on the July report, but that'll be overwhelmingly Lather Games posts, and Lemmy activity dropped off quite a bit.

In other news, June saw lather products from only two brands new to the Lather Log: a soap from Rex Supply Co., and shaving cream from Schick.

Probably in no small part due to the blackout, June saw a huge drop in shaves posted, even accounting for Lemmy. We saw 1,741 shaves posted, which is 415 fewer than in May (132 of those were only posted on Lemmy, so Reddit's drop was 547 shaves). That's 58.03 shaves posted each day, which is 11.52 fewer than in May. Across both communities, I think there were probably 160 active SOTD authors, which is probably 4 fewer than in May, and each author posted a mean of 10.88 shaves in June (this is 2.27 below May's mean per author).

Category June 2023 Change from May May 2023 Apr. 2023 Mar. 2023 Feb. 2023 Jan. 2023
Total Shaves 1,741 -415 2,156 2,188 2,487 2,271 2,227
Unique Authors 160 -4 164 179 187 186 175
Mean Shaves per Author 10.88 -2.27 13.15 12.22 13.30 12.21 12.73
Unique Soapmakers 166 -24 190 181 153 163 167
Unique Scents 636 -52 688 660 617 641 654
Single Use Scents 331 -4 335 333 278 302 332

The most shaves posted in one day was 83 on Wednesday, June 7th, which is the same as the last two months' maximum (the Lemmy community wasn't quite up yet, so this was all on Reddit). The fewest shaves posted in one day was 32 on Tuesday, June 13th, in the middle of the Reddit blackout. Of these, 23 were unique to the Lemmy post, while 9 people went back to Reddit after the blackout to post in the Reddit thread.

Weekday Mean June Shaves for Weekday Mean May Shaves for Weekday Mean April Shaves for Weekday Mean March Shaves for Weekday Mean February Shaves for Weekday Mean January Shaves for Weekday Weekdays in June Total Shaves in June
Sunday 52.25 59.00 70.40 72.50 71.00 64.60 4 209
Monday 60.50 71.00 75.75 84.50 83.75 75.20 4 242
Tuesday 51.25 73.00 75.75 82.75 87.00 77.40 4 205
Wednesday 66.75 75.20 72.75 84.20 90.75 73.00 4 267
Thursday 60.40 72.00 72.50 83.80 78.25 73.00 5 302
Friday 61.00 72.00 75.75 77.60 85.75 71.75 5 305
Saturday 52.75 62.00 69.20 75.00 71.25 67.50 4 211
Overall 58.03 69.55 72.93 80.23 81.11 71.84 30 1,741

We welcome Figarose to the top ten scents, Midnight Stag makes a non-contest-related appearance, and Seville drops from the list for the first time since August.

June 2023 Top 10 Scents Uses (People) May Uses Apr. Uses Mar. Uses Feb. Uses Jan. Uses Change in Ranking from May
Tabac - Original 37 (19) 45 (14) 37 (16) 14 (10) 40 (18) 38 (14) -
Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Sea Spice Lime 35 (15) 29 (14) 41 (25) 17 (14) 27 (17) 33 (19) ^ 4
Martin de Candre - Vetyver 27 (1) 33 (2) 6 (4) 3 (2) 2 (1) 0 (0) -
Barrister and Mann - Figarose 23 (2) 0 (0) 1 (1) 0 (0) 0 (0) 2 (2) ^ 685 (new to the top ten)
House of Mammoth - Alive 19 (10) 30 (14) 23 (13) 10 (5) 13 (8) 8 (5) -
Proraso - Sandalwood 19 (8) 17 (6) 15 (11) 12 (5) 16 (9) 9 (6) ^ 10 (back in the top ten)
House of Mammoth - Shire 18 (10) 31 (16) 28 (18) 9 (6) 4 (4) 5 (3) v 3
Spearhead Shaving Company - Seaforth! Black Watch 18 (11) 27 (12) 38 (19) 20 (10) 25 (14) 32 (12) ^ 1
Summer Break Soaps - Rope Swing 17 (5) 28 (6) 6 (4) 1 (1) 1 (1) 0 (0) v 2
Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag 17 (3) 8 (7) 7 (5) 5 (4) 5 (5) 5 (5) ^ 41 (back in the top ten)
Barrister and Mann - Le Grand Chypre 17 (9) 7 (7) 14 (9) 8 (5) 11 (7) 10 (7) ^ 48 (back in the top ten)

Dropped from the top ten since May:

  • Barrister and Mann - Seville
  • Bufflehead - Tishomingo
  • House of Mammoth - Indigo
  • MacDuff's Soap Company - Birch + Root

A surplus of sandalwood shaves spurs Proraso back into the top ten brands.

