Do you have any smell you like/dislike even though most people don't?

Tomassci@sh.itjust.works to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 99 points –

I'll start with the fact that I kind of like the smell of gasoline, and also bleach for some reason.

142

I’ll start with the fact that I kind of like the smell of gasoline,

That is not nearly unpopular.

For me, pure Isopropyl alcohol (as in not part of some product). Reminds me of doctor's office when I was a kid, and I like it.

There's literally an Outkast song called "Gasoline" about it!

🎵 "Don't everybody like the smell of gasoline..." 🎶

I'm not a fan of the "new car smell", for some reason. The "new computer smell", on the other hand, is a rare treat.

I think the only reason that some people say they like it is because of the association with, you know, a new car.

When I was a kid, my grandparents got a new car. I got sick in it all the time because of it. I hate that smell to this day - but at least I don’t get sick anymore.

2 more...

Cologne or perfume on a human. Stop. It's not nice, I don't want to smell you.

But we all have a scent, would you prefer natural smell to perfume?

Also not OP, but without a doubt yes every time. I've don't think I've ever noticed the natural smell of a human being other than myself as a negative smell. OTOH, someone who is fresh out of the shower and used something like a strongly scented shampoo should quarantine themselves for at least a bit before doing something like getting on a bus.

Overall I agree but I’ve been much too close to some people who haven’t bathed in a while and that is an unpleasant smell.

If it's something you have to be intimately close to smell it's nice, if you sit down at the table next to me and I can smell it that's rough

Spent gunpowder smells absolutely lovely.

While not particularly good, it's not bad either: I'm immune to the smell of cow dung. Pig, sheep, horse, etc smell horrible. But Cow shit is perfectly OK. Guess which animal I grew up with.

LOVE black powder. Whatever's in my AR-15 shells is foul though. No other round bothers me. .22LR, .22MAG, .380. .45, any given shotgun shell, no problem. Every .223 round smells awful.

Anyone know what that might be?

Dunno. I've mostly fired 7.62x51 NATO as well as some other NATO standard rounds. They are smelled the same.

Love the smell of new years eve.
Nothing better than spent firework shells.

Literally anything that smells like seafood will make me nauseous

Nauseated. Though as an American I'm about ready to give up on this crusade. Nauseous means you make others want to vomit.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nauseous

They've even got a special note for people like you:

Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only to mean "causing nausea" and that its later "affected with nausea" meaning is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous to mean "causing nausea or disgust" is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous when referring to being affected with nausea.

Most seafood doesn't get me too badly, though I still don't like it. Cooking shrimp, on the other hand, makes it hurt to breathe for some reason. Not the same as nausea, but it still sucks.

Sounds like you're allergic to shrimp.

Perfumes and air fresheners. They all smell like toxic chemicals to me.

New car smell, it's awful. Sort of stale plastic if I were to describe it.

Amplified by long trips on bad roads as kid. Guaranteed to make you feel like vomiting on some sections. Now when I anticipate/pack for a trip I tend to smell that again even though I'm not even in a car.

You are not alone my friend. I heard that Chinese ppl feel the same way as you do and pay ppl to remove the smell before using the car. I don't know if it is because of the same reason tho haha

Cat piss does not smell particularly bad to me.

Maybe it's toxoplasma speaking.

I have cats, but they mostly pee where they're supposed to.

The icky cat pee smell happens when they pee on things not designed for cat pee, and then those things aren't adequately washed. E.g., suitcases, clothes, curtains, backpacks.

So, someone in my position might not think cat pee smells terrible, except I've been to houses where the cats weren't as well-behaved, and those houses stank.

When my wife and I were house-hunting, one of the houses we disqualified solely for the cat pee smell.

Yea I'm not a fan of them but cat piss and shit smells don't disgust me at all. I can eat in the kitchen after my cat had a shit on the other side of the room, no problem.

As you say, could be the toxoplasma.

I love the smell of bleach.

Absolutely hate the stench of coffee. About the only thing worse is coffee with vanilla in it. Disgusting.

Ooh, I was struggling to come up with one but you helped me think of one: vanilla-scented anything is gross in my opinion. Real vanilla is fine but the synthetic stuff is nasty. Unfortunately for me, all of my friends seemed to love vanilla-scented candles and lotions and I couldn’t escape it as a teen and college student. Bleh.

For me, coffee is okay, and I love vanilla, so I'll have to disagree here

Ah yes I hate the smell of coffee, thanks for reminding me of that!

Stuff smells like cigarettes to me!

I hate the smell of raw brown sugar. I like it in foods, and it's fine cooked, but the raw smell makes me gag.

Lavender because of garbage bags. Scented garbage bags are awful.

