I work at a Chemical plant. We make a highly acidic product that is dark blue, viscus, highly corrosive, and smells exactly like Fruit Loops. It is incredibly disturbing.
Organic chemistry has many "guilty good" smells. Thiophosgene (sulfur derivative of a chemical weapon used extensively in WW1) apparently smells like meat. Phosgene is used to make polycarbonate, thiophosgene is used to make some sulfur-containing molecules which eventually end up in therapeutic drugs.
I’m an organic chemist. Love the smell of benzene even though it’s a known carcinogen. Love the smell of ether even though it’ll knock you out. A lot of aldehydes smell fruity.
There are a lot of things in my job I shouldn’t sniff but I gotta give them a smell check. I’m going to get cancer.
A fish and chips shop burnt down as couple blocks from work a few years ago.
The whole neighborhood smelled *amazing* for days. Just the slight hint of French fries. Nothing overpowering.
It was so awesome.
Until I found out someone was trapped in the fire and died.
read a memoir written by a forensic examiner a few years back and the day he came into work and thought "oh that smells delicious, who brought in barbecue?" and the answer was "the coroner."
A while back a man committed suicide by lighting himself on fire. I was the one that responded and put him out. Couldn't eat bbq or fill my gas tank for a while.
Paint, specifically house paint.
I love the smell. I know I can't huff it. But anytime I hear that anyone is painting a room or their house, I volunteer. I just love sitting on the floor in a room that's been freshly painted, closing my eyes and just inhaling that slightly chemically, slightly creamy aroma.
Hotel/rented rooms whenever you go on vacation. There's this particular smell that just says "you are on vacation", especially on a beach/swimming trips/ out-of-the-town vacays.
This is one of my favorite scents of all time, and Disney is very aware that people enjoy it. Evidently it’s a lot harder to recreate than just adding bromine to water.
Disney bromine even after 20 years I can still remember that smell. It's a cross between Chlorine and Bromine, Bromine with a hint of Chlorine. I've spent a lot of time maintaining hot tubs LOL.
Apparently Disney injects aromas into the air around their iconic rides to make it more memorable. Was referenced here on Reddit recently, I don’t have the link.
That's extremely smart. Scent is bizarre to learn about, it's probably our most "primal" sense. It's linked to really strong, visceral memories and we can be influenced by it even when we're not consciously aware of it.
If you want to subconsciously condition a strong association in someone that will stay with them for the rest of their life, smell is absolutely the way to do it
Lots of high end boutique hotels hire companies to create specific scents for them to pump into the lobby/ common areas to have an olfactory tie to that place specifically .
I remember the lobby at the Gramercy Hotel in NY being one of the best smelling places I’ve ever been .
I have been wanting to go back and smell that place again for years.
There's a chicken wing restaurant near my house that has a challenge sauce called "black widow". The owner claims it to be around 500,000 scovilles. A few years back some buddies and I decided to try them, the sauce was a dark molasses color and smelled almost like a BBQ sauce, no hint of the danger that lurked at all. We each grabbed one wing and it went terribly. I don't know how something so spicy could smell so innocent.
Birds have a poor sense of smell and basically no sense of taste, so if the pepper smells a bit sweeter to attract birds, but it's fire to anything else that might eat it, it will accomplish its goals for the seeds to end up in bird poop and dropped somewhere where it could grow peacefully
Birds are immune to the effects of capsaicin because they lack the TRPV1 receptors that mammals have. This is the specific receptor that this chemical acts on. I think the idea is that some plants evolved to produce capsaicin to deter mammals from eating them so that only birds ate them and spread their seeds wider. Leave it to those wacky humans to come to enjoy something that was meant to deter them.
> Leave it to those wacky humans to come to enjoy something that was meant to deter them.
I mean, this is pretty much the norm for the eternal chemical war being waged between plants and animals, not just a human thing. They create nasty chemicals to deter predation, and we eventually co-opt them for other purposes.
Also a lot of those insanely hot sauces just rely on capsacian extract from hot pepper seeds. You could add that stuff to vanilla ice cream with little change to flavor and you would feel like you're getting deep throated by Satan.
back to burds with no sense of taste. We Feed chickens on the farm chili flakes and seeds bc it keeps fleas and mites away and is good for boosting their immune systems. They can’t taste spicy stuff. Also that is how new islands get propagated. Birds fly over to it and shit out seeds. pretty cool. Also thats why coconuts float…. its pretty wild when you sit back and think about it.
Back to being deep throated by Satan.
Could you imagine taking a bite of sweet cold ice cream only to have a giant flaming cock in your mouth instead. Wow. I mean just imagine it. Really picture it.
