Why the hell would anybody lick their fingers anyway? Seems to me it would have the potential to damage the paper. I use the same page-turning technique as BuckleberryFerry, no matter what the dangers of communicable disease are.
I heard somewhere that the mouth is the filthiest part of the body. :eek: That’s kinda hard to believe though - it implies that taking a bite out of a chip and then dipping it a second time is somehow worse than, say, sticking it up one’s ass.
The idea of someone spitting on my pages before giving it to me makes me gag a little inside. But see, I have mild hand-related OCD. I can’t go for more than an hour between washing my hands. I hate the way they feel dirty. Once, my water was out for about 3 hours, and I almost started gagging because of the way my hands felt. I’d actually take things out of the freezer, wait for condensation, and rub the water on my hands. I am strange. But that might be due to the fact that I chew on all the loose skin around my nails.
That being said.
The idea of me licking my finger before I turn every page disgusts me. I could never do that. I’ve worked at B&N - people read books there, and could be lickers. I borrow books from the library - I’m sure several people have been lickers. Money? Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww. (we REALLY need a pukey smiley face)
As it stands, I may be getting my finger-grease all over everything, butthat’s between my books and my fingers.
Lickers, however, are licking crap off their fingers every time they turn the page. From lord knows how many sources. Imagine the grossest finger-licker you can reading the book before you get it.
I have to stop now, I’m too close to gagging.
I love it when people try to turn around arguments. You wanna claim it’s unsanitary, make your case.
Daniel
Hehe. Me too. 'Cause germs lead to hand-washing. And the cold weather doesn’t help either. It’s 30 degrees outside right now and my hands are bleeding. 
Depends on the yardstick. If you put a tiny bit of saliva on a sterile medium in a petri-dish, it’s a safe bet that the dish will be totally colonized with a variety of microbiological life-forms much faster than if you put the same amount of fecal matter in the same place. So in that sense, it is your mouth is filthier than your ass. Of course, chances are that none of the nasties in your average mouth are as devastating as e coli, (which is a sure bet with ass-debris) is when introduced to the wrong end of the GI system, so you might be better off taking your chances with the spit, and just hope that the double-dipper doesn’t have mononucleosis, hepatitis, or something like that. It’s a numbers game.
Still, I am so fascinated my the anti-finger licking folks.
Do you all ever french kiss?
Well, sure, but not with the random strangers and the slobs we have to work with.
As Emo Phillips observed, love is just two people who’ve built up an immunity to each other’s microbes.
Of course, if Emo’s not enough of an authority for ya, there’s always this guy:
Then why’d you do it? YOU are making the claim that diseases are only transmitted through non-porous surfaces, and not through porous surfaces. So you make the claim and then we have to prove you wrong, eh? Whatever…
Yes, but only people who I actually like and know. However, my gross-out is not the idea that I’ll get their spit on me, it’s this:
It revolts me the way it would revolt me to see someone snacking on a dog turd, albeit to a lesser degree.
Gee, I’ve heard that somewhere before… 
Anyway, isn’t it silly to debate the transmissivity of diseases over a topic as mundane as people who lick their fingers? Rhesus monkey on a pogo stick! The OP seems to think licking is gross. If you disagree, fine.
My claim is that I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick through anything remotely like this, and I doubt anyone ever has. The porous/nonporous I’m happy to abandon, if it’s that important to you. Now, can you point to an occasion where anyone has ever gotten sick through germs someone left on a piece of paper after licking their fingers and touching the page? Or even something remotely like this?
Daniel
Yup, yup yup. I don’t do it with books, mine OR other people’s, but I work in an office and after a full day of filing, printing reports, compiling different paperwork, my hands are so dry that I can NOT turn pages without the friction.
The pages I have to do this to are ones that I’m sorting and collating, and they’re fresh off the printer or copier though.
Can’t use lotion, it would leave a mark, and these are books that are going to meetings, and or “important” people.
I’ve gotten colds from people at work lots of times. We can’t see germs, so when you catch a cold, you don’t know exactly where it came from. You can catch them from airborne particles or from touching surfaces that the sick person touched. Isn’t that why doctors tell you to wash your hands frequently? It stands to reason that if a sick person constantly licks his fingers and then touches things, you are going to have a higher chance of contracting his illness. Why is that not logical?
How the hell would I be able to give an example of someone getting sick by touching paper? I can’t give an example of any mode of transmission, because unless I took samples from every surface in the room and did a laboratory workup on them, I have no way of knowing how they contracted the illness. Does that mean nobody ever gets sick? Of course not.