I remember the first time I went to an anime convention, and was SO EXCITED because they were going to host a DDR tournament!
Then I went into the room where the tournament was supposed to be held and almost died. They were routinely shutting down the room just to try to air it out, and were doing routine announcements of “I do not care if you think you do not smell. Everyone needs to go back to their hotel and shower before coming back. We are serious.”
I didn’t enter the tournament.
What’s the point of showering if the dont wash their clothes
Well just dont wear any. Problem solved.
Turns out neurodivergent people think showering is what keeps them from smelling and refuse to regularly apply Anti-Perspirant.
Or worse, nobody ever told them ‘Deodorant’ lasts a whopping 2-4 hours compared to anti-perspirant. YMMV but most people aren’t the lucky ones with great skin or genetics that don’t make you rank like others who can last ‘48 hours’ with one application…
Like flushable wipes, yes, it says it lasts 48 hours, it’s bullshit. A few swipes in the morning in each pit, a few swipes every evening especially if you’re even lightly active. That means light-moderate pressure swipes too. Not so hard you’re leaving a visible layer which is why so many highschoolers shirts end up with white armpits, but not so softly that no material is literally coming off the cake. Reapplying more to already caked on pits is doing little. That means it’s time to shower and put on less next time. And wait until your pits are fully dry!.. then let the antiperspirant dry before tossing on a shirt and it’ll help with that shirt crud.
Try smelling your pits a couple hours after getting out of a good shower without applying any. It’s not the shower keeping most the stench off. It’s antiperspirant.
And yes, we will smell when you didn’t put any on Connor. Yes, we know you don’t think you stink because you can’t smell yourself. Yes, other people will always know when you smell. Air molecules travel at 500 meters per second.
Correct, you can’t wear the same thin hoodie 24/7 for more than a few days without it smelling. Yes, you should change your underwear daily. Yes, jeans can be worn for a while before needing a wash. Your thin ass comfortable nylon/polyester sweat pants only last a day with your stank. Wash your clothes. Wash your bedding ideally once a week unless you use pajamas. Even then, at least wash your pillow case once a week.
Start the routine now or set an alarm on your phone then actually follow through.
E: Additions.
changing underwear daily was a fake problem invented by big underwear to sell more underwear and thanks to the patriarchy it has thrived
There are ways to manage odor without antiperspirants, however they are even more work than just applying deodorant. Meaning they’re functionally worthless when it comes to the trogs stinking up your average MTG tournament.
The rest is spot on, though, wash your stuff regularly and not only will you smell less - your skin should clear up too.
Oh for sure. And ideally everybody could be doing them too. I’ve gone green or at least more eco-friendly wherever my budget can allow, but genetics are a fickle bitch.
Some people are lucky with their genetics and don’t have stank sweat, eat healthy food, don’t have physically intensive jobs, so that homemade deodorant can work or a couple swipes of regular deodorant will last 24 hours (and they all say reapply as needed).
Is your skin complexion already ‘bad’? Do you leave sweat stains on your bedding? Do you not have problems with breakouts from aluminum oxide? Do you eat bad and don’t have the no stank sweat genes (east asian)? Chances are you need to change up your antiperspirant or deodorant routine if you still stink.
To be fair, deodorant can last longer than 2-4 hours if you don’t stink. But most people doing a lot more than sitting are probably putting some wear on that 2 hour minimum.
I’d imagine one could stink as soon as 20 minutes after application if they are sweating.
Air molecules travel at 500 meters per second.
500m/s=1118mph. Seems unlikely
actually they’re only slightly off. 3-400m/s
Though that’s for individuals. The average is near 0, since they’re all going in random directions, canceling each other out.
The stinky molecules move slower than oxygen but you get the point. This was calculated in the 1800s btw
The issue is that antiperspirant is generally considered bad for one’s health, iirc, because it takes away the body’s ability to cool itself. Now of course, I’m not defending the sort of person that generally gives not one fuck about the most basic measure of hygiene, but…
There are alternatives. Bad body odor is generally produced by the bacteria on your body which thrives and emits odor in the moisture of your sweat, so legitimately taking a shower or applying hand sanitizer to your armpits will help. Though, I dunno if applying like, a rubbing alcohol mixture to your pits would be a wise decision to do frequently since that’s are pretty sensitive body part.