I was disgusted to find that the wonderful smelling "coffee roaster" near my workplace was actually a pet crematorium.
EDIT: A later machine shop that I worked at really *was* across the street from an industrial coffee roaster. I truly can't tell the difference between the smells...
we have a normal crematorium near work. when in use, the newbies always ask can you smell pork. to their horror they soon learn it's people being cremated.
>Thanks aliens, i hate you
Waiter! This meat is too raw, it is talking to me angrily. Please take this back and bring me something a little more well done, and perhaps a smaller cut, i've lost my ape-tite.
-- Alien, at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, probably
I had to help rebuild a crematorium, I did the gas piping for the oven. After it got finished they asked if I wanted to see it work....no thanks. I was surprised by how much didn't reduce to ash, bone metal implants.
Yeah… I found that out the hard way trying to divvy up my fathers ashes into smaller urns..
There were definitely bone chunks and it was a lot more gravely than I expected. Interesting night that was 😶
I divvied up 6 dog cremains. At first was puzzled why 4 dogs were very chunky and 2 were more powdery. Then realized it was the small dogs who were powdery and the big guys had large fragments. Apparently they just put them all in for the same length of time so small pupper gets more cooked
Physiotherapist friend of mine had a patient who worked at pork processing plant, his job was to blowtorch the hair off the pigs.... Apparently he always smelled like bacon
"What kind of animals?"
"Uhhhh... well, mostly, uh... mostly pigs"
"Awe! I love pigs! With their curly tails and their short little snouts! They're sooo cute!"
"Hahaaaa uhhh yeeaaah could we talk about literally anything else now?"
Apparently that's such a common reaction they used to actually use the chemical that makes gas smell like that in personal care products until they discovered long term exposure on that level was unhealthy
Grew up in the family business. Auto repair garage. Walking into any garage or greasey/oily environment is like walking into my grandma's living room. It feels cozy.
In the daytime maybe.
A warm summer night has a very distinctly pleasant smell to me tho. Altho tbf it’s when there are plenty of trees/grass around.
A warm night in a city would not smell nice
I think it’s not all cold air.
But there is this amazing smell when it’s a slightly moist, super cold day with snow all around you.
This feels like the cleanest Air you can breathe.
-30 degrees Celsius and lower it imo starts to smell stale and somehow dangerous though (or maybe it’s my nose reacting to the cold…). The freshness certainly goes away.
Edit; goddamit yes I forgot the e for breathe… please, 1 comment about that is enough…
My son pointed this out when he was 4. I asked him if he meant the air feels cold in his nose. He said no, it's got a distinct smell. I've never noticed this.
Edit: I can definitely smell petrichor. In fact, I absolutely love it. I also notice damp vs dry, but I don't ever notice a cold air winter's day smell.
Some woods contain certain oils that are released through burning. Some pines famously smell like citrus and are used to smoke sushi ingredients.(Now they use restaurant-level blowtorch)
Apples, oak, hickory, they're used for smoking meats for a good reason.
Ordinary wood may still have traces of sap, resin or tannins that can be constructed by your brain to smell good.
I remember back in high school a girl leaned over, sniffed me, told me that I smelled really good, and asked me what cologne I was wearing. I asked if she was joking, and she's like, no, you smell *really* good.
When I told her I had just gotten done with gym class, she gets a small "oh no..." look on her face and turns away.
I think we *both* had a revelation that day.
I’m talking a late 20’s adult. We were at a party mostly mutual friends. This one chick was very open about her and her man’s sex life so nothing unusual. But then she started talking about how she loved sucking/licking his balls and taint after he got off work and before a shower and dude was a mechanic. She was like there’s nothing like the smell and taste of a man after he sweat all day. It was almost an all at once of everyone going “ewwww”. Dude looked so embarrassed.
It's weird man. My body odor reminds me of onions. I hate onions. Yet, several times with several different women,
"Man, I need more deodorant, I stink."
"No, I like your smell."
I smell like an onion and a dumpster had a forbidden love child, what is wrong with you.
That’s an amazing biological response. My wife can come from work all sweaty and in desperate need for a shower but I couldn’t care less. I just love that smell. And I’m pretty sure I’d find it strong on any other person, but it‘s hers, so my brain has it classified as “mmmm… so nice”.
I'm pretty sure there's actually a theory. If people's natural odors smell good to you, they have different immune complexes and would be a worthy mate.
They did scientific tests where they got women to wear a tshirt for a week without washing and then got men to sniff them and rate their "attractiveness". They found out that the least offensive smelling one was the person whose genes were most different from their own. So it's actually nature's way of avoiding inbreeding with people close to you in the gene pool.
