Let’s get the awkward part out of the way first: Perhaps you’ve been hearing about friction-maxxing. We know, the term is, objectively, a little cringe, right? It sounds like something a 20-something podcaster would say right before trying to sell you a supplement. The -maxxing suffix alone is enough to make a reasonable person take a step back. And yet—like so many things that initially sound insufferable—there’s a real idea buried underneath the newfound internet slang, and it’s one that the well-groomed man would be smart to pay attention to.
Coined by columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton in a January 2026 essay for The Cut, friction-maxxing is the practice of intentionally choosing the less convenient option in daily life. The core argument: Technology companies have spent years conditioning us to treat ordinary discomfort—boredom, effort, the simple inconvenience of doing something slowly—as problems to be engineered away. Friction-maxxing pushes back. It’s not about being a Luddite. It’s about recognizing that ease isn’t always better, and that some of the things we’ve optimized ourselves out of were actually worth keeping.
Applied to the bathroom, this philosophy makes a surprising amount of sense.
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