toilet seat up or down: the definitive guide to ending pee dribble and bathroom drama 2025
thomas crapper would agree
why ‘default up’ is the only rational solution, according to game theory, common sense, and a little basic bathroom algebra
Sep 15, 2025
i won’t soil this article with pampered pooetry, lofty rebuttals, or the usual faux-intellectual pontifications about the up-or-down question. there’s no need for persuasion. there is one answer. the toilet seat should always remain up. that’s it. read on for rigor.
otherwise, tl;dr: your arguments are either weak (like, physically weak, if lifting a toilet seat is a struggle) or built on some societal norm where women became the final arbiters of people-pleasing blah blah. exceptions exist. physical impairments, disabilities. talk to me after class. but the debate as we customarily know it? consider it officially put to rest (in the upright position).
📖 define the terms
first, let’s define the toilet. the western toilet. and i’m talking about the toilet seat. i could give zero shits about the lid. it’s never been about the lid. the debate is over the seat, so let’s all pretend we’re dealing with a public porcelain waste receptacle that has one hinged seat. as you’ll see, the lid is just a casualty of the default up philosophy.
🫡 acknowledge my predecessors
here’s a quick run-through of those who came before me: choi (2002) minimized seat-lifting labor and crowned “leave it as you found it” the winner. siddiqi (2006) argued that fear of female wrath locks us into an “always down” trembling-hand-perfect nash equilibrium (translation: even if “down” isn’t efficient, fear of mistakes keeps everyone there). harter (2005) added that the costs of conflict outweigh all else, suggesting families/groups establish a contract or alternate up/down. clever, yes. complete, no. all three, crucially, overlooked the true externality driving our misery: pee dribble.
🚽 the default up philosophy
why do we care about seat position in the first place? my predecessors were concerned with the effort of moving the seat, the labor of movement. forget labor. i argue the true default position with the nastiest outcome in mind: sitting on a pee-soaked seat.
when the seat is left down and someone urinates standing, dribble risk approaches 100%. when it’s up, the problem nearly vanishes. so the cost isn’t labor. it’s unsanitary surfaces.
of course, when everyone sits, the seat goes down as needed. default up only addresses standing urination scenarios. but i think we can all agree, we don’t live in an “eveyone sits” democracy!
sidebar: sometimes, when you flush with the seat down, bowl water splooshes out onto the seat. yes, it’s gross. yes, it’s your problem. tear a square, clean it up, and put the seat up. wouldn’t have happened if the seat had been up to begin with.
📈 payoff matrix (sanitation-focused)
time to get nerdy. we’re talking game theory, probabilities, and social cost, all to avoid sitting in someone else’s pee. yep. this is exactly what choi, siddiqi, and harter did, but i’m doing it better.
let:
pₘ = probability a male urinates standing
d = probability of dribble (≈1 when seat down, 0 when up)
cₜ = cost of touching/moving the seat
c_d = cost of cleaning dribble
assume two players:
person a (equipped for standing urination)
person b (always uses seat down)
translation for non-mathers:
status quo (seat left down) = less effort moving the seat, but a much higher chance of sitting in pee.
default up = everyone touches the seat sometimes, but no one ever ends up in a puddle.
the trade-off is obvious. a tiny inconvenience beats touching pee pee. any effort spent flicking the seat is nothing compared to the disaster of sitting in dribble. default up wins. every time.
🏸 formalize the game
players: everyone who uses the bathroom. some can urinate standing (s type), others cannot (n type).
strategies:
always up (default up)
always down
leave as found
payoffs: in this game, sanitation outweighs effort. the cost of touching a seat (cₜ) is negligible compared to the cost of cleaning, or enduring, a sit-in-pee accident (c_d).
equilibrium explained simply:
“always down” can be stable because it satisfies social pressure, but it’s unsanitary.
“default up” is the optimal solution. a little inconvenience here, no one sitting in a puddle there.
you can’t lose if you keep it clean. default up is the only rational play.
🫖 social norms and real-world enforcement
why, then, do we cling to “always down”? because social norms often value appearance over actual welfare. courtesy, tradition, not being yelled at. here, courtesy and cleanliness diverge. “always down” is a welfare-decreasing norm. it feels polite, but it creates the worst outcomes (at best, you wipe up someone’s mess before you sit. at worst, you sit in pee pee.)
a personal anecdote: last time i stopped at buc-ee’s, a shrine to public bathrooms, their toilets fascinated me. spring-loaded seats that pop back up by default. no arguments. no dribble. no drama. they got the memo.
👊 the porcelain pushback
every manifesto meets its mob. here are the most common critiques i anticipate to be lobbed at my default-up philosophy (and the ways i flush them back down).
the hygiene critique
argument: leaving the seat up exposes the bowl. more germs, more splashes, more… visual offenses.
form: “you want me staring into an open sewer every time i walk in?”
counter: the lid is the true arbiter of hygiene, not the seat.
the gender equity critique
argument: women (and anyone sitting) will have to constantly lower it, which feels like an imbalance of labor.
form: “why should i be the one to adjust it every time?”
counter: it’s not gendered. it’s a shared action problem. men adjust before peeing, women adjust before sitting. symmetry.
the safety critique
argument: falling in. especially in the dark, especially for kids or the half-asleep.
form: “have you ever sat on cold porcelain at 2am? tragic.”
counter: blame proprioception, not philosophy. also: lids.
the laziness critique
argument: leaving it up is just shirking courtesy. you’re offloading effort onto the next person.
form: “if you loved me, you’d put it down.”
counter: no one ever says “if you loved me, you’d put it up.” why is courtesy one-directional?
the aesthetics critique
argument: a seat-up bathroom looks unfinished, chaotic, uncivilized.
form: “my feng shui is ruined by your hinge negligence.”
counter: this is vibes-based, not reason-based. aesthetics are subjective.
the compromise critique (aka the lidists)
argument: everyone should just close the lid after every use. ends the war entirely.
form: “seat up or down is moot. close it like you close the fridge.”
counter: default-up is still simpler in multi-user environments (no extra hinge step required).
🆙, up, and away
just like airline tray tables before landing, toilet seats should be returned to their upright and locked positions. not because it’s polite, but because it’s the most sanitary equilibrium. the default up philosophy fairly distributes effort, eliminates dribble, and saves humanity from one of its most ridiculous recurring conflicts.
full disclosure: i didn’t even factor in people without the xy chromo combo standing to pee at a western toilet. run that thought experiment in your head, plug it into the table. you still get a messy outcome.
so let the seats rise! let our butts stay dry. let reason prevail.