The smell of the freshly mown lawn. It smells so bad and I'm allergic so I guess this explains why I dislike how it smells.

Motor oil is a smell that I really like. It's from growing up around mechanic shops, I think.

I hate the smell of sandalwood. It's just overwhelming and I can't get past the heaviness of it. My coworkers use a tobacco and sandalwood scented room spray and I want to gag every time.

I like the smell of moldy houses. I've been told it's a health hazard, so I don't engage or encourage it, but when people excuse the smell in their residence, I tell them I like it.

I love the smell of wood burning/camp fire smell. There's something I find comforting about it. I've yet to find a candle that exactly replicates the smell, but if I ever do, I'm buying 50.

Theres a tea called lapsang souchong. Its a smoked black tea.

I tell people its campfire tea. God damn it smells good. Better than any candle ever will be.

Edit: if you don't really want to drink it you could also just use it as potpourri with it and get that wonderful campfire smell

Seconded. It’s like drinking a smoky campfire. It’s definitely not for everyone, or can be overwhelming. I like it occasionally. Nobody else in my house can stand it.

Theres a russian caravan which iirc is half and half assam and lapsang souchong which might be more palatable to people, but ill go full campfire for myself, everytime

I hated tea (well, didn't really hate. Just didn't see the point) until I had Smokey Earl Grey at my friend's house which I immediately called Bacon Tea. The sweet from the Earl Grey plus the smokey from the Lapsang Souchong really reminded me of a good thick cut piece of bacon dipped in maple syrup.

Then they recommended straight up Lapsang Souchong if I liked the smokey tea. I haven't drank anything else since. That was like 8 years ago.

A number of loose leaf tea places ive been to have a cream of earl grey tea i like. Ill have to mix them, that sounds delicious!

I actually can't stand tea, like TEA tea, but I do like herbal teas. I like the idea of using the lapsang souchong as potpourri, though! I'll try that.

Now you have me thinking "can you water plants with tea? What plants would benefit from the tea?" Would the aroma also maybe help keep bugs away? Or would it attract more bugs"

I think you and i just developed a new organic pesticide! And who says hate isnt constuctive! Lol

I think almost everyone likes that smell.

I can imagine it's hard to replicate in a candle, though.

Cooking oil.

I love me some fried food; I get nauseated smelling the oil itself while things are cooking though. It's worse depending on the oil or fats used. Straight butter and eggs frying in a pan is the worst.

I do janitorial work at McDonald's in the mornings and I always wait until after the switch to lunch to really clean the kitchen because the smell of the eggs being fried makes me wanna puke.

I can relate with the butter.

I love butter. Cook with it all the time. It's amazingly delicious. But the smell when melting it makes me want to throw up and I don't get why.

Same with Italian hard cheesea. Parmegiano and Peccorino Romano smell like ass but raste really good in my carbonara. Anyone can relate?

Dislike lavender. I once passed through a town that produces a lot of lavender, has a festival for it and everything. It was so awful. Lovely area, though.

Pool water, I really like the smell of it.

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but…

Chloramines result from the combination of chlorine disinfectants and the perspiration, cosmetics, and urine that enter pools on the bodies of swimmers.

I smelled pure liquid chlorine up close for the first time and it is what I associate as the pool smell.

The smell of diesel and 2stroke mix are nostalgic for me.

Also I love the smell of vinegar.

When I was a kid, my dad had a newspaper distribution business. We had a series of diesel box trucks. The new ultra low sulfur diesel doesn't do it for me, but the odd whiff of the old sour stuff takes me back to my childhood.

The last time I smelled it was many years ago. I don't really expect I'll ever get that hit again.

I feel like it will burn my nose hair when I smell vinegar 😭

Me too! Only white vinegar though, that apple cider stuff gags me

Agreed!

I take it you like salt & vinegar chips, too? I'm an addict lol

You bet! Also some Chinese food places use a lot of vinegar in their sauces. Makes me smile!

I love the smell of alfalfa, I even have scent modifiers in the scent. People think I'm crazy (not that they don't already).

Alfalfa hay is the smell of my childhood. It makes me incredibly nostalgic.

Vinegar smell makes me want to vomit and it's used in every fecking fish n chips place. blergh

You would hate my house. I clean with straight vinegar since it's antibacterial and food. I'm cleaning with something that I can eat rather than toxic cleaners.

Same for the gasoline. It's not as uncommon to like it as you might think

I can‘t stand the smell of coffee roasting since childhood… hated it when one of my employer moved office next to a coffee rostery

Cooking chicken and cooking fish just immediately makes me want to gag

Might have ARFID for those things, but I've also got a really weird social anxiety about food in a social context, so it just compounds how put off I am when I smell fish or chicken cooking

And then there's me. I hate the smell of cold chicken but loveeee cooked chicken.

fresh printed business cards from an actual printing press, with ink.

