Thank you for being the voice of reason and your patience with some people. A lot of people succumb to The Toupee Fallacy (A form of selection bias in which a thing whose quality is measured in terms of being difficult to detect is wrongly judged to be of poor quality in general, caused by the fact that most people only notice poor quality instances of it.).
I stopped showering every day for medical reasons and under medical supervision when I was young, and that really helped with my smell(Turns out I had both a fungal infection, and a hormonal disorder), and the habit stayed. My hair and my skin do a lot better, and due to the nature of my job, I would certainly know if I smelled, since I am often meeting clients and other team leads.
Having a bidet, applying deodorant daily and changing my clothes daily as well, added to working in climate controlled spaces, away from the sun, crowds and smelly habits like smoking are all factors that some people seem incapable of even considering.
But of course, this is Lemmy, where nuance often just fucking dies.
Denying the antecedent: “showering every day prevents smelling bad, therefore if you don’t shower every day, you will smell bad”
Confirmation & Selection bias: “that person smells bad, therefore they can’t shower every day, making them an example of not showering every day leading to smelling bad”
Bias of anecdotal evidence, presumably - at least, I’m assuming that most such people really do smell bad to themselves after only a day, which is treated as a reliable indicator of everyone’s condition.
It’s quite interesting to me, because it clearly becomes a very emotive topic when the difference between waiting one, two or three days to bathe is pretty abstract. I have developed a hypothesis that it’s the feeling of having a shower when one is feeling sticky and sweaty and dirty, and then coming out feeling nice and clean, that gets readily associated with bad odour. I then think that this link simply can’t form easily if your feeling when coming out of the shower is not “nice and clean” but “disgusting ball of skin-flakes held together only by paraffin and artificial grease”.
I have encountered this kind of attitude before but I was actually surprised to find it that prevalent here, because I expected more people to be sympathetic to conditions which require deviation from the norm.
I’m one of those low percentage of non east asian people who have this and it is indeed nice especially since I’m allergic to most deodorants. The hard ear wax does sometimes cause me issues during allergy season though so its not all good.
Idk, humans have lots of different smells and some are more tolerable than others. Like if you don’t sweat much (not me unfortunately) you can definitely go a day without showering. The worst human smell might be a rotting tooth though, that’s really difficult to be around.
I’m the same. But of course I do daily the parts where the sun don’t shine.
Some people really do smell more than others, with the same washing habits.
I myself prefer a slight body odor in others, even light sweat (not stink!). Although some perfumes smell really good. But that agressive deodorant smell I hate.
I’m sure plenty of people do, maybe you’re even one of them, but turning this into blanket statements is weird and annoying. How many people think, because of the culture embodied in this sign, that they must shower every day, and never even check?
if you don’t shower daily you reek like shit /FULL STOP
Maybe you reek like shit after a day without showering because you don’t adequately wipe your ass? Because I don’t have that issue. I shower 2-3 times a week and don’t have any issues smelling like I stepped in your argument.
I also don’t really go places much since I work remote, but it’s not hard to shower before leaving the house to go do something
Get a bidet, use deodorant, and you can skip a day between showers, as long as you haven’t been working in the yard all day, or just got done at the gym.
Yep. I developed eczema and soap/chemicals are not my friend, I will forgo deodorant in the winter and use it lightly during the summer - you’d be surprised how little you really need - but I am checking with people about it regularly. I had a friend tell me I smelled like “outside” which made me realize the crystal deodorant wasn’t working right.
Plenty of people don’t start to smell bad 24h after a shower, with or without deodorant. In winter, I’d guess it’s actually most people.
I’ve learned for my own body the sweet spot is to use deodorant every day first thing in the morning and once per 48 hours take a full shower but if I do anything that causes me to sweat on an off day then I need to take a quick shower without any soaps. This keeps my body appropriately not-smelly and my hair doesn’t get greasy from over-washing like it does if I do a full shower daily. This regime also survives both running 5ks and biking 20+ miles in the summer, even if the day of the race/ride falls on an off-day!
