If we’re warned by doctor’s, and even by the warning label on the box not to put qtips in our ears because of possible damage, then why do qtips feel so damn good in them, and why is it so hard to stop once you start?
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The warning is on the Q-Tip box because it’s very easy to cause problems by doing this. You can rupture your eardrum or push foreign objects deeper into your ear. Wax is in your ear for a reason and you can push it places it shouldn’t be. Warning you about that stuff on the box is how the company avoids some random court case going poorly for the company because a person argues that’s what they thought cotton swabs were for.
Why it feels good is just related to the body’s evolution not always making the choices you’d make if you were playing a video game and trying to max your stats.
That part of the ear is super sensitive so if anything IS entering your ear you feel very uncomfortable and try to remove it. That trait persists because somewhere in our evolutionary history, some situation where organisms with this kind of setup were better at surviving than organisms without it. (Or at least, by coincidence, the organisms that survived majority had this trait).
Also sometimes when you get sick, the tissue gets inflamed and can feel itchy or irritated. Some of the nerves in that area are shared, so a sore throat in the right places can make your ear feel funky. Those bad feelings go away temporarily if you stimulate the nerve, which the Q-tip does. Even if you aren’t feeling funky, it feels kind of good to stimulate that nerve.
Now, if we were sitting at a video game menu, we might choose to stop making it feel good so people don’t damage their ears with Q-tips. But would it help? Now people might be less likely to respond quickly if something like a bug tries to get in their ear. That seems bad.
And in the end, this doesn’t impact reproduction or evolution. Even if someone *does* make themselves deaf with a Q-tip, they might still find a way to woo a partner and produce babies. Those babies aren’t going to be deaf. And while they may have some of the traits that led their parent to damage their ear, it’s also likely their parent will tell them “Don’t do this, it’s how I went deaf” and they might just listen.
Sometimes that’s just how stuff is. It’d be nicer if our body worked a different way, but nothing’s making the randomness that drives evolution push us in that direction.
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