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The Shaving Cadre

Welcome to The Shaving Cadre, a forum dedicated to gentlemanly discourse about wet shaving and other topics of common interests. Membership is always free so register today and join in the fun

The REAL value of Forum Friendships and your DUTY to preserve internet Forum Integrity EVERYWHERE!

fhalden said:
I certainly agree that one should never post intentional falsehoods, or malicious content, but subjective opinions are necessarily biased. There's nothing wrong with that. Now, I think it's the responsibility of a poster to disclose conflicts of interest or the existence of special relationships with a vendor, but I know that a review is an opinion, and nothing more. I absolutely love ETHOS/CBL lime soap, as do others. I like the performance of A&E Kaizen, but couldn't stand the scent. That may make me an outlier. Sharing and mutually respecting each other's views is the strong suit at TSC in comparison to other forums, and it's why I spend so much time here. Thanks for such a thoughtful post.

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I agree there’s an assumption of personal bias in everything we say whenever we speak about our own opinions, but if we are always expressing our own opinions other forum members will be able to learn those biases. It’s true, visitors and random internet searches will never learn those biases but that’s just the nature of the beast. It’s the hiding of biases or imply there is no bias when there is that is a problem. Generally speaking, an active member will usually expose there biases, preferences and quirks to those who are also active. That’s part of what makes participating in forums fun and maybe one of the reasons we enjoy the banter and side trails so much.

I think mutual respect is very important and not something you regular observe on larger forums these days. I don’t think everyone has to know everyone to be respectful of opinions but I do think knowing more about each other helps.

I also agree it would be nice if people disclosed potential conflicts of interest but most people don’t think of those things in such blatant terms when talking about their favorite shave gear. ...maybe when they are insta-famous or YouTube monster’s they think about those things.
 
CBLindsay said:
We have all done it, read someone's review or watched a video (not one shared here of course) and had a razor described as "efficient", the soap was "thirsty". The soap is "easy to load and lather" but you need to "use the SV method" if you want to get the best lather, start with a "dryer" brush and load until you get a "nice proto-lather" then face lather, adding water a little at a time "dipping the tips in water" until you get a "thin, low structure" lather. If you do this you will have perfect lather for a straight razor or SE, with plenty of "glide" and "residual slickness" that is off the charts. The person doing the review might try to describe the scent using a variety of words that quickly morph into the kid of sounds that emanate from Charlie Brown's teacher on the Christmas Special but you DO understand when he says it has a "SOS" of about 4 or 5, perfect you say because you LOVE strong Blah blah wha wha scented soaps with off the charts residual slickness and you always use the SV method, and your brush couldn't BE any dryer or your load any more proto. You live for efficiency so that razor is a must have to, who cares that you need to mortgage you dog house to get it.

The order arrives and you eagerly rip open the package (who needs to save the box, you KNOW you're going to love it), OOOH, the razor looks nice...what a blade gap! Sniff! ...Ummm, maybe when you lather it, maybe THEN it will open up and you will be able to smell it, he SAID it was a 4 or 5. Then you shave. and nothing goes right. The soap is a bear to lather but you figure it out because you ARE the Jedi Master of shaving. The scent is ghost like, fleeting at best and more Whaaaa than Blah BLah Wha wha. The razor? Well, the gap that you thought looked so impressive works great as a garlic shaver and fish filet ...and the doctor is optimistic the skin graft will take but efficient isn't the word you would use (your dog is pretty mad because they repossessed his doggie palace while you were getting the skin graft). Hoping to get your doggie palace back, you scurry over to "S&S" to post your gear for sale on the BST (using the OTHER GUY'S description of course).

What went wrong? In short, the "reviewer"/YouTuber & the audience don't share a common understanding of the terms being used. There are two basic reasons this happens, the "reviewer/YouTuber" lacks the experience to translate what he is experiencing into terms his target audience will clearly understand, or the audience lacks the experience to understand the "reviewer/YouTuber". Almost every aspect of the Wet Shaving Hobby is subjective, so there will always be room for personal interpretation. The more experience and exposure to different products someone has the better they will become at providing deeper or more refined descriptions and explaining things in a more concise manor, leaving less room for personal interpretation.