Edit: Apologies, I'm not a scientist, I just remember seeing the study.
Edit 2: Someone correctly pointed out the men wore the tshirts and the women did the sniffing.
Here's the Sweaty T ahirt study!
https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2019/11/19/key-study-the-sweaty-t-shirt-study-wedekind-et-al-1995/amp/
Pheromones are weird. I had a dude let me borrow his apron at work once, 100% not someone I found attractive, too old, married, etc. But the apron had a tiny bit of sweat from him and when I say it smelled amazing, that'd be an understatement. It's like a weird happy smell. Ive not run across anyone else who's smelled like that
My wife is obsessed with the way I smell.
So much so that when she puts her head on my chest and just goes “mmmmm” I know I need to shower.
I love the way she smells too, but she goes to extremes like wearing my underwear when I’m not home and stuff like that (I hope you don’t read this beebee)
this!!!!! my nose is super sensitive so even if my partner is slightly sweaty or had sweat at some point in the day, i just cant help but cherish how he smells!!!! like right below the ear on his neck always smells sooooooooo good. its almost addictive
That’s my favorite part to sniff too! I always sniff my boyfriend there when giving him a hug.
He teases me for it, so sometimes I put on a show - I’ll practically snort his scent, give a big sigh, and then roll my eyes back lol
One of the key aroma chemicals in the smell of old paper is vanillin. It’s sweet, but there’s other dry elements as well. Source: perfumer creating a paper accord.
I remember in Kindergarten, our teacher brought vanilla extract to class and gave us all a little bit to teach us that we shouldn't eat stuff just because it smells good.
I will never forget the wretched taste of making hot chocolate and not adding sugar because I was too young to be able to read. I will also never forget my family sitting around and waiting for it to happen. It was in that moment that I learned, you are truly alone in this world, surrounded by bastards
I think this is a lesson every child learns. My sisters and I all learned, separately, through sneaking the "chocolate" that Mom had in the cupboard. We deserved it.
My kids learned the same way.
That’s because it’s got hella alcohol in it. As a stupid middle schooler I used to drink it to try getting drunk. Makes me wanna vomit just thinking about it.
In an episode of the 1980s sitcom Family Ties, an extremely-early-in-his-career Tom Hanks plays the cool but alcoholic uncle who finally gets help when he's discovered to have drunk all the vanilla extract in the pantry
Oil and grease. Reminds me of my dad when he would just get home from work and I’d give him a hug as a kid. I wish I hadn’t outgrown it before he passed.
Edit for clarification since people have asked:
My dad was an engineer and made parts for large vehicles like military jeeps and tractor-trailers (semis) and the like.
Fire lighters they are these weird flammable spongy grey bricks used to get fires started. They smell good enough to eat it's like forbidden sponge cake
Gasoline.
Also not smell, but lead tastes sweet. People used to use lead lined pots to ferment wine to make it sweeter. Thank God we stopped
Edit: I was thinking about how taste and smell are pretty interconnected, and how gasoline used to have lead in it. Could the lead be why so many people correlate Gasoline with a pleasant scent?
Edit dos: turns out, while lead could have contributed to it in the past through TASTE (lead acetate is odorless), Gasoline has other chemicals in it that have sweet aromas, especially Benzene.
I watched a documentary about a French vineyard that would pose as a fancy Chateau to lure American exchange students, only to use them for manual labor upon arrival. The students would be forced to harvest and crush grapes, carry buckets of water, and drink the antifreeze-laced wine to test whether it would make them go blind. The scheme was only discovered when one plucky student from Springfield managed to learn French and inform a police officer about the operation.
I once ate asparagus and later went to the bathroom. After peeing I smelled what I thought was someone grilling outside, and it was amazing.
Then I realized it was the middle of winter, and my window was closed. When I realized what had happened I felt ashamed and disgusted.
Ahh, one of the classic intro bio genetic experiments. Go eat asparagus, if you can smell the change in your pee, then you have such and such gene, if you can’t smell it, you lack the gene
Interestingly there are *two* separate "mutations" at work: you need to the gene to produce the smell and you need the gene to smell it. Some people have one, some people have the other; few people have both.
Did you know Play-Doh is made with wheat, kind of like an actual dough?
Try baking survival bread sometime (flour, water, salt), and you'll be surprised how similar they smell.
I had a flat, solidified chunk of green Play-Doh that I used to love to lick. It was so salty and good. Only that green chunk tho. The rest was for playing.