Regarding deodorant I get smelly by the end of the day if I do not use deodorant regardless of the temperature. Also, some deodorants are apparently really good for larger folks who have chaffing issues. A friend of a friend specifically recommended slathering it anywhere that chafes first thing in the morning and that can help significantly
Well I’m certainly not taking a cold shower in winter! I don’t have a thermostatic shower tap so don’t know what temperature it is, but I guess I have it at about body temperature… Not sure if that is as hot as you mean.
Oh fuck, moisturiser!! Thank god someone has finally suggested MOISTURISER to me! And here I’d been covering my body in salt and ash. Truly I am saved.
I use the skin friendliest soap I know of, and can smell when I need a shower, and have trusted other people who validate my own sense. Olfactory fatigue makes no sense unless you shower really infrequently.
Thanks for your fake, ill-informed concern though. Sucks that on Lemmy people are so closed minded they can’t understand that people sweat less than they do.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about medical stuff in public but I don’t believe it is about soap alone because it also affects skin that i don’t soap up in the shower.
You’re not anonymous on social media? That’s always a mistake.
affects skin that i don’t soap up in the shower.
Dawg, what’s the point of showering if you don’t wash your entire body?
There’s no valid excuse for not bathing every day, except if you’re camping or something. If you really are having negative skin reactions, you should go see a dermatologist. I’m not a doctor, so maybe I’m wrong.
You say that you don’t stink, but you also don’t bathe every day, so I’m not going to trust your judgment on matters of hygiene. You should try to get an opinion from someone who wouldn’t lie to you. I have a cousin who doesn’t regularly shower, and he tries to hide it by slathering himself with cologne, but that just makes him smell like body odor and cologne. I tell him he smells like shit, but he doesn’t care. He readily admits that he is just too lazy to shower every day.
Idk why I care so much about this. It’s your life, be gross if you want to. Just… Don’t lie to yourself, I guess.
I don’t wash in the shower what I wash out of the shower.
I am an adult and it’s weird you and others assume that I haven’t consulted a doctor about this in my entire life.
Not all health problems are curable, so actually doctors’ advice includes (or can include) “don’t shower every day if that exacerbates your condition”.
My partner wouldn’t lie to me about this, which I know because sometimes they do tell me I need a shower. Not often though. It’s weird that you think it’s so hard to tell, yet also are so adamant that it must be done every day - yet that’s my experience with most people online.
It seems pretty clear it just grosses people out who never questioned the habit.
Like, you’re trying to make your point sound reasonable and well thought-out, but then you write stuff like
I don’t wash in the shower what I wash out of the shower.
Wtf does that mean? Your hands? Your face? Your asshole?
I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been on this earth for enough decades to have met all kinds of people with different showering habits. Those that don’t shower daily are easy to identify, either by their smell up close, or by their oily skin from a distance. Maybe you’re an anomaly, and should be studied by doctors for your superior anti-stink genes?
My partner wouldn’t lie to me about this, which I know because sometimes they do tell me I need a shower.
Different people have different sensitivity to smells. I’ve known two people who have no sense of smell (and one of them habitually stinks). Maybe your partner likes your stench? Maybe they just tolerate it because they love you?
Again, I don’t care how you live your life, esp since it’s unlikely I’ll ever have to smell you. I have no ill-will towards you, and hope you live a long and happy life. But for the sake of intellectual curiosity and internet conversation, I’m not backing down from my position if all you have is a “just trust me bro”.
What parts of your body do you wash regularly outside the shower? Is it a non-zero amount? Then you understand what I mean, right?
How are you correlating the smells of all these people with how often they shower? How many people have you asked that question of, because I’m guessing it’s “none” and you’re simply assuming that everyone who showers every other day is detectable by your nose - rather than those being people who haven’t washed for a month.
My partner tells me on the rare occasion when I smell bad, so there’s no reason to think they’re saving my feelings. I can also smell the change.
You’re so keen to assume all these details about my life instead of believing what seems to me to be extremely unsurprising - that it takes at least one person a few days to start smelling bad.
people of different age, race and sex all smell different, with a common gene among Asian people resulting in little to know body odour. This shouldn’t be hard to believe.
My partner tells me on the rare occasion when I smell bad, so there’s no reason to think they’re saving my feelings. I can also smell the change.
