Most girls take showers. Some of them have long, or long-ish, hair. And — as is common among most mortals, who spend their lives in a state of progressive decay — sometimes, their hair falls out.

Which is fine. People are actually expected to lose, on average between 60 to 100 strands of hair everyday. Even if some people lose more than that, there are bigger problems in the world than hair fall.

But the problem is this: the wonders of modern plumbing include shower drain strainers — they are those things that cover your drain so big things don’t fall into it and clog it. And these strainers in a communal shower are often — in fact, disturbingly often — ringed with somebody else’s hair.

In and of itself — this is pretty gross. Not to mention depressing — I don’t want to see clumps of anybody’s hair for largely purely aesthetic reasons, but it doesn’t help that it is also a reminder of the general low level of health that we accept as the new normal in college (disclaimer: I’m still recovering from a sore throat I got from eating at Fraiche and am considerably bitter about it.)

But while I’m in the shower, I always pause to think about the ever present ominous collection of somebody else’s hair. It’s important to note here that I am not in fact obsessed with this phenomenon, nor do I regularly ponder things that are, at best, distasteful. But the longer I think about this in the shower, the longer I can avoid my homework, so naturally, I gave this a lot of thought.

And I realised that what really irks me is the why. Why can’t people just pick up their hair and shamefully dispose of it like we’re expected to? It’s so easy to solve this menace — and yet, we are forced to live like barbarians.

Because it’s really not that bad to pick up your own hair. I would argue that on the grand scale of things, it’s not even exceptionally gross. Markus Zusak, in his book “The Book Thief” — which spent 230 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list — conveyed it best when he wrote, “No one’s urine smells as good as your own.” Because nobody is really disgusted by their own hair falling out — fearful, maybe. Disappointed, concerned, resentful of their father who started balding early — all plausible. But it’s really not at all that repulsive or taxing to simply pick up your own hair after a shower.

And yet, time and again, for as long as communal showers with drains covered by sieve-like covers have existed, this problem has persisted (probably).

So the question remains — why does the bathroom in my dorm have so much hair stuck in the drain?

If my first year of liberal arts education has taught me anything, it is to make connections where nobody else would — mostly because the connection is usually either bizarre, obvious or too taxing to be useful. But, I’m taking a new class about collective action and I’m excited about it, so instead of doing the readings for that class, I’m going to use the game theory we learnt in it to explain this phenomenon.

I know that this is probably making John Nash turn over in his grave and everyone who watched "A Beautiful Mind" gasp in horror — but I insist that this has to be done.

So, for the basics: game theory is concerned, among other things, with exploring how to make a choice, when the outcome of your choice is dependent, in part, on somebody else’s choice. Interestingly enough, the credit for developing this theory is given to John Von Neumann — who wrote his first paper on it in 1928, before going on to recommend, quite enthusiastically, a nuclear strike on Russia, who was still developing nuclear weapons. His reasoning? Mathematics. With two nuclear power’s in the world, annihilation of one was to him, “not a question of whether but of when."

But apart from all that doom and gloom, game theory is actually incredibly interesting because it can be applied to so many different situations. As my favourite misunderstood quote goes, “Hell is other people” (Jean-Paul Satre) — and yet, everyday, we are forced to cooperate with other members of our species to survive.

Which would be fine — except other people have minds that work independently. That means every act of coordination involves some amount of guesswork or investigation — because people are tricky, and often mysterious, or at the very least periodically irrational.

It’s honestly kind of remarkable that we are able to do anything at all, when you really think about it. But that is a rant for a different day.

Game theory provides a framework to look at these interactions, which are often characterized by imperfect information (a.k.a lying, deception and miscommunication — the staples of life) between players.

And when it comes to collective action, where a group of individuals have a common interest, game theory becomes even more interesting. Because you would assume that in a group where something is in the best interest of everyone, each of those members would be motivated to contribute — especially when the cost of contribution is less than the benefit gained. But no — that actually is the not what happens, at least in big groups.

Because for an individual in a group, the rational choice would actually be to not contribute to achieving the group's’ common ends — the rational option would be to become a free rider who simply sits back and waits for everyone else to do the work, and then reaps the rewards anyway.

Which is infuriating! And it’s infuriating for a number of reasons — first, because obviously, if everyone did that, the collective action wouldn’t even happen. Second, because, even though it’s so sneaky and unfair, it makes so much sense! And I hate that the kid in every project group whose only contribution is a name to tag onto the end of the project is actually the most rational one!

I should mention at this point that this is not strictly true and there are of course a number of complications and nuances to this situation and the application of the theory. But the central idea is still salient: that the most rational response for an individual in a group with a shared interest is to not actually contribute.

And that’s what explains the hair and the drain and the grossness.

Because after all, this whole situation can be boiled down to a game theory case study. All the girls on my floor are a group, and among our many shared interests is the goal of a clean living environment — which of course, includes the showers.

And yet, nobody wants to clean up after themselves, because they assume that everyone else will, and then their minimal contribution won’t be missed anyway. Or maybe they’re hoping that somebody get’s so frustrated that they just clean up for everyone. Either way, the dominant strategy seems to be one of inaction.

Which is disheartening, but there are solutions to collective action problems. The first solution is that the problem can be divided up, so it is no longer a collective action problem, but that can’t really be done in this context — at least not without extensive contractor work. And unfortunately, private bathrooms don’t look like a reality anytime in the near future for us. The second solution can be accountability — small groups are much more likely to solve collective action problems because their members are easier to hold accountable. The third solution is to have a third party that enforces contributions — like the government using the IRS to make sure you don’t evade your taxes.

For the accountability to work, first we need to establish that people care what others think of their hygiene habits. In 2015, the global antiperspirant and deodorant market was a whopping 18 billion dollars big. That’s a lot of money. That’s almost 300,000 years of Stanford tuition (And yes, I did do that math). I’m taking that to be proof that generally, people care about not being gross — and they actively spend time and money pursuing that end.

But the problem with accountability is that that urge doesn’t translate into action because of the anonymity provided by the showers. And as much as this shower hair thing riles me up, getting rid of that privacy is probably not entirely rational.

So if accountability doesn’t work — we are left with third party enforcement. Which explains why occasionally a notice or sticky note will pop up on the doors of the shower stalls with a reminder to pick up your hair. It also explains why our our residential staff had to bring it up in hall meeting. But so far, that hasn’t been enough — because people know that they can still get away with it.

But maybe, and I admit this is naive and hopeful — this long and winding exploration of this phenomenon will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back — and finally result in people doing their part to keep our showers clean.

Only time will tell if my passive aggression will yield results. But if it doesn’t I know what I’m taking away from all this: most people can be gross, and a dorm setting makes them just more publicly so. And the dominant strategy in life is to avoid at all costs having to live with other people.