Why are soap operas called soap operas?

It's not like it's half an hour of watching people clean their hands or whatnot... nor, thank god, is there any singing...

its because when it gets in your eyes it stings like fuck

Maybe the people who first made them were fed up with people prancing around a stage singing and wanted them to clean up their act.

Because the only people watching them should actually be too busy doing the washing with their soap powders to be watching any telly, the workshy scrubbers (d'ya see what I did there?)

Daytime dramas so named because they were originally sponsored by the makers of laundry detergent in the early days of television.