Is that the case? Or do they only tell you once the smell becomes unbearable? Usually, when you reach the point that you can smell your own stank, it’s really bad for other people. Have you had an open conversation with them about this? It’s an awkward topic for most people. If you’re so adamantly defending your point here on the internet anonymously, I wonder if you’re more defensive about it IRL, and off-putting to people who would otherwise be honest with you.
In any case, one of us is delusional here. You? Me? I don’t think we’ll reach a consensus on that one.
I noticed that you didn’t reply to the following pretty important things:
How are you correlating the smells of all these people with how often they shower? How many people have you asked that question of?
and
people of different age, race and sex all smell different, with a common gene among Asian people resulting in little to know body odour.
So I’m not going to get into further personal details until you show some good faith there.
For that matter, you never said how you were able to know how you yourself start to smell so badly after merely 24 hours out of the shower if this information is so unavailable.
And just remember that it was you who used the word “delusional”, not me.
I only shower on hair wash days. Showering isn’t the only form of bathing, and I don’t understand why people think soap stops working outside a shower. I feel absolutely gross if I can’t take a wet washcloth with some soap and wipe all the grime off periodically. If you’re relying on a daily shower to keep you clean, and don’t wash outside a shower, you must be absolutely disgusting.
Why can’t you use a washcloth inside a shower? Why do you think sitting in a pool of your own grime is cleaner than having a shower wash it down the drain?
Plenty of people don’t start to smell bad 24h after a shower, with or without deodorant. In winter, I’d guess it’s actually most people.
I try to shower as infrequently as I can without stinking because it fucks up my skin every single time.
Thank you for being the voice of reason and your patience with some people. A lot of people succumb to The Toupee Fallacy (A form of selection bias in which a thing whose quality is measured in terms of being difficult to detect is wrongly judged to be of poor quality in general, caused by the fact that most people only notice poor quality instances of it.).
I stopped showering every day for medical reasons and under medical supervision when I was young, and that really helped with my smell(Turns out I had both a fungal infection, and a hormonal disorder), and the habit stayed. My hair and my skin do a lot better, and due to the nature of my job, I would certainly know if I smelled, since I am often meeting clients and other team leads.
Having a bidet, applying deodorant daily and changing my clothes daily as well, added to working in climate controlled spaces, away from the sun, crowds and smelly habits like smoking are all factors that some people seem incapable of even considering.
But of course, this is Lemmy, where nuance often just fucking dies.
Yeah. I guess you can analyse it as:
It’s quite interesting to me, because it clearly becomes a very emotive topic when the difference between waiting one, two or three days to bathe is pretty abstract. I have developed a hypothesis that it’s the feeling of having a shower when one is feeling sticky and sweaty and dirty, and then coming out feeling nice and clean, that gets readily associated with bad odour. I then think that this link simply can’t form easily if your feeling when coming out of the shower is not “nice and clean” but “disgusting ball of skin-flakes held together only by paraffin and artificial grease”.
I have encountered this kind of attitude before but I was actually surprised to find it that prevalent here, because I expected more people to be sympathetic to conditions which require deviation from the norm.
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This is actually genetic!
Lucky east Asians…
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/east-asians-no-body-odor-dont-need-deodorant-rcna156778
I’m one of those low percentage of non east asian people who have this and it is indeed nice especially since I’m allergic to most deodorants. The hard ear wax does sometimes cause me issues during allergy season though so its not all good.
TIL there’s no such thing as a master race /jk
Thanks for sharing :)
Idk, humans have lots of different smells and some are more tolerable than others. Like if you don’t sweat much (not me unfortunately) you can definitely go a day without showering. The worst human smell might be a rotting tooth though, that’s really difficult to be around.
I’m the same. But of course I do daily the parts where the sun don’t shine.
Some people really do smell more than others, with the same washing habits.
I myself prefer a slight body odor in others, even light sweat (not stink!). Although some perfumes smell really good. But that agressive deodorant smell I hate.
you just made my stomach turn
So that’s why they have those 48 hour protection deodorants, it’s for the Magic players!
Yu-Gi-Oh! players too, especially if they do 5m combos every time they’re going 1st.
I’m sure plenty of people do, maybe you’re even one of them, but turning this into blanket statements is weird and annoying. How many people think, because of the culture embodied in this sign, that they must shower every day, and never even check?
