I just watched a very interesting video on the inside baseball about content creators of food videos on TikTok and YouTube — the next post will have the video and some of my thoughts on it — but the train of thought stimulated by the video carried though my morning shave.
One thing discussed was the difference in pace between TikTok and YouTube — a difference reflected both in the pace of an individual video and the pace of content creation. TikTok moves much faster: the number of views can explode exponentially for a video and a creator, but then also drop precipitously if the horde moves on. (The trick, of course, is to keep the horde engaged.)
One of the TikTok creators interviewed in the video says that YouTube is like a mutual fund, with slow and steady growth or decline, and TikTok is like bitcoin, with rapid and extreme rises and falls.
The soap I used today is on the YouTube side of shaving soaps, a soap from back in the day of solid brands and slow movement. The soap was made by Truefitt & Hill and was their basic shaving soap — a classic lavender fragrance in a high-quality triple-milled puck. This soap was made well before the Great Reformulation, which saw almost all other traditional British brands outsource their shaving soaps, which resulted in an immediate drop in quality. (D.R. Harris continued to make their own shaving soap.)
I was struck this morning by the quality of the lather — extremely nice consistency, good glide, and pleasant fragrance. Then I thought of some of my favorite current shaving soaps. These have a much greater range of fragrances, from the semi-novelty (Chiseled Face’s Summer Storm and Midnight Stag, Stirling Soap Company’s Texas on Fire, Catie’s Bubbles’ Waterlyptus) to quasi-traditional (Phoenix Artisan’s Dapper Doc and Solistice, Declaration Grooming’s Yazu/Rose/Patchouli, Phoenix & Beau Spitfire, most of Grooming Dept soaps), and they are also much more consciously focused on skincare, with ingredients cupuaçu butter, bacuri butter, donkey milk, duck fat, lamb tallow, bison tallow, murumuru butter, Guinness Stout, tucuma butter, ucuuba butter, kuki nut oil, avocado oil, and on and on. I don’t have the ingredients list for this version of Truefitt & Hill, but I’m sure it was much plainer. Soaps then did not compete on ingredients.
They are not triple-milled, and new varieties constantly come to market. Modern shaving soaps are TikTok, the old traditional soaps are YouTube. Both can provide a fully satisfying and pleasurable shave. Though the pace of the products has picked up, the pace of a good shave remains steady.
The Copper Hat Shaving brush I used this morning worked up a splendid lather from the soap. I took care to load the brush will, and I had a thick, comfortable lather for every pass. Not until today did I notice how this knot is a solid dark brown up to the silver tips — no bands, just a solid color.
The razor is my stainless-steel RazoRock Mamba, which I can verify by a glance at the bottom of the baseplate (see right). This is good marketing, IMO — making sure whoever happens to use the razor can see the make and model — and it is good brand-building — making sure the user knows the brand. (Brand-building is a part of marketing.) It has a subliminal message, too: that the maker is happy to put his name on the product because (a) he stands behind the product and (b) he is sure you will like the product. (Oddly, RazoRock does not do this with their razor handles, which bear no identifying marks as to maker or model. Maggard Razors and iKon, to take two examples, both put their logo on the base of the handle to identify the maker, though the model is not identified (and not needed — if you know the maker, you can quickly figure out the model).
The shave itself was excellent in both experience and result. The Mamba is a very comfortable razor, not at all inclined to nick, and for me, it is efficient as well. Three passes left my face perfectly smooth.
A small splash of Chatillon Lux’s Vide Poche aftershave lotion (augmented with a couple of squirts of Grooming Dept’s Aion Hydrating Gel) finished the shave. Chatillon Lux no longer makes this fragrance, but it’s quite nice: “amber and sweet orange, with geranium and honeysuckle and lavender and bergamot.”
The tea this morning is Murchie’s Baker Street Blend: “Lapsang Souchong, smooth Keemun, rich Ceylon, Gunpowder, and floral Jasmine.” I’m enjoying my mug of tea with my usual breakfast, a bowl of chia pudding (see photo at right), which I make each evening for breakfast the next morning. The dark brown color is from the cocoa powder.
Great way to start the day.