I didn’t expect it either, so I was surprised to see damage show up relatively quickly (a couple of months). My theory is that it’s wringing them out with a much stronger force than anything you could ever do by hand, stretching the fibers beyond their normal use.

While it seems to be a controversial issue, there’s something everyone agrees on - delicates should not spin at the highest speeds. Why is that? If it caused no additional wear, wouldn’t it make sense to use the highest speed on everything? If not, wouldn’t the same forces apply to all clothing, even if the wear is not immediately obvious?

It’s entirely possible that the damage was coincidental and unrelated to the spin speed. My data is anecdotal, and should not be taken as gospel. I could not find any meaningful tests on the subject (e.g. we ran these towels 1000 times on medium spin then measured the wear). Every source I found is either a random person pretending to know everything, or part of an obvious sales pitch.