Spaghetti without tomato sauce? That's like pissing in the morning without farting. Sure, it'll get the main job done but it's not the same pure pleasure.
Fwiw, you can neutralize tomato sauce with a little bit of baking soda. Start with a pinch, stir, wait thirty seconds, and taste to see if you need more.
My guess is that the pasta mentioned above is spaghetti "aglio olio e peperoncino" (garlic, olive oil, red pepper), so not just olive oil.
Could be the recipe with the highest ratio taste/effort you can find, something that even a drunk student can pull off a 4 in the morning, so they probably just continued their tradition from the university years
Butter emulsifies into a sauce just from the residual heat of the spaghetti (and some mechanical action - stirring, pan flip, etc)
Oil needs a bit more help, otherwise it's just grease on noodles. The starchy water the pasta was cooked in can do most of the heavy lifting there, but the addition of garlic helps too.
