Whatever you do in the comfort and Google-blessed privacy of your own home is between you and your webmaster—the pimple popping community is very vibrant online, very serious about their art, and we're not here to judge people who are into that. HAVING SAID THAT, the moment you decide to pop your lover's pimples in a public space is the moment you become an enemy of all that is good and right in this world.
Tipster Farah Visslailli encountered two such enemies while riding the N train around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday from Union Square to Brooklyn: "[I] had the pleasure of staring at this loving couple for the ENTIRE ride," she told us. "I've seen a lot of nasty stuff on the subway, but this is a first. She was going to town, popping his face/neck pimples for almost the whole ride. It wasn't just one-sided though, he reciprocated by going after a few on her forehead. How nice."
Visslailli was clearly traumatized by her experience, because her sarcastic "nice" is so far from cutting it in this situation. This is such a serious violation of public decency, we don't know where to begin. We've encountered every form of subway etiquette violations imaginable, we've put together lists of the worst sins you could commit, and this might be the worst we've encountered, the lowest form of social grooming.
We can only imagine the stories that these people tell themselves to sleep at night. It's like Frank Sobotka once said: "I knew I was wrong. But in my head, I thought I was wrong for the right reasons, you know?" But there are different kinds of wrong.
At least we can all take comfort in the fact that this couple's incredibly unhygienic defiance of the social contract could be their own undoing—nothing causes infections like dirty fingers probing open wounds.
