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The mysterious Redditor who’s changing the way we do laundry

How a man who calls himself Kismai built a cult following around lipase and “spa day.”

Here is what you need to know about the man known to hundreds of thousands of people as Kismai: Kismai is not his legal name; he is incapable of eating cheeseburgers without getting some on his shirt; and he hates when people are wrong on the internet. Separately, those three distinct characteristics could describe anyone. Together, those elements make for a hero to the people who seek laundry advice on Reddit.

“You would not know [from looking] at me that I am good at laundry,” Kismai told Vox (his full username is KismaiAesthetics, a joke from the first season of the sitcom Letterkenny.) “You would be more inclined to think I smell like Post Malone. I think that’s part of my charm. I’m not Martha Stewart. I am not stereotypically fastidious. I do this because I am a fat, sweaty slob who eats with wild abandon and apparently never learned to use cutlery as a toddler.”

Kismai is a savant when it comes to getting clothes clean.

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He has singlehandedly changed the way people do laundry. He is the reason the word “lipase” has become a topic of conversation across elder millennial group chats. He can move the market. His adherents clamor for their faceless champion to give them advice. They praise him for a 12-hour process called “spa day” and post their disgusting but satisfying results for the world to see. The small monetary tips they’ve sent him in appreciation have paid for his health insurance for the entire year.

Kismai never intended his laundry posts or his alter ego to ever get this popular, but this celebrity makes sense. Millions of us do laundry, and even though we live in the most technologically advanced age of washing machines and have an astonishing amount of detergents at our disposal, our clothes, sheets, and towels all suffer from persistent problems: foul pit funks, color transfers, graying whites, relentless stains, etc.

Spending the time and energy to do laundry and not come away with clean clothes is frustrating. We ruin our favorite shirts, cycle through socks and underwear faster than we’d like, throw away musty gym attire, and ultimately spend more money on both new clothes and new detergents in hopes to break free.

The act of doing laundry is predicated on the idea of washing away past grimes and past mistakes. When someone provides a method to this madness, shows their work and the results, and maps out an end to our collective annoyances, people will listen. Even if that person is a self-described slob.

“It’s this universal human experience, right?” Kismai said, trying to explain his popularity and the nerve he’s struck. “And for me, this all started with: How the fuck do I get the cheeseburger grease out of cotton?”

Why everyone suddenly wants detergent with lipase

One of the crucial tenets of Kismai’s laundry strategy is centered on lipase, a naturally occurring enzyme that can also be industrially prepared. Enzymes are especially good at breaking down different kinds of stains, which makes them an important component of laundry detergent. Lipase’s specialty is tackling lipids and fats (think: cooking oils, butter, and some oily body secretions).

“Some of the most common fat molecules are ‘Y’-shaped molecules called triglycerides,” said Nathan Kilah, a professor at the University of Tasmania who specializes in synthetic chemistry. “The ‘arms’ of the ‘Y’ are fatty acids that are linked into a central glycerol group. The lipase can break the connection between the fatty acids — Y arms — and the glycerol — central bit — which makes them into smaller molecules that can more readily dissolve into water.”

This science isn’t new; the first patent for animal derived enzymes........

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