Since we usually only shave once a day the only way to gain experience is time...and by participating in a quality forum like The Shaving Cadre. You might only get to put a blade to your face once a day but you can learn a lot and gain real world experience by interacting with (not just reading posts from) other members who have gained experience. By sharing gear and having conversations you learn about the gear and the lingo (develop the ability to describe for others). We often discuss how important it is for men to develop friendships/relationships with other men and how The Shaving Cadre has played a role in connecting members who have stuck strong friendships, what we don't mention often enough is how consistently our members pass and share samples, gear and ideas OUTSIDE the bounds of the forum. This sharing back and forth does more than feed the desire for more soap, razors and aftershave...it helps build a common language among our members so when a long standing member describes a razor's shaving characteristics or the type of scent a soap has, the majority of TSC members will immediately understand what is being described. Without the interaction between members (beyond avatar cloaked posts) there would be no deeper understanding of any Wet Shaving concepts. ...and of course we allow/encourage our soap vendors/artisan to interact in a similar way so they/we get the same deeper benefits making them even better at serving the community.

DUTY TO FORUM INTEGRITY
If you search the internet for different Wet Shaving related topics you may notice that links to forum posts often come up in the top 10 options (TSC forum links are increasingly more common). There is NOTHING more infuriating than having a link presented only to find that the thread it references contains mis-information, inaccuracies and falsehoods based on obvious bias' or posters spreading rumor rather than proving personal impressions or giving feedback/information based on personal knowledge. WE owe it to our community and to The Shaving Cadre to ensure our threads (our personal posts/videos etc) are always free from bias, intentional falsehoods & inaccuracies or statements meant to discredit or harm (or unnecessarily promote, schill or advance without merit). You'll notice if you search that the Googly machine NEVER forgets, it will find thread content from your very worst day and make it public at the very worst possible moment.

So you COULD post that face shredding razor on the TSC BST and say it's a really mild shaver ...but maybe you should just put it on eBay as a Halloween prop.

EDIT: Just to clarify for those looking for hidden meaning or feeling as if they missed something, this isn’t meant to call anyone out or accuse anyone (except Dave) of a particular wrongdoing. I DID Visit one or more other forums recently and observe things I didn’t like but to my knowledge those things aren’t the dirty work of any TSC member(s). This post/thread is simple meant to call attention to how differences in how things are said and received can lead to frustrations as we travel down the rabbit holes in this hobby.
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Well since there are two Dave's and a David ( me) ( @woodpusher said so) It must my other two hooligans brothers Whew!

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Part of the problem is there isn’t even an agreed upon standard lexicon amongst wet shavers. Someone might be using one word to describe some soap attribute, and I may use another for the same thing. There are words people use as an attribute, and I have no idea what it even is.

And each forum kind of creates a language of their own. Sometimes these trickle across forums (e.g. 3017), but sometimes not.

And it can’t always be chalked up to inexperience either. Me and other shavers have been at this for over ten years, but we still do things differently and describe things differently. Someone might say a soap is very thirsty, but their method starts with a dry brush, while another shaver starting with a wet brush didn’t need to add any additional water. May be a poor example, but you get my point. It’s a perspective, and we all need to understand that YMMV. The only opinion that matters is your own.

I agree, we all need to be honest and up front in our descriptions and reviews, but everyone should understand that these Are only our opinions and the usefulness of them truly ends at the bathroom door.

After a while of watching someone’s reviews and trying the same products to compare, you might get a feel that someone’s reviews are very close to your own experiences. But that can still bite you if you follow them 100% because eventually you will disagree on something.
 
A problem I see is one of experience. When I started wet shaving in 2014, my idea of what was excellent and what was good was vastly different than what I think is excellent, good, or bad currently. In 2014, I don't think I met a soap that was bad. But my reviews and posts on the internet, in varying forms, still exists.

Another issue I perceive is that over the past two or three years, I just haven't taken a chance on many soaps or other gear that I thought were going to be average or bad. Just about everything I have tried has been at the very least above average. I have made selections based off of what I know about the maker already, reviews of those whom I know and trust, and some other factors. This makes for a positive review (in some form or fashion) almost every time.

Basically...if someone is making a first time purchase off of what one person has reviewed and they don't know that person's body of work...well...I hate to say it...they are kind of looking for trouble. If a new shaver asks me what they should start with...I am likely to not tell him to go with a soap that is notoriously hard to lather, or tell him to use a super aggressive razor.