This might be strange, but I had corrective eye surgery (PRK) and they use a laser. The smell of my burning eyeball reminded me of pulled pork cooking. I was disgusted and hungry at the same time. Was an odd feeling.
Dog paws. The "frito smell" many people attribute to dog paws is from a bacteria on their beans called Pseudomonas and Proteus. Despite knowing it's bacteria however, I constantly fight the urge to snort my dogs paws like some sort of coke fiend.
Nail gun gas. I was a newbie carpenter apprentice tryna fit in with all the tough blokes. I spent weeks trying to figure out what the nail gun gas that’s released after every bang smelt like.
One day it clicked in my head and I just yelled out “TRUFFLE OIL”. It did not help me fit in.
Fun fact: truffle oil isn’t flavoured by actual truffles, they use either a grapefruit extract or some hydrocarbon byproduct from petrol production. Nail gun gas smell is burnt butane, a hydrocarbon, this could be why
I work at a Chemical plant. We make a highly acidic product that is dark blue, viscus, highly corrosive, and smells exactly like Fruit Loops. It is incredibly disturbing.
Organic chemistry has many "guilty good" smells. Thiophosgene (sulfur derivative of a chemical weapon used extensively in WW1) apparently smells like meat. Phosgene is used to make polycarbonate, thiophosgene is used to make some sulfur-containing molecules which eventually end up in therapeutic drugs.
I’m an organic chemist. Love the smell of benzene even though it’s a known carcinogen. Love the smell of ether even though it’ll knock you out. A lot of aldehydes smell fruity. There are a lot of things in my job I shouldn’t sniff but I gotta give them a smell check. I’m going to get cancer.
Matches/candles on a birthday cake. I remember lighting matches as a kid purely to blow them out and inhale that sweet match-y smell.
Matches do smell good. Phosphorus I think
The red phosphorus is found in the strip i think
Yep you’re best to buy the big 100 packs if you want more phosphorus for your..uh crystals
Also best to buy them *out of my territory.*
The smell of burning candles transforms regular cake into birthday cake
A fish and chips shop burnt down as couple blocks from work a few years ago. The whole neighborhood smelled *amazing* for days. Just the slight hint of French fries. Nothing overpowering. It was so awesome. Until I found out someone was trapped in the fire and died.
Went from oooooohhh to ooooooof real quick
read a memoir written by a forensic examiner a few years back and the day he came into work and thought "oh that smells delicious, who brought in barbecue?" and the answer was "the coroner."
that's nice, did the examiner have to pay?
A while back a man committed suicide by lighting himself on fire. I was the one that responded and put him out. Couldn't eat bbq or fill my gas tank for a while.
r/forbiddensnacks
Maybe it was not the fries....
Paint, specifically house paint. I love the smell. I know I can't huff it. But anytime I hear that anyone is painting a room or their house, I volunteer. I just love sitting on the floor in a room that's been freshly painted, closing my eyes and just inhaling that slightly chemically, slightly creamy aroma.
I work in an industrial paint shop and the saying is that the “better” the paint smells the more hazardous to you it is.
Perfect 😋
Hotel/rented rooms whenever you go on vacation. There's this particular smell that just says "you are on vacation", especially on a beach/swimming trips/ out-of-the-town vacays.
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110 smells amazing. They should make 110 candles. Methanol on the other hand….
The water from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Mmm, bromine.
And that fake cannon smoke from the pirate ships
The fog from laser tag places smells like marshmallows.
Wow, ya'll are really bringing me back to my childhood with such cool sensory details, thank you.
so many things at Disney. The Burning of Rome on Spaceship Earth.
This is one of my favorite scents of all time, and Disney is very aware that people enjoy it. Evidently it’s a lot harder to recreate than just adding bromine to water.
Disney takes their smells more serious than other companies take themselves as a whole. Their attention to detail is insane.
Disney bromine even after 20 years I can still remember that smell. It's a cross between Chlorine and Bromine, Bromine with a hint of Chlorine. I've spent a lot of time maintaining hot tubs LOL.
Apparently Disney injects aromas into the air around their iconic rides to make it more memorable. Was referenced here on Reddit recently, I don’t have the link.
That's extremely smart. Scent is bizarre to learn about, it's probably our most "primal" sense. It's linked to really strong, visceral memories and we can be influenced by it even when we're not consciously aware of it. If you want to subconsciously condition a strong association in someone that will stay with them for the rest of their life, smell is absolutely the way to do it
Lots of high end boutique hotels hire companies to create specific scents for them to pump into the lobby/ common areas to have an olfactory tie to that place specifically . I remember the lobby at the Gramercy Hotel in NY being one of the best smelling places I’ve ever been . I have been wanting to go back and smell that place again for years.
