It’s been a shitty year — just piles and piles of shit, everywhere. Here at MEL, we decided to really pile on the shit by posting a ton of it ourselves. But we’re not talking about the shitposting you’re used to (or the quality of our work): No, this had nothing to do with memes and everything to do with article after article about literal crap. Here, we look back at all the times we covered our site in poo.
Enjoy, shithead!
Why We Get the Shits After Going on a Bender
We’ve written a lot about our bodies this year — including what plops out of it — so it figured that at least one installment of our daily column, Things We Learned About Our Bodies Today, would include some manner of fecal investigation. Here, MEL Social Media Editor Jeff Gross explained the science of why your ass acts like Niagara Falls when you’re hungover.
Sample Shitty Quote: “So now you’ve got shit headed at high speed to your bowels, which has been made liquid thanks to the stomach inflammation, and which hasn’t been given the time to have that fluid absorbed back into your body. That’s the runs. That’s what that is.”
How to Politely and Discreetly Poop in Public
Shitting in public is no easy feat: The toilet seat is unfamiliar, you’re not sure who’s listening, and chances are, the toilet paper is anything but Charmin ultra-soft. So to help alleviate your inevitable public poo dread, Gross asked three qualified experts how to handle the most delicate of these shitty situations.
Sample Shitty Quote: “Not sure how to excuse yourself from the [dinner] table for more than five minutes without giving yourself away? ‘One classic excuse you can make is a phone call that can’t wait,’ says Eric Shani, the general manager of the popular gastropub, The Pikey, in L.A. ‘Make it business-related. This does two things: It gives you time to use the bathroom and makes you seem important.’”
How to Poop on a First Date
Another of our most proficient shitposters is MEL Staff Writer Tracy Moore, who’s written about poop on two different indelible occasions. Here, she wrote about how to poop on a first date. If you absolutely have to.
Sample Shitty Quote: “Flush first and make sure the toilet is working. From there, you can consult any number of guides for how to poop at someone’s house you’re dating so they don’t know you pooped — from timing it until after they’ve used the bathroom, to waiting for them to go flip the laundry, to creating a raft of toilet paper for your poop to land silently on. Other tricks: Run water (doesn’t work); hum or sing (doesn’t work); play music loudly (works, but is annoying).”
Here’s an Idea: Don’t Poop in the Pool
Next, Moore had some thoughts on swim season.
Sample Shitty Quote: “Maybe don’t poop in the pool ever, and maybe don’t let your children poop in the pool ever? The CDC once wrote that ‘diarrhea and swimming don’t mix!’ and that’s a sentence we should type up on a little piece of paper and print out and then pin to the bathroom mirror to look at whenever we have diarrhea. Okay?”
What Happens to a Poop When You Hold It in Until It Goes Away?
Whoever said there’s nothing magical about shit knew nothing. Case in point: The disappearing poop. MEL Editorial Assistant Andrew Fiouzi’s investigation into what happens when you hold in your poop until it goes away turned up some worrying answers.
Sample Shitty Quote: “‘The longer the stool stays in, the harder it gets,’ says Niket Sonpal, an assistant clinical professor at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York. ‘At this point, you may actually start to notice a distended belly — the pressure builds until you can’t hold your stomach flat even if you try. As the stool gets harder in your colon, you up your risk for an uncomfortable trip to the bathroom. You may experience straining, bleeding and even small tears.’”
Scientists Are Collecting Poop From Elite Athletes to Create a Performance-Enhancing Poop Pill
Yes, you read that correctly.
Sample Shitty Quote: “New research suggests that performance-enhancing probiotics can be made from microorganisms found in the guts of elite athletes. Swallowing their shit will make your shit — whether that’s running a weekend 5k or hitting eighth for the company softball team — that much better.”
Forget the Viral Mad Pooper — Everyone Has a Poop Bandit in Their Lives
Of course then, MEL Contributing Writer Mile Klee reported on the viral mad pooper, which made us realize that we’ve all had the privilege of having interacted with a serial public pooper.
Sample Shitty Quote: “Most incredibly, the single in-court application of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, ‘which generally prohibits employers from requesting genetic information from its employees,’ delivered a $2.25 million judgement against a company that took cheek swabs from two employees to test against DNA collected from — you guessed it — a series of stool samples left in one of its warehouses.”
‘2 Girls, 1 Cup’: An Investigation Into the Web’s Shittiest Mystery
All of which brings us to the most in depth retrospective of the viral video, ‘2 Girls, 1 Cup,’ ever written. Klee offered up this 3,000-word manifesto on the video that stole our hearts and shat all over our brains.
Sample Shitty Quote: “That the video itself depicts one woman defecating into a cup, in a manner frequently compared to that of a soft-serve ice cream machine. That this woman then messily licks and sucks on her own whipped shit with another woman. That the two of them go on to make out, rubbing their shit-smeared faces together, finally taking turns vomiting the shit back into the cup as well as into each other’s mouths. And that, oh right, there’s no good reason for anybody to watch that shit.”