They need like, armpit probiotics, or something. Some sort of stick full of bacteria that smells like lemons or strawberries or something, and then just outbreeds the other bacteria. Somebody should do that, sounds awesome.
It depends on the kind of bacteria, too. Just like with your gut, having a healthy skin biome is important. Not just for odours but also for various skin conditions and infections. Having a healthy skin biome can be the difference between an infection taking hold and giving a nasty sore or dying off due to too much competition (or maybe even predation) without you noticing anything.
Part of it is cleaning the textiles that come in contact with your skin. Especially towels, though clothes and bedsheets are also important. Towels are important to clean properly because their whole job includes absorbing water. Always hang them so that they can dry properly. But even with that, the frequency of them getting wet means bacteria or fungus can start to thrive over time. You can smell it when this happens, it’s one of the nasty BO smells. Let those get established on your towels and they’ll transfer that life to your hands or body whenever you use them. I use bleach with my loads of towels/washcloths (which also means they’ll go longer before they do start to stink, too).
I’ve come to believe that for those who often stink but do shower regularly that it might actually be their laundry practices causing the odours. Maybe there’s some piece of clothing they don’t wash regularly, like a coat or backpack, that is carrying the stink. Or maybe they aren’t washing their clothes effectively. A little bit of bleach once in a while can help with that, too. You don’t need much bleach to sanitize things and most clothing won’t fall apart or lose colour from one exposure. Air drying in direct sunlight could also help with that, since UV light can also sanitize. Also, don’t leave your clothes in the washer for a while before drying them. You’re sometimes better off not washing them at all than doing that.
And another reason why towels are important to maintain properly is that soap can mess with your skin’s pH and make it more difficult for the healthy bacteria to survive. And using hand sanitizer is just blasting away the good and bad so that whatever is the most aggressive ends up taking its place (hence the higher potential for infections). If you blast all the competition away and then rub a towel full of bacteria on your skin right after, you shouldn’t be surprised to discover you stink a short while later.
There’s pre- and pro-biotic soap and lotions that can help support and replace healthy skin biomes.
Plus, nothing starts or ends a day like a good shower.
If I don’t wear antiperspiration my armpits start chaffing when I’m doing yard work or working out and have never overheated because the rest of my body is sweating, but maybe that’s just me or something.
Yeah that definitely varies from person to person.
Except that what they call “Deodorant” doesn’t really stop any odour but just adds a synthetic stink on top of the BO. Essentially, it’s a perfume that, instead of giving a mild floral smell, is made to give off a smell strong enough to numb the sensory organs to BO.
Have enough of that in a venue just adds to air toxicity, which, at the same time, people are unable to realise, making it much worse than toxicity from natural BO.
Yes, I avoid all crowded places. I am not in Japan and would rather be late to work, waiting for the next train than take the train when it is too crowded.
Exactly why I harped on the fact that Antiperspirant is the important part of the Deodorant combo…
Maybe it’s a strategy. Smell so bad your opponent can’t concentrate.
That’s just mutually assured destruction at events, plus all the bystanders in the area might get hit with a clinger BO. Unfortunately some of these curdled ballsacks do do it on purpose, like at smaller Smash tournaments. But are they really winning when their own community doesn’t like them?
Man, thatd be super disappointing. I wish DDR was an active scene still, went with my kid to an arcade recently and for half a minute I thought they had DDR, but it was a copy cat that only had diagonal arrows and a center button (don’t remember which, in the groove maybe). Luckily I have a metal pad and my PS2 still works.
I’ve heard this point a lot but given the fact that until the industrial age, most people had open flames in their kitchen and bedrooms so if i had to guess I’d guess most people smelled of woodsmoke.
That just helped cover the asscrack smell.
Swamp ass with hints of mesquite or a cherrywood smoke.
I’ve had some exes tell me they love the way I smell after a couple days camping, but also that I can’t touch them because I am grimy.
Spend a week roughing it, or in a cabin away from running water, and you’ll realize very quickly that smoke only sorta covers how bad humans can smell
If anything it mixes eventually and makes a whole new nasty
If anything it mixes eventually and makes a whole new nasty
Definitely.
Woodsmoke doesn’t smell unhygienic…actually many people like the smell
For the first few hours. Stale woodsmoke in your hair smell awful.
When everyone is used to it.
