I can get why this practice was used by oldschool barbers but for the love of god i can't see the science behind it.

We use hides from grass eating animals to make strops because the high silicate concentration in the 3-rd layer of the skin bound in a dense colagen matrix (a consequence of their diet of grass)...this layer is exposed by taning and mecanicaly removing the superficial layers of the skin that re mostly glands and epitelial cells.....this translates to extremly fine abrasion from the silicates and friction burnishing effect from the colagen fibers.
...and i can get how that can hlp an edge.

but i can't see how our own skin that has realy lower content of silicatesand the colagen fibers are not exposed due to the fact that we are not taned )...

I realy cant see what this does to the edge other then cleaning...

But if it works for you...hell...why not....it looks cool...and gets the blod flowing for sure.