A strange new gaslighting campaign is claiming that British people don’t rinse the soap off when washing their dishes

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Mostly starting in September of 2024, a slew of articles has been published claiming that British people “don’t rinse the dirty soap off their dishes when washing them”— where they claim that instead it is customary in the UK for people to simply set the dishes on the drying rack with the soap still on them!

I believe this is some sort of a weird media hoax for a few reasons.  First of all because I can’t believe that anyone would not automatically quickly rinse the soap off their dishes before setting them on the rack, because it is effortless to do so and there is every reason to do it and no reason not to do it.  And also I don’t believe that such a ridiculous supposed phenomenon could not have been widely reported before.

I think this is another strange gaslighting campaign that is similar to the “Flat Earth Society,” or with the more recent situation of thousands of leftists seeming to pretend to be enamored with the United Healthcare CEO killer, as explained in this link.

For example, it was recently reported in these articles:

A November 29, 2024 House Digest article: “Is The British Dish Washing Trend Really Getting Your Dishes Clean?” (link)

A September 19, 2024 Apartment Therapy article: “I Discovered the British Way of Washing Dishes, and I’m Shocked” (link)

A September 12, 2024 Metro.Co.Uk article: “Americans are horrified by the ‘strange’ way Brits wash dishes” (link)

September 11, 2024 PopSugar article: “Is the ‘British Way’ of Washing Dishes Really So Bad?” (link)

September 11, 2024 Edinburg Live article: “Americans in stitches at how British people wash up – saying we get it wrong” (link) — (Note this article in a British media outlet even says in its title that “we” do it!  But I still don’t believe it though.)

I was able to find some older articles that mention it, but nonetheless I still don’t believe that it can be true:

This March 11, 2022 “Medium” article: “Why Brits Don’t Rinse Off Their Dishes” (link)

This 2014 “Straight Dope” article: “Do the British not rinse dishes after washing them?” (link)