I love it. Sadly it’s also carcinogenic
What isn’t…
Death doesn’t. Well, unless you’re the one doing the embalming or applying makeup or making the coffin…
Yeah I love it. Sad to hear it is. Wonder where the state or synthetic chemistry is on it
A friend of mine in the military said when he was deployed and everyone starting stinking. He could be eating with a load of stinking guys. But he could smell if a woman came into the room.
I guess we aren’t too far removed from the animals after all.
Back then people would stuff flowers in their shirts to cover up all the bad smells.
The first claim is true though. People used to not mind the smell of sweat.
That it’s percieved as unpleasant, and that people are worried about others smelling them is a modern trend, which was pushed by advertising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8zRpRPgJNw
11min Video on the topic by “Future Proof”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1shh4d0mz0
German short documentaryEdit: Wow, lot’s of personal attacks, very classy. So many nice people here.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. People have been trying to mask body odor for literally thousands of years.
Unless OP’s definition of ‘modern’ is from, at least, the 1500s till now…
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No its not true, there where products masking bodily smells thousands of years. Idk what you are talking about. But i have to say, if you show up unshowered and without deodorant ata fucking con and im near you i will puke all over you.
You’ve heard of “Free Hugs”…
You’ve heard of “Free Shrugs”…
Now get ready for:
if you show up unshowered and without deodorant ata fucking con and im near you i will puke all over you.
Free hurls
Yeah, they ignore that frigging Egyptians who bathed daily and invented cosmetics and soap, also invented perfume and toothbrushing, and incense, and also had deodorants. Over 4 thousand years ago.
People smell, just fucking use deodorant.
Yeah, but I recall attending a gaming tournament where smash brothers had an entire gym to itself.
By day two it was so bad that the artists(mostly women) just outside the gym had moved their vendor tables away from the gym.
There is a distinct difference between the smell of freshly generated sweat, and dried sweat mixed with all of the other accumulated filth one accrues when they don’t regularly shower.
The first time I went to pax, the whole convention stank like stale pizza. Like at a mall next to a Sbarro’s. Problem was, there was no food court or restaurants at pax… It’s all the greasy gamer stink.
This is the dumbest fucking take. The entire historical record disagrees with two YouTube videos and you’ve landed on the latter’s side.
But they did their own research! /s
Yeah, there’s a reason they aren’t scientists. Like, who tf quotes a Future Proof video unironically. They are the idiot’s idea of an intelligent video.
Big difference between “the smell of sweat” and “horrible BO” though.
It wasn’t so much “not mind” as it was “put up with” since there was no real alternative for the average person. Also, there’s the remarkable ability of the human brain to filter out inputs it deems unnecessary. Bad smells that are a constant presence end up being filtered out.
People have been cleaning themselves for essentially forever. Bathing was not as common as it is today, but we know people have been washing their hands, feet and face regularly for many thousands of years.
Cleanliness features very heavily in religion dating back thousands of years, and the earliest soap recipe is from ~2500BC, although we know they were making at scale hundreds of years before then.
Wells to make water available in places where there’s no stream or river date back even further to the ~8000s BC.Most people weren’t rocking perfumed soaps and immersion in hot water, but washing your clothes with a homemade soap, scrubbing your feet, hands and face with cold water and a rag every day or so and likewise your body roughly weekly was available to most people at a minimum. If you were near a river or body of water, like humans tend to prefer to live, washing your feet, hands and face every morning and a weekly scrub was perfectly comfortable.
Primates are generally very conscious of grooming. Humans are unique in regularly washing with water, but we’re also unique in being nearly hairless, remarkably greasy, and clever. It tracks that we’d figure out the water thing pretty fast.
I don’t know, bad smells are not filtered for an evolutionary reason. Sure you work at a bakery and the amazing smell of bread is filtered by day 2 never to be smelled again, but i had to bunk under a mfkr in the military who was under shower supervision, and yet still had a mark on him from that time someone dropped an alcohol pad on his arm. My brain didn’t filter shit, as in the smell of.
Username checks out.
“I don’t actually smell bad, you’ve just been socialized to believe that.”
Please touch grass, shower, and apply deodorant.
It’s funny too because many animals have adapted to not be smelled too easily so as not to become dinner.
Username checks out
People also eat a very different diet now, with way more sugar.
Changes things.
Edit downvotes from stinkers
Username checks out, the smell makes people cry.