Wait - if you don’t shower every day, how do you wake up fully? :p
White-knuckling traffic with my kid in the car seems to work okay
I can’t drag myself out of bed to the shower until I’m awake enough to do non-shower things anyway…
interesting… If I have to leave the house on time, shower is the actual wake-up call for me. Alarm is just to get me to sleep walk into the shower
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Maybe you reek like shit after a day without showering because you don’t adequately wipe your ass? Because I don’t have that issue. I shower 2-3 times a week and don’t have any issues smelling like I stepped in your argument.
I also don’t really go places much since I work remote, but it’s not hard to shower before leaving the house to go do something
Get a bidet, use deodorant, and you can skip a day between showers, as long as you haven’t been working in the yard all day, or just got done at the gym.
💀💀💀
I’m sorry about how rapidly you stink, have you experimented with different deodorants or consulted a doctor?
Have you thought that they might have already and it was no help?
And that’s the reason it was a question
Nah, that was a tit for tat.
Then you come in with basically an expertly placed, “what if medical science has no solution to their uncontrollable stench?”
🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Your bad diet makes you smell worse
To add: It’s a good idea to occasionally check with someone else how you smell, because we notice our own smell less than others.
Yep. I developed eczema and soap/chemicals are not my friend, I will forgo deodorant in the winter and use it lightly during the summer - you’d be surprised how little you really need - but I am checking with people about it regularly. I had a friend tell me I smelled like “outside” which made me realize the crystal deodorant wasn’t working right.
Yeah, my partner can be trusted to advise me of the situation lol
Prince Andrew, for instance, famously does not sweat.
I’ve learned for my own body the sweet spot is to use deodorant every day first thing in the morning and once per 48 hours take a full shower but if I do anything that causes me to sweat on an off day then I need to take a quick shower without any soaps. This keeps my body appropriately not-smelly and my hair doesn’t get greasy from over-washing like it does if I do a full shower daily. This regime also survives both running 5ks and biking 20+ miles in the summer, even if the day of the race/ride falls on an off-day!
Regarding deodorant I get smelly by the end of the day if I do not use deodorant regardless of the temperature. Also, some deodorants are apparently really good for larger folks who have chaffing issues. A friend of a friend specifically recommended slathering it anywhere that chafes first thing in the morning and that can help significantly
Body moisturizer after shower is a game changer. I wish I’d known about it sooner.
Are you made from sugar? I’m part of the two-a-day club. When I wake up and after the gym.
Are you, by any chance, showering with hot water? It’s said that warmer/hotter water dries out the skin more.
Well I’m certainly not taking a cold shower in winter! I don’t have a thermostatic shower tap so don’t know what temperature it is, but I guess I have it at about body temperature… Not sure if that is as hot as you mean.
Yeah, but this is a shop for MTG nerds. They ain’t most people.
You probably need to find a good moisturizer and leave it on for a while in the shower.
Oh fuck, moisturiser!! Thank god someone has finally suggested MOISTURISER to me! And here I’d been covering my body in salt and ash. Truly I am saved.
Simply fill your bath with lotion and bathe in that instead of water!
The best part is the bath will never be contaminated by dirty water so you can reuse the lotion forever…
I can then run around the village and have people try and catch me
Aveeno makes an oatmeal bath for this purpose
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You probably smell really bad. Olfactory fatigue might make you think otherwise. Just shower and moisturize. Find skin friendly soap.
I use the skin friendliest soap I know of, and can smell when I need a shower, and have trusted other people who validate my own sense. Olfactory fatigue makes no sense unless you shower really infrequently.
Thanks for your fake, ill-informed concern though. Sucks that on Lemmy people are so closed minded they can’t understand that people sweat less than they do.
Could you go into detail? Is it the soap, or the water that fucks up your skin? And how does it get “fucked up”?
I don’t want to go into too much detail about medical stuff in public but I don’t believe it is about soap alone because it also affects skin that i don’t soap up in the shower.
You’re not anonymous on social media? That’s always a mistake.
Dawg, what’s the point of showering if you don’t wash your entire body?
