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
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. :)
Yikes. I do feel your pain, because I don’t have any sort of career in being a programmer and tried to figure out how to set up automatic daily posts. 100x simpler than what you’re doing, but I’m also 100x times dumber.
Probably not any dumber; maybe just less experienced! :)
Configuring these bots can also get pretty complicated!