I think body odor has an evolutionary reason to exist, and that reason applies to prehistoric humans living in small gather hunterer societies of <150 people only. Whatever that reason was, is not necessary for our survival in modern society where you meet thousands of people over your lifetime and run into new strangers constantly.
I dont think body odor ever played an evolutionary role. As far as I know body odor is caused by bacterias eating and multiplying whenever we sweat. If this is the case body odor is here because we sweat which isnt that common within the animal kingdom.
(Although dont quote me on any of this, this is just what I seem to remember and Im lazy to look it up - tldr i might be lying)
That doesn’t exclude it having a purpose. A lot of our existence we owe to bacteria inhabiting our body
And a lot of what happens in evolution is passed down the generations not because it’s useful but because it doesn’t hinder reproduction.
Body odour does hinder reproduction, though.
But it doesn’t though. Before people bathed consistently, everyone smelled. It wouldn’t have been a factor in partner selection.
It wouldn’t have been a factor in partner selection.
This is pretty presumptuous, as there appears to be a lot we can pick up about potential mates based on their body odor.
I’m absolutely not an anthropologist, but if we evolved in small <100 person communities, often settling near water, I’d imagine keeping everyone relatively stank-free wouldn’t have been impossible.
There has been some research in this area pointing to being able to smell if someone is sick. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10550911/
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Not everything is an evolved functional trait, like the first poster was saying.
Loosing our hair and getting greasy was a functional adaptation. That grease getting stinky is just a byproduct that didn’t introduce a negative selection pressure.Evolution doesn’t have a plan, it just takes the shortest path towards better that doesn’t make things worse.
Giraffes have a nerve that runs from their brain, down to their torso, then back up to the top of their neck. There’s no reason or benefit to this, it’s purely because when what the nerve runs to evolved in reptiles, it was at the top of the torso. Neck gets longer, nerve follows since there’s no pressure to select against stupid nerve layout. There’s a species of toad that evolved to become so small that their ear bones can’t actually pick up the sound of their species mating chirp. They still chirp, but none of them can hear it, and instead they signal based on seeing the motion of chirping.deleted by creator
Nope, evolution is chaos. The current planet is the output of a chaotic system. You seriously think koalas play an evolutionary role? Platypus? Hell even humans have about 20 design flaws. Sometimes nature just threw shit at a wall and called it “good enough.”
20? I can name hundreds…
Lol don’t be mad
Pretty sure body odor would have worked against them. Once a predator detects body odor of a human… it knows that body odor belongs to human meat.
A lot of predators avoid humans though
I feel like feline predators seem more likely to approach regardless of the situation. By feline I mean like Bob cats, leopards, panthers etc…
lol…
That’s not how evolution works.
It might just be there was not enough of a selective pressure to remove it. Or something else that causes it has a more important function than smell.
I assume the article is going for “we should be okay with body odor” which feels very granola. Not everyone needs deodorant, but many do if they don’t want to smell. Antiperspirant can be bad for your body, but deodorant should do the trick for most, by masking the sweat smell with their preferred scent.
The article is screen grabbed and cropped to remove the context and increase outrage. It’s actually about debunking all natural deodorants claims about detoxing.
Are we gonna have a body odor acceptance movement to go along with the fat one?
I live in australia and catch PT in summer. No one should be ok with body odour.
OMG, I read the comments.
I’m a guy who showers daily and tries to make sure I don’t smell (breath and body). Today, however, I am off from work and only washed my face. I’ve had that not so fresh feeling all day.
I’m going to take shower right now.
edit - shower complete. also, i was trying to quote ghostbusters in the beginning but messed up it. it should have been “I looked at the comments, Ray”.
I shower twice a day. In the morning to wake up and to get rid of the sleep sweat, in the evening so i don’t bring outside materials to my bed.
Your poor skin.
My skin is perfectly fine, im just allergic to basically everything that touches it, especially most skincare products and moisturizers are the worst.