I guess I say all of this to prove Chris' point. Participating in your Shaving Social Circle is imperative! It is through social interaction, albeit online, builds knowledge of those you converse with so that you can base decisions on more than just someone saying, Mitchell's Wool Fat Soap is the best and every newbie should try it before any other soap.

Great discussion Chris!
 
Spider said:
Part of the problem is there isn’t even an agreed upon standard lexicon amongst wet shavers. Someone might be using one word to describe some soap attribute, and I may use another for the same thing. There are words people use as an attribute, and I have no idea what it even is.

And each forum kind of creates a language of their own. Sometimes these trickle across forums (e.g. 3017), but sometimes not.

And it can’t always be chalked up to inexperience either. Me and other shavers have been at this for over ten years, but we still do things differently and describe things differently. Someone might say a soap is very thirsty, but their method starts with a dry brush, while another shaver starting with a wet brush didn’t need to add any additional water. May be a poor example, but you get my point. It’s a perspective, and we all need to understand that YMMV. The only opinion that matters is your own.

I agree, we all need to be honest and up front in our descriptions and reviews, but everyone should understand that these Are only our opinions and the usefulness of them truly ends at the bathroom door.

After a while of watching someone’s reviews and trying the same products to compare, you might get a feel that someone’s reviews are very close to your own experiences. But that can still bite you if you follow them 100% because eventually you will disagree on something.
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You pretty much said it all.

I think its ok to point out when you find yourself disagreeing with another's descriptions or experiences but your goal should be to help build a better understanding overall, not cast others in a negative light. In my example where the original reviewer called the razor "efficient" and you found it to be a shredder, it might be beneficial to say "I got this razor because reviewer X thought it was efficient, I found it so aggressive I can't use it" that way others who might know YOU well will have a better understanding of the razors nature. Or maybe someone else was thinking the same thing but was afraid it was their technique or inexperience that caused the pain. Just be honest and try to add a little value when possible.
 
@dangerousdon I think you really nailed it with the experience thing.

I remember when I got to the point that I was ready to upgrade my soap game I read literally hundreds of reviews. I really couldn't afford to make a mistake at the time. Getting soap shipped to Finland is a costly endeavor. Now thankfully I wound up making the right choice and that soap maker is still my personal #1 maker.

But there were a few things that stuck out to me reading the millions of reviews, and the experience factor was number one. It was amazing to me to see how many folks were pontificating with a collection of three soaps. I pretty much looked at the guys who had large collections and looked for them mentioning the properties I was looking for.

The thing that was lacking in so many reviews was any kind of context. "Out of my collection of 5 soaps this is great lathering but maybe not as slick as X..... but this was only my first try so who knows"

Of course if you're a one soap, or razor etc man, more power to you, but it's pretty hard to make comparative reviews without having anything to compare to. And for most people comparison is the next best thing to being able to actually trying something.

What's interesting with shaving is even though it's a seemingly simple activity, there really are a lot of variables. I mean, is every lather you make really the best possible lather? Are they consistent or do you have good and bad days? I know I do. That's just one. @Spdier makes some great points there, not everyone builds later the same, different brush types affect the lather etc.... Experience is the only hope of seeing through that fog.

Lol, the guy I set up for his 60th just messaged me and said, 'I think that the cheap shaving gel I had is better than the soap you got me' and no wonder, it takes a bit to figure it out.

That said, there is another interesting breed of micro analyzers. Again more power to you but Idk, for my situation, past a certain point, it's all shades of grey to me. But I guess that's one way to go down the rabbit hole as well. My gut says that's sort of an intermediated phase, or just about hype generation. I've got some really great soaps, but at the end of the day, the difference between them in terms of actually getting the job done isn't anything huge. At that point it's more about the variety of experience than that X is so much better than Y.

Of course this is a hype based game, and ironically, though it's moved into my top two of makers, the OP's brand is a really good soap, but has never felt like one of the cool guys on the hype train. For me it was one to grow into. I can't really say why that is, maybe it has to due with the old time soap like scent the base has, maybe the packaging, maybe it's just the Hesperia je ne sais quoi. But the thing is, it's really a good soap.

Not sure what the point of this ramble is other than getting more than one opinion is a good thing, following your spirt is a good thing, if it works for you it does, hype be damned.
 
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