Photo: @thebrandonrobert/TikTok
He protested that he used hot water, as if that makes it okay.
By John Sundholm — Written on Jan 21, 2023
Everyone has their own shower routine, and straight men are notoriously more lax about their daily cleanliness routines than their female counterparts.
But one guy on TikTok has been revealed to be extra, extra lax about it—so much so that he doesn't even use soap.
That's what TikTok influencer @thebrandonrobert's girlfriend found out when she set a series of traps in their shower to test whether or not he was using... well, literally anything in the shower to clean himself.
It turned out that Robert has been going ultra-minimalist in the shower to an extent that left his girlfriend kind of horrified.
And judging from the reactions to the video, Robert is far from the only guy out there with an entirely too-chill shower routine.
Brandon Robert's girlfriend put a series of tests in their shower to see if he had used any soap.
She also investigated his use of shampoo or body wash —and he hadn't touched any of them.
As she explained in the onscreen text, Combs placed red glitter paste under the back brush, shampoo and bar of soap in their shower "to see if my BF cleans himself with soap."
She then questioned Robert as to whether he'd showered yet that day, and when he said he had, she went to check to see if any of the red glitter paste had been smeared by him moving the products around.
"I didn't use that!" Robert exclaimed as she revealed he hadn't touched the back brush.
And that's no big deal, right? Not all of us use a back brush, nor do we all shampoo our hair every single day, so the fact Robert didn't use the shampoo either carries some plausible deniability.
But of course, Combs' check underneath the bar of soap revealed Robert hadn't touched that either—and that's when all bets were off.
Robert revealed he only used water in the shower—even to wash his, um, most important areas.
After determining he hadn't even touched the soap, Combs asked Robert, "What did you use?" To which he replied, "The water!" as if that was the most normal possible answer he could give.
Of course, there's a glaringly, and horrifyingly, obvious question to be asked here, and Combs didn't shy away from it. "How did you wash your a-s?!" she exclaimed.
Sheepishly, Robert turned back to the camera and repeated, "With water..." like a child caught in a lie.
People on TikTok and Twitter were even more mortified than Combs was.
One woman on Twitter asked in all caps, "Why do y'all date men?!?!" before going on to reveal her disgust at Robert's revelation.
She was far from the only one.
A woman on TikTok commented, "that woulda been my last straw, how you gotta ask a grown man if he used soap," while another quipped, "I would not be renewing his contract."
Another Twitter user summed it up in the most vivid terms possible: "I bet he smells like bologna and nickels." Honestly, that sounds about right.
Robert doesn't seem to be the only man out here not using soap in the shower, though.
For reasons that will always remain a mystery, several others revealed a similar aversion to soap, like a TikToker who commented, "wait till people find out using soap everyday is bad for your skin and hair." Oh, dear.
Another wrote, "I remember my grandad haven’t used any soap showering most of his life." Wild that you'd reveal this when you could simply say nothing!
And of course, there was that TikTok last year about how many men don't know you're supposed to wash your butt in the shower. That whole thing went so viral that even Julia Fox weighed in on it.
She guessed that the problem has to do with fragile masculinity and men's fear that touching their butt will make them gay.
Which sounds absurd until you read about men actually thinking this—stories about straight men being hung up on this idea go viral on Twitter practically monthly.
Straight men, if you're reading this—please put your phone down and go wash your a-s. Right now. With soap. The rest of us are literally begging you!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.