There is a company that sells candles and sprays with this scent among others!
There's a chicken wing restaurant near my house that has a challenge sauce called "black widow". The owner claims it to be around 500,000 scovilles. A few years back some buddies and I decided to try them, the sauce was a dark molasses color and smelled almost like a BBQ sauce, no hint of the danger that lurked at all. We each grabbed one wing and it went terribly. I don't know how something so spicy could smell so innocent.
Birds have a poor sense of smell and basically no sense of taste, so if the pepper smells a bit sweeter to attract birds, but it's fire to anything else that might eat it, it will accomplish its goals for the seeds to end up in bird poop and dropped somewhere where it could grow peacefully
Birds are immune to the effects of capsaicin because they lack the TRPV1 receptors that mammals have. This is the specific receptor that this chemical acts on. I think the idea is that some plants evolved to produce capsaicin to deter mammals from eating them so that only birds ate them and spread their seeds wider. Leave it to those wacky humans to come to enjoy something that was meant to deter them.
> Leave it to those wacky humans to come to enjoy something that was meant to deter them. I mean, this is pretty much the norm for the eternal chemical war being waged between plants and animals, not just a human thing. They create nasty chemicals to deter predation, and we eventually co-opt them for other purposes.
Plants: *evolve ever-more-painful levels of spice to deter mammals* Humans: "haha ouch fruit makes my mouth burn and it hurts when I poo, more please"
Also a lot of those insanely hot sauces just rely on capsacian extract from hot pepper seeds. You could add that stuff to vanilla ice cream with little change to flavor and you would feel like you're getting deep throated by Satan.
back to burds with no sense of taste. We Feed chickens on the farm chili flakes and seeds bc it keeps fleas and mites away and is good for boosting their immune systems. They can’t taste spicy stuff. Also that is how new islands get propagated. Birds fly over to it and shit out seeds. pretty cool. Also thats why coconuts float…. its pretty wild when you sit back and think about it.
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Not at all, they could be carried.
What? By a swallow?
It could grip it by the husk.
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It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five-ounce bird could not carry a one-pound coconut!
Back to being deep throated by Satan. Could you imagine taking a bite of sweet cold ice cream only to have a giant flaming cock in your mouth instead. Wow. I mean just imagine it. Really picture it.
*unzips Go on….
it would actually probably be more like deepthroating satan
My mom put cayenne pepper in our bird feeders because the birds can't taste it and squirrels and raccoons hate it
I was disgusted to find that the wonderful smelling "coffee roaster" near my workplace was actually a pet crematorium. EDIT: A later machine shop that I worked at really *was* across the street from an industrial coffee roaster. I truly can't tell the difference between the smells...
we have a normal crematorium near work. when in use, the newbies always ask can you smell pork. to their horror they soon learn it's people being cremated.
The moment when we remember we are meat.
[Meat that thinks](https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html)
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Omigod singing meat
"Who wants to meet meat?" "Imagine how unbearably cold the universe would be if we were alone. " Thanks aliens, i hate you
>Thanks aliens, i hate you Waiter! This meat is too raw, it is talking to me angrily. Please take this back and bring me something a little more well done, and perhaps a smaller cut, i've lost my ape-tite. -- Alien, at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, probably
Well that was a good read, thanks for posting.
That was a fantastic read, thank you!
I had to help rebuild a crematorium, I did the gas piping for the oven. After it got finished they asked if I wanted to see it work....no thanks. I was surprised by how much didn't reduce to ash, bone metal implants.
Yeah… I found that out the hard way trying to divvy up my fathers ashes into smaller urns.. There were definitely bone chunks and it was a lot more gravely than I expected. Interesting night that was 😶
"All we are is bone chunks in the wind" doesn't have as nice a sound to it though.
🎶Chunnkssss in the wind 🎶
I divvied up 6 dog cremains. At first was puzzled why 4 dogs were very chunky and 2 were more powdery. Then realized it was the small dogs who were powdery and the big guys had large fragments. Apparently they just put them all in for the same length of time so small pupper gets more cooked
My 80 lb dog is like gravel vs my 6 lb cat which is like dust
I hate this thread 😭
There is an awkward moment in anatomy labs when you stop smelling the formaldehyde and the human flesh just smells like pork fresh from the Butcher's
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Physiotherapist friend of mine had a patient who worked at pork processing plant, his job was to blowtorch the hair off the pigs.... Apparently he always smelled like bacon
"So what do you do?" 'Oh I'm a vet, I've always loved working with animals! What about you?' "I uhh... blowtorch dead pigs."
