Being a man and saving print media

Frequenting the men’s restrooms in the Indiana Memorial Union, I have come to the conclusion that print media will never die.

To those who lament the demise of paper-and-ink newspaper in the age of digital media: Let your lamentations cease.

There will always be a market demand for print newspapers, for there is an impulse in man to read the news (or, at least, the sports section) while relieving his bowels. Unless a smart phone is invented that will sanitize itself, print media will always triumph instead of digital in the sacred place of the bathroom.

Because ladies don’t poop and their farts smell like cinnamon rolls, I don’t expect them to understand the subtle manual dexterity required to read a newspaper while holding it up so that no section slips to the floor.

But learning to do so is part of the process of becoming a man, just like eating red meat, finding excuses for being lazy, high-fiving the accomplishments of our fellow men, watching “Point Break” and pretending to like baseball (which helps with point number 2).

The bathroom, even the public bathroom, has always been a sanctuary of sorts. It is one of the few places left on earth for a man to be alone and to read of the atrocities of the world and of local sport teams. Reading the paper while using the bathroom is one of the simple joys in life that the government will never be able to take from us.

Go and see for yourself, if you are not already there, the number of copies of the Indiana Daily Student strewn across the bathroom floor. The paper plays a dual role in bathroom life: first to be read and enjoyed and then to be used as a mat for the urine-infused floors of the stalls.

The inexperienced public restroom user will make the mistake of picking up and reading the previously disposed-of paper instead of bringing a fresh one. But this is an error soon corrected.

One must always bring a fresh copy of the newspaper to protect one’s hands from bathroom-related diseases and also to add a fresh layer to the growing mat on the floor, providing a greater buffer between oneself and said diseases.

To be informed (about sports) and to be relatively sanitary, this is the natural, self-preserving state of man and the lifeblood of print media publishers across the world.

Newspaper and magazine publishers may be seeing their print publications in decline, but this decline will never hit rock bottom.

Men will never fail to find the joy of reading the newspaper in their bathroom solitude, and only a few will find the joy of writing for the newspaper in that same solitude.

­— sdance@indiana.edu