There’s no valid excuse for not bathing every day, except if you’re camping or something. If you really are having negative skin reactions, you should go see a dermatologist. I’m not a doctor, so maybe I’m wrong.
You say that you don’t stink, but you also don’t bathe every day, so I’m not going to trust your judgment on matters of hygiene. You should try to get an opinion from someone who wouldn’t lie to you. I have a cousin who doesn’t regularly shower, and he tries to hide it by slathering himself with cologne, but that just makes him smell like body odor and cologne. I tell him he smells like shit, but he doesn’t care. He readily admits that he is just too lazy to shower every day.
Idk why I care so much about this. It’s your life, be gross if you want to. Just… Don’t lie to yourself, I guess.
I don’t wash in the shower what I wash out of the shower.
I am an adult and it’s weird you and others assume that I haven’t consulted a doctor about this in my entire life.
Not all health problems are curable, so actually doctors’ advice includes (or can include) “don’t shower every day if that exacerbates your condition”.
My partner wouldn’t lie to me about this, which I know because sometimes they do tell me I need a shower. Not often though. It’s weird that you think it’s so hard to tell, yet also are so adamant that it must be done every day - yet that’s my experience with most people online.
It seems pretty clear it just grosses people out who never questioned the habit.
Like, you’re trying to make your point sound reasonable and well thought-out, but then you write stuff like
Wtf does that mean? Your hands? Your face? Your asshole?
I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been on this earth for enough decades to have met all kinds of people with different showering habits. Those that don’t shower daily are easy to identify, either by their smell up close, or by their oily skin from a distance. Maybe you’re an anomaly, and should be studied by doctors for your superior anti-stink genes?
Different people have different sensitivity to smells. I’ve known two people who have no sense of smell (and one of them habitually stinks). Maybe your partner likes your stench? Maybe they just tolerate it because they love you?
Again, I don’t care how you live your life, esp since it’s unlikely I’ll ever have to smell you. I have no ill-will towards you, and hope you live a long and happy life. But for the sake of intellectual curiosity and internet conversation, I’m not backing down from my position if all you have is a “just trust me bro”.
What parts of your body do you wash regularly outside the shower? Is it a non-zero amount? Then you understand what I mean, right?
How are you correlating the smells of all these people with how often they shower? How many people have you asked that question of, because I’m guessing it’s “none” and you’re simply assuming that everyone who showers every other day is detectable by your nose - rather than those being people who haven’t washed for a month.
My partner tells me on the rare occasion when I smell bad, so there’s no reason to think they’re saving my feelings. I can also smell the change.
You’re so keen to assume all these details about my life instead of believing what seems to me to be extremely unsurprising - that it takes at least one person a few days to start smelling bad.
people of different age, race and sex all smell different, with a common gene among Asian people resulting in little to know body odour. This shouldn’t be hard to believe.
Is that the case? Or do they only tell you once the smell becomes unbearable? Usually, when you reach the point that you can smell your own stank, it’s really bad for other people. Have you had an open conversation with them about this? It’s an awkward topic for most people. If you’re so adamantly defending your point here on the internet anonymously, I wonder if you’re more defensive about it IRL, and off-putting to people who would otherwise be honest with you.
In any case, one of us is delusional here. You? Me? I don’t think we’ll reach a consensus on that one.
I noticed that you didn’t reply to the following pretty important things:
and
So I’m not going to get into further personal details until you show some good faith there.
For that matter, you never said how you were able to know how you yourself start to smell so badly after merely 24 hours out of the shower if this information is so unavailable.
And just remember that it was you who used the word “delusional”, not me.
I only shower on hair wash days. Showering isn’t the only form of bathing, and I don’t understand why people think soap stops working outside a shower. I feel absolutely gross if I can’t take a wet washcloth with some soap and wipe all the grime off periodically. If you’re relying on a daily shower to keep you clean, and don’t wash outside a shower, you must be absolutely disgusting.
Why can’t you use a washcloth inside a shower? Why do you think sitting in a pool of your own grime is cleaner than having a shower wash it down the drain?
In what world does your bathroom sink sit in a pool of grime? Clean your bathroom, geeze.
What’s the point of commenting if you are just going to belittle someone else immediately after they said they didn’t want to talk about it?