6 Stupid Internet Beauty Tips We Actually Tested
At this point in human history, most of us are now hard-wired to either A) distrust what we read on Internet or B) distrust what we read on the Internet and shout profanity at the screen. But one topic that still turns us into slack-jawed marks at an 1800s snake oil show are "lifehacks," those time-saving tips and tricks that range from handy (the pain of a paper cut can be stopped with chapstick) to unmitigated clusterfucks.
We asked long-suffering Cracked writer Evan Symon to dive back into the fetid crevasse where stupid Internet lifehacks go to spawn and die, and return with six potential stinkers to test on his own body. What bad ideas did he dredge up?
Using Peanut Butter As Shaving Cream
For the everyday shaver, if you run out of shaving cream, you just use a dab of soap. It's not entirely satisfactory, but it works in a pinch. BUT WHAT IF YOU RUN OUT OF SOAP? According to Examiner.com, peanut butter makes for a more than serviceable price-conscious replacement (for shaving your face, not scrubbing your junk). To test this, I grew enough facial hair to look like a Seattle barista circa 1992 and then slathered my face with a veritable "glop" of peanut butter.
Or "a "diarrhea of" depending on your bathroom lighting.
Applying it wasn't terrible, as I smelt like a Reese's man. Unfortunately, I needed to hack the legume paste off my face, so I began shaving, only to stop immediately when this happened:
Fuck.
Unlike shaving cream, every swipe of a brand-new razor required a full minute to remove the peanut butter. Instead of a clean-shaven goatee, I was left with a patchy facial hair ensemble that could only be described as "Shaggy from Scooby Doo, if he was caught in a grease fire." If you're going for that look, then by all means, shave with goober peas.
The face of a man who just remembered how much replacement cartridges cost.
Using Kitty Litter As A Facial Mask
After a cursory glance at prices on Google, I discovered that a gentleman's spa facial could cost up to $60, which is way pricier than most other facials you can find on the internet. Given that price, it sort of makes sense that some people would try out the kitty litter facial. I started by crushing and wetting several scoops of (clean) kitty litter and plastering it onto my face, like Steven Seagal under siege in the Scoop Away factory.
I'm guessing that this beauty regimen was popular with Al Jolson.
I then waited for it to dry, until I resembled a zero-fucks reboot of Der Golem.
Taking it off proved a bit challenging, what with hundreds of jagged particles digging into my face
Amazingly, it sort of worked! Sure, it was peeling a bunch of stalactites out of my pores, but my skin felt so smooth that it was like I had taken a bath in George Michael's "Careless Whisper." After all, kitty litter is made from certain types of clay, the same material used in a wide variety of facials. And if you can't get past the fact that you're wearing a product used to collect animal feces, well ...
Cleansing Your Pores With Elmer's Glue
Ah yes, the glue pore facial mask, the chosen beauty tip of Ralph Wiggum. I began my adventure in non-toxic epoxy by slathering Elmer's all over my face until I metamorphosed into Ziggy Stardust.
Just the beer light (and glue fumes) to guide us.
As it dried, my eyelids kept getting glued to my brow as I blinked. Better than gluing my eyes shut, sure, but I ended up walking around for 30 minutes in a perpetual state of surprise. Once the glue dried, it was time to emerge from my arts-and-crafts chrysalis.
The face of a man still pissed about razor prices.
Glue remained stuck in my eyebrows, but it did the job, although not nearly as efficiently as the kitty litter. The only real bonus was this ghastly souvenir, which you're welcome to toss around your house so dinner guests will mistake you for a skin walker.
Or a mothman. Options!
Tanning With Coffee Grounds And Olive Oil
Beauty comes at a price. A real tan can lead to cancer, whereas spray tans have the power to repel most forms of sane human companionship. Thankfully, there is a third way! The process is relatively simple. Mix coffee grounds and olive oil together, drench your favorite limb in there for 15 minutes, and voila! Now you have a beautiful OH DEAR GOD.
"Eh, still tastes better than Starbucks."
Here's a comparison of my clean hand to my "took a wild ride through an Italian cafe" hand. The "tanned" hand on the left definitely got bronzed a bit, but, over the next few hours, my caffeine-lipid force field kept smearing all over nearby surfaces. I wouldn't recommend this exactly for you, dear reader, but perhaps for that special somebody you keep in the well in your basement.
"It puts the extra virgin decaf on it's skin, or it gets the hose again."
Removing Calluses With Stale Bread And Vinegar
Are your feet crusty and hard? Are your feet not hooves? Rejoice! You can remove calluses by, uh, using stale bread soaked in apple cider vinegar. After taping the vinegary bread on my callus and taping it in place, I shoved my foot and my new burning wheat sock into a plastic bag and hit the hay.
TIP: Always ask the grocery clerk, "Will this bread bag hold a human foot?"
The result? Good morning, foot!
If foot could speak, he would be asking me "Why?" over and over again in a weary voice.
No, my foot did not liquefy. But the piece of bread did. Overnight, I had made the world's worst version of bread pudding. On the plus side, the vinegar ate away my callus (Yay!). But on the minus side, it returned a few days later (Boo!). In summation, I would only recommend this lifehack if it satisfies an intensely obscure sexual urge.
Jell-O Hair Dye
If Reader's Digest is to be believed, the new hair dye sensation is Jell-O, that wholesome American dessert made of fruit flavoring and cow knees. After deciding that I would be coloring my hair with the dregs of an orange-flavored boneyard, I mixed the Jell-O with hair conditioner. I now resembled Archie, that wholesome American teenager who was assassinated recently.
Well, if Archie was cross-bred with an Oompa Loompa in a Pentagon bunker.
Once I added enough Jell-O to hate the color orange for the rest of my life, I wrapped my head in a towel, praying to the hair gods for a luscious Leeloo shade of orange.
My prayers went unanswered.
Yup, the conditioner dried on, causing the Jell-O to recrystallize in my hair and crumb off like citrus dandruff. I can't wait until next month, when the brain trust at Reader's Digest teaches me to whiten my teeth with lye.
Evan V. Symon is a personal experience team member at Cracked. If you have an awesome experience or job you'd love to write about, let him know at tips@cracked.com.
For more from Evan, check out 7 Gross Foods Your Grandparents Ate (That We Taste Tested). And then check out 19 Life Hacks You'll Want to Know in a Catastrophe.
