What do your friends/family think of your Shaving hobby/obsession?

Nick the Knife

Nick the Knife

Krill Enabler
Grand Society
Joined
Sep 4, 2012
Location
Coffs Harbour, NSW
Hi,

I'm curious to get feedback on what users' friends/family/gimps feel about their wetshaving hobby/interest/obsession etc?

Obviously users are differently positioned along the variable spectrum that is wetshaving - e.g someone who has two razors, a couple of soaps, a brush and a few packs of blades is seen as pretty normal. Whereas having a dozen razors, brushes, soaps plus a thousand or so blades from all kinds of makers is perhaps seen a tad differently! Oh and then you have Mark1966's private museum! :eek:

To be fair I think Mark is positioned a lot more 'normally' than a lot of us as he has a legit and reputable collection. So even people who think wetshaving is something medieval can appreciate it as its clearly a hobby/collection of impressive levels.

Whereas for someone like me with 20 odd razors, a dozen brushes, several dozen soaps and thousands of various blades it just looks like WTF!!!!!!!

I flagged this thread as it occurred to me in a moment of day dreaming how moronic/idiotic I'd feel someone was if I found out they had a collection of toothbrushes and pastes - some of them artisan ones, others just made over seas, loads of different brush heads etc etc or the same for other personal grooming products taken to our extreme.

Haha so do others really see us this way??? If so, obviously sod them BUT it'd be good to know.

:) NtK
 
My other half thinks it is fairly cheap as a hobby if only a little bit weird. If she buys a pair of shoes & a dress it outstrips my normal annual spend quite easily.

Plus she likes the scents and smoothness too, so everybody is happy.
 
Good question @Nick the Knife!

In all seriousness my wife is very accommodating and supportive. I spent a LOT of time building up the collection and obsessing about it but that has settled down now. She is glad that I have an interest to pursue and has actually probably encouraged the popping into antique stores for a quick look when we visit a town :)

The kids are another matter - they think I'm crazy.

As for friends - I've converted a few, some have their own weird hobbies and understand (Trekkies and ComicCon fans etc) and others I think are secretly curious/envious but a little embarrassed - it does make for a slightly weird conversation.
 
I have to say I find it telling that we've had three of the most senior and well established members reply and at BEST their significant others think it's a little bit weird - the majority however have been deemed essentially crazy!

There does seem to me to be that line that a lot of folks have the option of crossing pretty early on in wetshaving - that being the one where you go from buying with a view to finding superior performing products for yourself to instead buying just so you have 'another/more' of a given type of item. The additional feature often being that folks in the former section often tend to sell off/clear what they feel are inferior/seldom used/surplus products-items - whereas the latter well....I hate to say it as it is me but does tend to hoard the items as they feel they're not favourites BUT they'll get used every now and then.

As alluded to I do think a few users here do have legit 'collections' of items - and I use collection in the sense of it being a formalised hobby. The shining example obviously being Mark's amazing razors.

I'm happy to use myself as an example and there's no way I can justify all my gear as a true 'collection'. However it's easy enough to justify in any other manner of ways.

That said people do think it's completely nuts. Like a few others my wife is quite happy for me to buy items that clearly are somewhat excessive - I'd often get the raised eyebrows and comment of,"Thats not another razor?" when a package turned up.

That said she's had her own razor for several yrs now (first Gillette Heavy Tech now a Feather Portable (easier handle to grip)) - she's also been designated her own brush (VS Synth as it's super easy to lather and more forgiving of her not washing it out properly etc) - she appreciates the superior artisan soaps but volunteers to use the lower end one as she claims it matters not for her - suffice to say I pass her the Arko with glee!

I've gotten a few others to agree to TRY using a safety razor, brush and soap (though I try and start them on a cream to keep it simple) but no-one else ever took it any further! Haha was it wrong to give them a Rimei + Shogun blades????? Just joking, but they all seem to think it's just too hard - takes learning new skills and still when mastered more time then their can of goo and 'insert random number between 3 and 9' bladed cartridge system. I suppose from a number of angles I do see their logic.

They see wetshaving as a clear regression and complicating a process that should be pretty much straight forward and minimised in ones day/life. Therefore I could advocate utilising a piece of obsidian flint and get essentially the same reaction/judgement as suggesting a Webber PH etc. To be fair the few folks I know are a very lazy bunch - but I think that the primary benefits of wetshaving are quite intangible and therefore very difficult to accurately convey to sceptical onlookers.

As stated I know I'd be quite scathing in my silent judgement of someone with a similar hoard/inventory of other items for another personal grooming aspect e.g oral hygiene, hair care, nail clipping!!! Haha but perhaps that says more about me because without knowing the nitty grit of their rationale it's very easy to oversimplify it as nutty, excessive or extravagant.