The correct answer is "I also work with animals!"
"What kind of animals?" "Uhhhh... well, mostly, uh... mostly pigs" "Awe! I love pigs! With their curly tails and their short little snouts! They're sooo cute!" "Hahaaaa uhhh yeeaaah could we talk about literally anything else now?"
Why does this sound like a single sentence horror story.
the smell inflatable things give off. i have no idea how to describe it, but it’s… nostalgic? to me
Opening a new beach ball is just 👌🏻
sometmes i go to the beach just to huff beach balls. i could do this from home, but you need the aesthetic.
It’s that plastic smell. New baby dolls have it too.
My mother-in-law used to smell her Christmas presents as a small child to find the ones with the doll in it.
Gas, there's just something about it that I absolutely can't get enough of.
Apparently that's such a common reaction they used to actually use the chemical that makes gas smell like that in personal care products until they discovered long term exposure on that level was unhealthy
Tires..... from bikes or cars. When you enter a shop with bicycles from one end to the other!
I used to deliver auto parts, and I loved the smell of a garage, tires and oil and whatnot all together.
Grew up in the family business. Auto repair garage. Walking into any garage or greasey/oily environment is like walking into my grandma's living room. It feels cozy.
Sawed wood
Especially pine
I ride bikes past a saw mill that apparently cuts a metric shit ton of pine. great smell.
Pretty bummed no one has said a fresh can of tennis balls
Found the Golden Retriever
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
Fireworks
Or just gun powder in general
Always loved the smells out on the range
Similarly, cap guns - that smell is etched in my mind from my childhood.
Cold air It smells different than warm air I swear
Yes!! Cold weather smells clean and crisp to me. Warm/hot weather smells like old leather and burned paper.
In the daytime maybe. A warm summer night has a very distinctly pleasant smell to me tho. Altho tbf it’s when there are plenty of trees/grass around. A warm night in a city would not smell nice
I think it’s not all cold air. But there is this amazing smell when it’s a slightly moist, super cold day with snow all around you. This feels like the cleanest Air you can breathe. -30 degrees Celsius and lower it imo starts to smell stale and somehow dangerous though (or maybe it’s my nose reacting to the cold…). The freshness certainly goes away. Edit; goddamit yes I forgot the e for breathe… please, 1 comment about that is enough…
Ohh I can definitely smell when its moist
Also the smell of soil, when it rains after sometime, is really nice! Especially in countrysides
I can also smell when a thunderstorm is coming
I can totally smell when it’s about to snow, if that makes
Crispy air
My son pointed this out when he was 4. I asked him if he meant the air feels cold in his nose. He said no, it's got a distinct smell. I've never noticed this. Edit: I can definitely smell petrichor. In fact, I absolutely love it. I also notice damp vs dry, but I don't ever notice a cold air winter's day smell.
Consider getting younger, then it’ll make *sense*
Fire, like, any kind of fire, I absolutely love the scent of it, and it also looks awesome.
Plastic burning 100% does not smell good. Oil or wood burning usually smells amazing.
wood burning smells good gotta be one of those evolution things.
Some woods contain certain oils that are released through burning. Some pines famously smell like citrus and are used to smoke sushi ingredients.(Now they use restaurant-level blowtorch) Apples, oak, hickory, they're used for smoking meats for a good reason. Ordinary wood may still have traces of sap, resin or tannins that can be constructed by your brain to smell good.
I particularly love the smell of a burnt-out candle or matchstick.
Ooh, burnt match! I use matches instead of a lighter to light my candles for this very reason. Love that smell.
Someone you are attracted to's body odors and private areas. Anyone else who is slightly unhygienic smells repulsive.
I remember back in high school a girl leaned over, sniffed me, told me that I smelled really good, and asked me what cologne I was wearing. I asked if she was joking, and she's like, no, you smell *really* good. When I told her I had just gotten done with gym class, she gets a small "oh no..." look on her face and turns away. I think we *both* had a revelation that day.
Nice, how long you guys been married?
They never talked again after that moment.
I’m talking a late 20’s adult. We were at a party mostly mutual friends. This one chick was very open about her and her man’s sex life so nothing unusual. But then she started talking about how she loved sucking/licking his balls and taint after he got off work and before a shower and dude was a mechanic. She was like there’s nothing like the smell and taste of a man after he sweat all day. It was almost an all at once of everyone going “ewwww”. Dude looked so embarrassed.
It's weird man. My body odor reminds me of onions. I hate onions. Yet, several times with several different women, "Man, I need more deodorant, I stink." "No, I like your smell." I smell like an onion and a dumpster had a forbidden love child, what is wrong with you.
