Is it Shaker!?

@EarthShaker

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Clown who draws and sometimes publishes games.
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Is it Shaker!?@EarthShaker1/4/2023, 2:55 PM

Clown hates it! One weird trick to make me quit a tutorial

It's interesting (frustrating) how many times I try to find a guide on cleaning something it always inevitably leads me to dozens of guides which boil down to "make a paste out of vinegar and baking soda and put it on there". People really think that because it fizzes that shit can do everything!! It'll clean my old sneakers and my bathroom tiles grout! Unclog my drains! Make my dishwasher work again! (Admittedly it did make it smell better, so credit for that, though it didn't improve performance). I've given these things a chance and they just don't fucking WORK!

But like these guides are so commonplace and hard to sift through thanks to the whole industry of turning the industry into listicles and SEO sludge pages that it's starting to make me actively angry when I encounter them!

Same thing for every page that recommends apple cider vinegar as a home remedy for anything; same magical property that makes people include it on every list.

#The Cohost Global Feed #frustration #the modern internet #uselessness #I just want to clean my grout

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in reply to @EarthShaker's post:

Aerginous @Aerginous1/4/2023, 3:25 PM

I know someone on the benign side of a content farm and the vinegar cleaning trick articles are legit a bit of an in-joke to them. "Don't have inspiration? Write a vinegar cleaning trick article."

A lot of stuff seems so badly designed to be cleaned, it's discouraging.

noah @noahtheduke1/4/2023, 3:38 PM

The SEO equivalent of Gus, the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, thinking that windex fixes everything.

Noel B @NoelBWrites1/4/2023, 3:53 PM

It's especially frustrating to me because baking soda is a base and vinegar is a fucking acid so they neutralize each other. Acidic substances can be good at cleaning some stuff! Alkaline substances can be good at cleaning other stuff! But if you use them together they cancel each other out and you might as well be using water, but bubbly.

I assume the fact that it's a fizzy reaction reminds people of sudsy soap so they just assume it's good at cleaning.

(Yes, I guess you could use the paste for friction to lift certain stains out, but you're better off making the paste with baking soda and water, not vinegar.)

@flintlock-media1/4/2023, 4:12 PM

I think the intended impact of making stuff fizz is that it helps to "lift" stuff that's embedded in fabric? Like if you had a stain on a tablecloth and you cover the stain in baking soda, then dribble some vinegar (or lemon juice) on so that it fizzes, the stain particles will get agitated and become less stuck to the fabric fibres, thus making it easier to then wash out the stain in the washing machine. I don't know if that's what is actually happening at a small scale but i've used baking soda and vinegar on various household stains and this is how it usually works for me.

I think the underlying foundation of baking soda / vinegar tricks is "You can achieve a lot with acids and alkalis to get shit off other shit, and baking soda / vinegar happen to be the most safe and easily available in most people's homes". I think a lot of people aren't aware of the actual chemistry reasons for using those two substances, which may be why they're suggested for everything, even situations where that's not the best fix.

Noel B @NoelBWrites1/4/2023, 4:24 PM

I think "friction" is basically the only use case for the baking soda + vinegar mix but:

You need to apply it so that the reaction happens on top of the stain, like you described. A lot of articles suggest making a paste beforehand and then applying it which is basically a waste
In a lot of cases, you're better off using a baking soda + water paste and rubbing it, especially with surfaces that won't get damaged by the friction

You're right, those are the two most common (and safer) alkaline and acid substances found in a household, which is what makes them so useful for cleaning, but also so tempting for those "life hack" articles/tiktok videos/whatever form of content ad revenue flocks to next

@flintlock-media1/4/2023, 4:28 PM

A lot of articles suggest making a paste beforehand and then applying it

... they do? It's legit possible that I've got into the habit of not actually reading the actual article words, since I mostly just google for confirmation of whether I need an acid or alkali for a given stain.

Yeah, making the fizzing happen in a separate container and rubbing the neutral mush on a stain would be extremely silly. I had no idea that people were doing this 😅

Nire Bryce @NireBryce1/4/2023, 5:29 PM

the paste is usually fizzing as you apply it. but there's basically only one place this works and that's cleaning some plastics, where it cleans sightly better than water and baking soda and smells much worse.

Is it Shaker!?@EarthShaker1/5/2023, 1:15 AM

That's interesting because at my shop the default answer we give people for cleaning plastics is "soap and warm water or a product specifically for plastic like brillianize". I guess that means vinegar + baking soda isn't hard enough to scratch plastic or chemically strong enough to etch them, that's cool.

Nire Bryce @NireBryce1/5/2023, 1:48 AM

depends on the plastic but in my years of needing to clean things or remove stains on plastic, it's never worth the smell just use the right solvents if you need more than soap

蒸しルビー @YuushaRuby1/4/2023, 5:23 PM

Yeah the SEO click farm articles that are partially written by AI are really a plague on the internet, I’ve mostly been running into this with dwarf fortress lately and have come across sentences that include things such as “fans of simulation games can then…” and I’m like fucking hell they’re not even trying to hide it lmao

squircular reasoning @spiders1/4/2023, 5:28 PM

this stuff drives me up a wall

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