June 2023 Top 10 Soapmakers % of Shaves % of May Shaves % of Apr. Shaves % of Mar. Shaves % of Feb. Shaves % of Jan. Shaves Change from May Total June Shaves Using This Soapmaker
Barrister and Mann 14.1% 13.4% 16.3% 9.9% 15.0% 17.2% - 246
Stirling Soap Co. 9.4% 9.0% 9.4% 44.2% 13.1% 8.4% ^ 1 163
House of Mammoth 6.5% 9.6% 7.2% 3.7% 7.4% 7.3% v 1 113
Noble Otter 5.0% 5.3% 5.2% 3.4% 6.7% 5.5% - 87
Declaration Grooming 4.1% 4.4% 5.3% 3.9% 6.1% 7.5% - 72
Spearhead Shaving Company 3.8% 3.5% 5.0% 2.3% 3.6% 4.8% ^ 1 67
Ariana & Evans 3.3% 3.4% 3.6% 3.0% 2.2% 2.8% ^ 1 57
Summer Break Soaps 3.1% 3.8% 2.7% 1.5% 2.2% 1.5% v 2 54
Chiseled Face 2.9% 1.7% 2.6% 2.0% 2.5% 4.5% ^ 5 (back in the top ten) 51
Proraso 2.6% 1.7% 2.0% 1.1% 1.5% 1.0% ^ 4 (back in the top ten) 45
Southern Witchcrafts 2.6% 2.2% 2.0% 1.5% 2.2% 2.5% - 45

Dropped from the top ten since May:

  • Grooming Department

A three-way tie for tenth place gives us a little longer list than usual!

June 2023 Top 10 Most Prolific Scents used in June Scents used in May Scents used in Apr. Scents used in Mar. Scents used in Feb. Scents used in Jan. Change in Rank from May
Stirling Soap Co. 59 66 56 96 71 52 -
Barrister and Mann 53 48 52 50 52 52 -
Declaration Grooming 35 37 38 32 42 43 ^ 1
Ariana & Evans 34 38 32 29 26 29 v 1
Talent Soap Factory 23 23 24 21 10 11 ^ 1
Catie's Bubbles 21 19 20 13 23 19 ^ 2
Wholly Kaw 19 18 16 16 15 18 ^ 2
Zingari Man 18 16 13 14 12 16 ^ 3
Noble Otter 17 18 19 18 18 20 -
Chiseled Face 16 12 10 8 13 12 ^ 3
House of Mammoth 16 21 18 17 20 18 v 3
Grooming Department 16 24 20 16 13 12 v 5

Nobody dropped from the top ten since May.


Due to the blackout, two days in June had many fewer shaves, or perhaps people ended up posting under radically different names on Lemmy: as far as I can tell, only thirteen shavers posted a shave for every day in June.

r/Wetshaving's Every Day Shavers for June 2023:

  • 35048467
  • walden
  • djundjila
  • el_charminman
  • gcgallant
  • Impressive_Donut114
  • InfernalInternal
  • Old_Hiker
  • RedMosquitoMM
  • scribe__
  • USS-SpongeBob
  • whosgotthepudding
  • worbx
[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 1 points 1 year ago

Haha, I'm laughing listening to your comment: I had thought about preparing for the Games this year instead of flying by the seat of my pants, but you're probably right it's a little late to start at this point. :)

[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 0 points 1 year ago

Decent razors, or decent blades? If you're using a DE razor, I'd recommend picking up a sample pack with several or a dozen different types. I've found the same blade will give a better or worse shave in different razors, so there's some utility to trying several different brands, if you've got the basics of how to handle a DE razor. I've been going through sample packs for three or four years now.

And if you're using canned foam, it's also possible just switching to a better cream or soap might do well. It may not be as fast or convenient, but I think some creams like Speick or Cella might do better, and be nearly as fast to lather up with a wet brush as spreading it with your fingers. Just a thought, if you're looking for a better shave. And I suspect a good soap would be even better.

[-] worbx@sub.wetshaving.social 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Woohoo! Thanks all for bringing the podcast back. I'm looking forward to listening to it!

worbx

joined 1 year ago