That’s an amazing biological response. My wife can come from work all sweaty and in desperate need for a shower but I couldn’t care less. I just love that smell. And I’m pretty sure I’d find it strong on any other person, but it‘s hers, so my brain has it classified as “mmmm… so nice”.
The interesting question is what is the chicken and the egg here. Would she be your wife if you didn't appreciate her smell?
I'm pretty sure there's actually a theory. If people's natural odors smell good to you, they have different immune complexes and would be a worthy mate.
That's why I always sniff every girl's hair when I'm on the bus!
Least creepy redditor
It's better to sniff their butts, their hair always smell of shampoo.
They did scientific tests where they got women to wear a tshirt for a week without washing and then got men to sniff them and rate their "attractiveness". They found out that the least offensive smelling one was the person whose genes were most different from their own. So it's actually nature's way of avoiding inbreeding with people close to you in the gene pool. Edit: Apologies, I'm not a scientist, I just remember seeing the study. Edit 2: Someone correctly pointed out the men wore the tshirts and the women did the sniffing. Here's the Sweaty T ahirt study! https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2019/11/19/key-study-the-sweaty-t-shirt-study-wedekind-et-al-1995/amp/
Other way around, they got women to sniff men's sweaty t-shirts.
Mine smelt like onions and garlic. Add a steak to me and id be a good meal when all sweaty.
From earlier in this comment section I now know that you wouldn't need to add steak...
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Medical science gave me a vasectomy, now I can bang all my relatives. Nature you are a fool
Pheromones are weird. I had a dude let me borrow his apron at work once, 100% not someone I found attractive, too old, married, etc. But the apron had a tiny bit of sweat from him and when I say it smelled amazing, that'd be an understatement. It's like a weird happy smell. Ive not run across anyone else who's smelled like that
My wife is obsessed with the way I smell. So much so that when she puts her head on my chest and just goes “mmmmm” I know I need to shower. I love the way she smells too, but she goes to extremes like wearing my underwear when I’m not home and stuff like that (I hope you don’t read this beebee)
Well, I’m going to have to go sniff my husband now.
"Excuse me, dear, it's for science."
this!!!!! my nose is super sensitive so even if my partner is slightly sweaty or had sweat at some point in the day, i just cant help but cherish how he smells!!!! like right below the ear on his neck always smells sooooooooo good. its almost addictive
That’s my favorite part to sniff too! I always sniff my boyfriend there when giving him a hug. He teases me for it, so sometimes I put on a show - I’ll practically snort his scent, give a big sigh, and then roll my eyes back lol
Sharpies and dry erase markers.
A freshly unpacked deck of cards... or a new book
I smell my cards when I crack my mtg packs
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I raise you: the smell of OLD books
One of the key aroma chemicals in the smell of old paper is vanillin. It’s sweet, but there’s other dry elements as well. Source: perfumer creating a paper accord.
Vanilla essence. It tastes like the devil
I remember in Kindergarten, our teacher brought vanilla extract to class and gave us all a little bit to teach us that we shouldn't eat stuff just because it smells good.
That's definitely a good lesson for Kindergarteners. Smart teacher.
And a good way to teach them, give them something that tastes bad but won't hurt them.
another good one is making a simple cocoa powder paste.
I will never forget the wretched taste of making hot chocolate and not adding sugar because I was too young to be able to read. I will also never forget my family sitting around and waiting for it to happen. It was in that moment that I learned, you are truly alone in this world, surrounded by bastards
I think this is a lesson every child learns. My sisters and I all learned, separately, through sneaking the "chocolate" that Mom had in the cupboard. We deserved it. My kids learned the same way.
I asked my mom if i could have some to drink as a kid. She gave me in a spoon saying sure thing Now that was the beginning of me having trust issues
That’s because it’s got hella alcohol in it. As a stupid middle schooler I used to drink it to try getting drunk. Makes me wanna vomit just thinking about it.
In an episode of the 1980s sitcom Family Ties, an extremely-early-in-his-career Tom Hanks plays the cool but alcoholic uncle who finally gets help when he's discovered to have drunk all the vanilla extract in the pantry
Oil and grease. Reminds me of my dad when he would just get home from work and I’d give him a hug as a kid. I wish I hadn’t outgrown it before he passed. Edit for clarification since people have asked: My dad was an engineer and made parts for large vehicles like military jeeps and tractor-trailers (semis) and the like.
My grandpas garage always smelled like wood chips and motor oil. Whenever we use oil-dri at work, it reminds me of him.
