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Social media has three goals. Two of them, reporting the news and getting people to read/watch what they’re producing, are both done to satisfy goal #3, which is to get as much money from advertisers as possible.

Reporting the news is easy. Granted, you need to be a good writer or know how to make compelling videos. Getting people to read it? Not so much. So over the years, social media has taken to making titles more and more sensational, to bait or entice potential readers to click. Hence, “clickbait.”

The best kind of clickbait is the one that’s not actual “news” news, but “FYI” or human interest kind of stuff. It stays evergreen. So while X number of entities may write about it one year, Y number of entities may post their version month or even years down the line. After all, it’s a whole, new audience that may not have seen it (or don’t remember that they saw it) the first (second, third, etc.) time around.

That’s how the whole “Don’t use hotel hair dryers” story pops up repeatedly. Here, let me show you:

The origins

Back in 2008,  ABC News released a piece called The Price of Cleanliness. It went into all the germs you can find in a hotel room – in/on the toilets, sinks, drinking glasses and even the irons. They knew because they tested a bunch of hotel rooms in the L.A. area. Of course, big surprise, there were plenty of germs found, regardless if you were staying at a 5-star hotel or a $98 one.

One thing the article mentioned was the hairdryer in each room. Chuck Gerba, the microbiologist who was testing everything suggested that the hairdryer was one of the most germ-laded items in each hotel.

“There must be some things you can do with a hairdryer that I am not aware of because some of them were pretty germy,” Gerba said.

This would make sense, especially in the halcyon days of pre-COVID. State codes might mandate that hotels sanitize obvious areas like toilets and drinking glasses, but the same can’t necessarily be said for less evident items such as hair dryers. So it was entirely possible that housekeeping (or Airbnb owners) wouldn’t sanitize or even clean the hairdryer for months, if not years.

The clickbaity copycatters

Of course, people are always being warned about germs in the toilet or on the TV remote control. But on the hairdryer? That’s new! So over the years, different entities started picking up on just that part of the story…with more and more clickbaity titles, to boot. Here are some of them:

• 2017: Why You Should Never Use the Hairdryer in a Hotel Room (Cosmopolitan)
• 2019: This is Why You Should Never Use the Hair Dryer in Your Hotel Room (Marie Claire)
• 2020: The Real Reason You Might Not Want to Use a Hotel Hair Dryer (The List)
• 2022: Why You Should Never, Ever Use a Hotel Hair Dryer (Indy100)
• 2024: Grim Reason You Should Never Use the Hotel Hairdryer (Escape)

Are germy hair dryers really so bad that we shouldn’t use them?

For most of us, not really.

I mean, let’s face facts…unless you’re in a sterile environment, everything you touch has germs on it. If you have a typical immune system, most of them won’t hurt you. A few can, though. Fecal coliform, MRSA, etc. They can give you major GI issues, infections that are resistant to antibiotics, etc.

So here’s what you do. You know that little bottle of hand sanitizer that you keep in your pocket? Wipe the hairdryer down before you use it, just like you do the TV remote control.

Problem solved, and you can keep using hotel hair dryers.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary