On Performative Cleanliness

In November, a woman put her prepackaged Christmas tree in the tub and washed it. “Unpopular opinion: You need to clean your Christmas tree,” she wrote on the TikTok video devoted to documenting the experience, during which viewers can see perfectly clear water circling the drain, as if it wasn’t obvious enough that nobody actually needs to hose down a chunk of plastic that comes straight from a cardboard box. She was right about one thing: It was indeed an unpopular opinion; the comments on the video, which went viral on both TikTok and X, ranged from annoyed (“sometimes I think people clean just to make other people feel dirty”) to mocking (“me doing anything at work to make it look like I’m busy”) to diagnosing her with obsessive-compulsive disorder.