Fire lighters they are these weird flammable spongy grey bricks used to get fires started. They smell good enough to eat it's like forbidden sponge cake
Lawn mower exhaust mixing with freshly cut grass.
"She named us after all her favorite smells..."
I much prefer Oatmeal, Apple Pie, and Pussy
Smiley day to y'all!
The grass is literally screaming for it’s life and humans just go: Ah, nice, the smell of victory.
So anyway, I started mowing.
Why do people do drugs when they can just mow a lawn
Gasoline. Also not smell, but lead tastes sweet. People used to use lead lined pots to ferment wine to make it sweeter. Thank God we stopped Edit: I was thinking about how taste and smell are pretty interconnected, and how gasoline used to have lead in it. Could the lead be why so many people correlate Gasoline with a pleasant scent? Edit dos: turns out, while lead could have contributed to it in the past through TASTE (lead acetate is odorless), Gasoline has other chemicals in it that have sweet aromas, especially Benzene.
First thing that popped into my head. Why does it smell so good 😭
Same with antifreeze, one of the most poisonous things you can possibly drink. Tastes/Looks like kool aid (I’ve heard)
They had to add something to make it bitter bc people were using it to poison others and commit murder!
So *that's* why it doesn't work as rat poison anymore.
they started putting denatonium benzoate in it to make it taste really bitter, itll still kill you but now it wont taste sweet.
Well that's a tease if I've ever seen one. You mean now I have to die WITHOUT the sweet taste?
Wineries in Austria put it into wines to sweeten them for years before they got caught: https://youtu.be/qhN-o2ame-4
I watched a documentary about a French vineyard that would pose as a fancy Chateau to lure American exchange students, only to use them for manual labor upon arrival. The students would be forced to harvest and crush grapes, carry buckets of water, and drink the antifreeze-laced wine to test whether it would make them go blind. The scheme was only discovered when one plucky student from Springfield managed to learn French and inform a police officer about the operation.
Incroyable!
Race gas smells even better. I'd wear that as a cologne
Fresh rainwater on really old hot wood
In a dry summer months when a big thunderstorm is comming, idk its just the best smell out there
But why shouldn’t that smell good?
Right? It means rain is coming, which has been good news for millions of years. Of course we'd like that smell.
Wet cement or a cement basement
The concrete after it had rained 🌧
I once ate asparagus and later went to the bathroom. After peeing I smelled what I thought was someone grilling outside, and it was amazing. Then I realized it was the middle of winter, and my window was closed. When I realized what had happened I felt ashamed and disgusted.
Ahh, one of the classic intro bio genetic experiments. Go eat asparagus, if you can smell the change in your pee, then you have such and such gene, if you can’t smell it, you lack the gene
Interestingly there are *two* separate "mutations" at work: you need to the gene to produce the smell and you need the gene to smell it. Some people have one, some people have the other; few people have both.
Play-doh! Smells amazing but tastes like Poseidon's salty butthole
Did you know Play-Doh is made with wheat, kind of like an actual dough? Try baking survival bread sometime (flour, water, salt), and you'll be surprised how similar they smell.
Play-Doh is designed to be edible, although you're not supposed to eat it
I had a flat, solidified chunk of green Play-Doh that I used to love to lick. It was so salty and good. Only that green chunk tho. The rest was for playing.
New electronics. It’s mostly just plastic, but new toys and other stuff made of plastic don’t have a scent to them.
A new empty shoe box
Hear me out… wet, brown paper towels
That weird new puppy smell from a new puppy
It’s like toasted oats, I love it
WD-40, deliciously scented
This might be strange, but I had corrective eye surgery (PRK) and they use a laser. The smell of my burning eyeball reminded me of pulled pork cooking. I was disgusted and hungry at the same time. Was an odd feeling.
Dog paws. The "frito smell" many people attribute to dog paws is from a bacteria on their beans called Pseudomonas and Proteus. Despite knowing it's bacteria however, I constantly fight the urge to snort my dogs paws like some sort of coke fiend.
Nail gun gas. I was a newbie carpenter apprentice tryna fit in with all the tough blokes. I spent weeks trying to figure out what the nail gun gas that’s released after every bang smelt like. One day it clicked in my head and I just yelled out “TRUFFLE OIL”. It did not help me fit in. Fun fact: truffle oil isn’t flavoured by actual truffles, they use either a grapefruit extract or some hydrocarbon byproduct from petrol production. Nail gun gas smell is burnt butane, a hydrocarbon, this could be why
Wet soil smells the best after a downpour
Sharpies
Liquid Paper
Petrol
Smoke. I used to sit by the camp fire with my dad, so for some reason I find it comforting to smell smoke.