01 · Simulation
The Roll Lab
A real-time physics sandbox. The hanging sheet is a verlet rope — grab it, swing it, let a cat at it. Flip the roll between over and under and watch who pays the entropy tax.
• Drag the sheet — it swings like paper
• Press O / U to remount the roll
• Run the cat test — on over, expect casualties on your carpet
• …and if you remember the sacred sequence of arrows, you may achieve infinite paper.
02 · The numbers
A Nation, Quantified
Settle it. Right here. (demo referendum, saved in your browser)
The Stancemeter™
Slide to declare where you stand on the wall of public opinion.
“Aggressively neutral.”
Historical record (as commonly reported — see sources)
Victor Farlow surveys American attitudes on paper position. Roughly half favour over; the remainder split between under and dignified abstention. A scholarly milestone for an unscholarly issue.
A widely-cited U.S. poll: 70% over · 17% under · 13% don't care. The over camp's favourite ammunition — quoted by hoteliers, manufacturers and uncles alike.
Team Under's strongest card: reports and surveys of cat owners suggest a roll hanging under is far harder to unspool at 3 a.m. Feline engineering remains undefeated.
The great shortage. For one brief, humid month, nobody cared which way the roll faced — only that it existed. Orientation went temporarily dormant.
03 · Context
A Brief History of a Long Sheet
Gayetty's medicated paper
Joseph Gayetty markets the first well-known commercial toilet paper — flat sheets, stamped with his name. No orientation possible. A prelapsarian bathroom.
The patent that started everything
Seth Wheeler patents the perforated, splittable roll. His drawings show the sheet unrolling over the top — the over camp treats this document like constitutional law. (He also invented the tear line, and is somehow not richer for either.)
“Splinter-free”
Marketing finally admits what 19th-century users already knew: previous paper was, mildly speaking, hazardous. The stakes of roll-ness rise.
America gets polled
Victor Farlow's survey of attitudes toward paper position proves two things: people have opinions, and people will answer surveys about bathroom paper.
70 / 17 / 13
The numbers that end dinner parties — at least half of them.
The feline factor
Cat-owner surveys arm the under resistance with its best empirical(ish) defence: a tucked sheet is an un-bat-able sheet.
You, here, reading this
The debate passes to you with the usual urgency of a roll in a gas station at closing time.
04 · The arguments
The Case, Both Ways
Click a card to see the verdict. One side has a patent; the other has cats.
“Somewhere in a patent archive, a 134-year-old drawing is still winning arguments.”
05 · Self-assessment
Which Orientation Are You?
Five low-stakes questions with extremely high-stakes implications.