I never use deodorant. Also don’t ever use shampoo. I shower once every two days. Never get complaints. Working as a nurse, I;m always close to people who would definitely tell me if I smelled bad. Not saying this will work for everyone nor that everyone should do the same. I do however think that the industry has been successful in marketing these products as must-haves for daily use and I know that’s a lie. Many people who wash regularly won’t have strong odor with or without deodorant or shampoo. I did use them during puberty and I was a bit uncertain when I stopped. They work on your insecurity, and so you’re inclined to keep using these products, everyday, all the time, just to be sure. No one wants to smell bad. I volunteer in a sort of day care for the homeless and the shame people feel when they smell bad and others notice is incredibly large so it makes sense people stick to their deodorant just to be sure. There’s also really no harm in it, but I feel like our hygiene-cleanliness culture is quite extreme sometimes. Deodorants are a real solution for a real problem obviously, but many people over do it and when overdone people reek of deodorant or perfume. Like old ladies on a bus. Yuck.
You can wash regularly and have strong smell. AND it’s not very good to never use soap.
People that bathe in parfum are bad as well.
AND it’s not very good to never use soap
Unless we’re talking about washing hands I disagree. Soap is bad for your skin. Water alone is enough to do away with any dirt on your body, and the downside of soap is that it also does away with all sorts of oils that your skin needs to function properly.Of course there are mild soaps, but still it’s not really clear to me what the benefit of soap would be.
I tend to disagree. I guess it depends…
I’m using shampoo for hair, though only because I think a lot of filth that’s flying around in cities (and dust in rooms) collects there (and it gets itchy).
But as a counter example: I washed my feet with soap a long time ago and had constantly issues with fungal infection there. Then I stopped that (and only use water) and never had these issues again…
Sounds like you should see a doctor about the fungi. They don’t just go away.
Well as I said, I never had any issues again since like 7 years or so, got healthy feet etc. so I guess that this indeed has gone away?
Well, cool if it worked for you. But it probably won’t for most people. Fungi are usually very hard to get rid of.
Can confirm. My dad’s bo is sour. Stinks up the bathroom and with the least bit of sun, the effect of exessive showering is undone.
my psych/socio teacher in HS had a rather funny litmus test for that one.
Words from his mouth were “if your ear wax is dry, you probably don’t stink anymore”
What does ear wax being dry have to do with stink? Just wondering
not entirely sure, but that’s what he postulated, being a middle aged man and all.
Presumably it just means that your body is producing less material for bacteria to make smelly. But this is also 1700s levels of science lmao.
I used to work for Star City Games.
Enough said.
My condolences. Same for the WoW guys.
ok funny question. If we’re concerned about the shit that’s in deodorant, are we concerned about the shit that’s in stuff like makeup?
Or is this just one of those conspiratorial things where we only focus on the one thing because haha funny cognitive dissonance thing.
I’m in the minority, even among the people I associate with offline, but I’m concerned about the shit that’s in everything. Anything I put on or in my body. That also includes things I put on my dog or the food I give him. If I see/smell someone treated their lawn recently I don’t let him walk on their grass because I know he’ll lick his paws later and get sick.
(Yes, I wear deodorant.)
fair enough. Just curious what the general sentiment among the public here is i guess.
Or a metal concert
Oh god… But the ones ive been to smell like beer and urine…
Those are just to help provide more grip to the floor for moshing
Yeah I need antiperspirant or I stink.
Antiperspirant or deodorant? Sweating is natural and some antiperspirant ingredients are harmful.
https://www.realsimple.com/beauty-fashion/skincare/bath-body/deodorant-vs-antiperspirant
Man I can fucking smell this post. People will do all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify being lazy and gross.
I don’t think it’s mental gymnastics I think it’s a lack of actual gymnastics, so to speak. Body odor mostly comes from sweating so if you don’t sweat much you don’t need deodorant near as much. Someone with a healthy body weight living a largely sedentary lifestyle in a cooler climate might not need it at all and might smell perfectly fine with showers every other day or even every third day. However, that’s best case scenario and most people don’t check all those boxes. If you’re overweight, move around a lot, or just live in a warmer climate then that’s not going to work.
ITT
People who didn’t read the article and assumed Slate was telling everyone to not use anything…
Did you read their headline?
Did you read the article?
Did you read the fucking shit they wrote in the post?
I did read the article. They go into the history of modern deodorant and antiperspirant and the marketing of them. They talk about how antiperspirant is safe to use but the narrative that it causes cancer keeps growing regardless of what scientists say. They also relate having conducted an experiment with deodorant instead of antiperspirant and how many people could probably get away with just deodorant.
At no point do they say we should abandon all hygiene.
Smash brothers players smell even worse than the average expo goer.
💀
I’m reminded of Rieri reminding her fans to take showers just before a concert
Based