I do also have quite OCDish and even Asperger traits (or perhaps more) so I do think this made me a very soft target for the conniving wetshaving gods. All this said I am pretty certain that I've hit the 'ceiling' for my acquisitions - anything from here has to be sideways oriented e.g trades. I don't want to wake up realising I've become the wetshaving peer/equal of the crazy lady who keeps 50+ cats in her home!
 
OMG...if it's anywhere and I mean absolutely ANYWHERE near that we're all in big trouble!

Almost ROFL and had to go on a 10min search to find if that guy was for real or a mockumentary......and more alarmingly it appears it's the former!!!

Favourite bits so far are:
  • His Confucius-esque mantra of,"You can sharpen a pencil without a pencil sharpener but you can't sharpen a pencil without a PENCIL!" Thats gold Jerry, gold!
  • His reassurance than the rag you use didn't HAVE to be an old Wu-tang tshirt
  • "You should take a COUPLE OF HOURS to look through your own home to find a pencil worth sharpening." WTF???????
  • Suggesting you look in your Grandfather's tomb for a strop! :censored:
  • Oh man - the more I watch the more I could just write down every second thing he says - even Marco himself from YKW if stricken by a sudden bout of severe OCD would watch this and say,"This guys ridiculous!"
I'm yet to finish watching it BUT I'm thinking it's probable he either has a German backpacker tied up in his basement or he secretly likes to cut open small animals just to see whats inside them. Oh and the out-takes to the video would have his elderly Mum's voice in the background saying,"Watchadoing down there? I'm trying to watch Jeoprady!" With him bellowing back in a homocidal rage,"Shut up Mum!!!! My new friends and I are making my fucking movie!!!"

To be fair there's worse things to do with you life - last I checked artisanal pencil sharpeners weren't the source of much of the planets woes so shame on me for judging him so harshly. But I still thikn there must be a touch of mockumentary about it or else the local authorities in his area should be notified about him!
 
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Well ...for under $1000 you can set yourself up with everything you need! And as he says, he'd know as he HAS!

So a lot of us would already be infront on the cost side of things, plus apparently and somewhat alarmingly/amazingly he apparently really makes an income from it. I'm still very, very dubious - seems like a clear parody of modern obsessions with taking such things to an extreme.
 
No, say it ain't so!
 
My wife is pretty supportive. She thinks it is 'cute' that I am so into it. But maybe that is a bad thing, kind of like how adults may think it is cute when small children get so focussed on trivial things...

Anyway, she is also supportive of popping into antique shops, and compared to other hobbies I have had/still have (cooking, BBQ, cycling, photography) this is a very cheap hobby.

My friends are divided. Most don't know about it (I'm a little embarrassed). The ones that do think I'm nuts, but are not surprised at all, because I can also be a bit ocd/azbergers about various things in life (my cooking, for example, is very precise). I do have some friends that, as it turns out, are also into it. And they are also my nerdy friends (like me) that are actuaries/computer programmers. I am beginning to see a pattern...
 
My wife thinks I'm crazy and doesn't want to know anything about it. My mates think I'm nuts. My family are polite about it but don't talk about it.
But... I'm having fun! Haha!
 
My wife thinks I'm nuts and couldn't care less. Most other family members think I'm a little bit odd. My friends all think it's stupid to turn what they view as a chore into a hobby.
The only exceptions are my mum and my boss. Mum likes coming along to antique shops and my boss thinks it's great that I always come to work clean shaven and smelling nice.
 
My father always backed me on that one, for him, shaving with razors that use 10cents blade is like slapping the capitalism system in the face. He also see my purchases as long term investments, he even purchased a cased Toggle because he thought prices would sky rocket (Well he was right loll). My mother was skeptical at first, she couldn't believe folks were shaving with old used razors until I explained that if Barbicide was good enough to kill HIV, it was good enough for sanitizing a few dusty razors. She also likes the scents of the soaps I gave to my dad.
 
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Lately I've been told that I was a hipster by my friends because I use vintage razors, snap vintage lenses on my dSLR, drink tea & wear a Gatsby. A friend of mine came to my rescue and said 'Hey, Max was doing all that stuff long before they invented the word Hipster' lollll
 
Nick the Knife said:
Well ...for under $1000 you can set yourself up with everything you need! And as he says, he'd know as he HAS!

So a lot of us would already be infront on the cost side of things, plus apparently and somewhat alarmingly/amazingly he apparently really makes an income from it. I'm still very, very dubious - seems like a clear parody of modern obsessions with taking such things to an extreme.
Click to expand...

If you think that's anything other than a pisstake - you've already been on forums too long.
 
My wife just lets me do what I want - she used to entertain my "oh feel how smooth my face is this morning" thing with a "Wow, isn't that good", but now whenever I do she stares off into that same distant place she looks whenever I let one go. But hey, she isn't stopping me, just not egging me on. Beyond that I don't much care. Work would be happy to not have to manage a manager with a hipster beard and top knot ('king hate that look!)...and I couldn't live with myself if I smelled like David Beckham's Instinct or Lynx Java.
 
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