That's an interesting one. When I was a child I liked the smell of new books and magazines. They had a rather pleasant odor. But since a couple of years now fresh-printed things smell just awful. I think the ingredients of the ink or the paper have been changed.

I remember liking the smell of diesel exhaust as a kid but now, at least here in Japan which may have different emissions, it makes me feel like I can't breathe.

Petrichor is fantastic as is the smell of the ocean. Cow manure is super nostalgic to me. I was driving my motorcycle to do some paperwork in the city and smelled them putting it on the fields. An ocean away, but still felt like my childhood home.

Cilantro/coriander leaf (and whatever thing in my property smells oddly like it when I cut grass/weeds) is like bug spray to me. Can't stand the smell. A tiny bit in something doesn't put me off, but it quickly gets unbearable and chemically to me.

I agree with you on gasoline. I also enjoy the smell of the blue liquid you put in your car and then spray on the windshield (I don't know what it's called).

I thought it was supposed to smell good

Me too but I can't breath when someone use it... So I thought I was the odd one

1 more...

I like the smell of other people. We work so hard to scrub ourselves clean, but I like to smell of people, even sweaty. I ask my spouse not to shower too often, lol. (Not trying to ask them to be super stinky... just a little favor.) I sneak a little smell every time I hug my kids.

IDK if this is popular or not, but I never hear anyone talk about it, so *shrug*

I've noticed that there's good BO and bad BO. I think it depends on which bacteria make up the skin fauna. I can't stand the bad BO but I like the good BO, at least from someone I'm in a sexual relationship with (since you need to be really close to smell it, as it's usually not a strong smell).

The bad BO smell I associate with clothing, towels, or equipment not drying out properly. It can require bleach to get rid of the smell entirely.

The good BO smell I can't really describe.

And ever since I've started using pre- and pro-biotic soap/lotion, I've noticed that I've only had the good BO, even after not showering for a few days. This is an added bonus because I started using it in the first place to successfully clear out a recurring skin infection. And the pro-biotic lotion smells amazing, too.

I've also noticed I like the smell of my arms, which is a different smell entirely. Not sure if it's the skin or the hair. I have to put my nose directly on my arm to smell it.

Seriously! People with a healthy skin fauna smell great.

I think it has a lot to do with how frequently people shower using soap. Showering with just water should be much more common. I use soap only about once a week but shower almost every day. I've never had less issues with body odor.

Not sure if it's unpopular or not, but the smell of peanut butter is disgusting. The taste is fine, but the smell 🤮

For me peanut butter is not as bad as dry roasted peanuts. For some reason before they’re pulverized, it smells like cigarette smoke to me.

Popcorn. I hate the smell of popcorn. It permeates everything and takes so long to go away.

Interestingly, I do not dislike eating popcorn. Just the smell.

Like: Chlorinated water smell, so yes bleach, there was a chlorinated water fountain in a building I used to work in and I would just go sit by it and smell it, so relaxing. Pot and tobacco both smell so good before they are burning, too, but the smoke, no, yuck.

Dislikes: I have trouble with rose, lavender.

The chlorinated water smell instantly takes me back to summer days at the pool. Makes me happy. I don't really care for garlic.

Asafetida. People call it horrible unless cooked but imho it just smells like garlic++. It's sulfurous, but so is garlic and a lot of food really. Sulfur isn't necessarily an unpleasant smell to me. As far as I can tell the smell of asafetida doesn't change when cooking, it just gets milder.

Healthy compost also smells kinda nice, rotting meat is awful but if you're not getting putricene and co from anerobic nitrogen decomp decay mostly smells damp and warm and spicy.

Durian also smells amazing, but that's a pretty popular opinion given the wild popularity of the fruit. Potentially more sulfur not aversive stuff there.

In the hate camp peanut butter. It is overpowering and early in the day makes me throw up. My wife adds it to coffee sometimes which makes the entire house smell of peanut butter for hours. It's a very powerful and cloying smell.

Agree on compost. When they mulch the landscaping around my office, it’s oddly pleasant.

I hate the smell of coffee, as well as the powder/beans.

I generally feel like my sense of smell is quite bad. There's not really a lot of smells that I hate abnormally, probably due to the reduced sense of smell. I do like gasoline smell just like you, but honestly I thought that that was normal.

I like the faint smell of cigarettes from a distance.

I love the smell of first time firing up a brand new toaster. I've only experienced this like 3 times in my life but it's immediately recognizeable and very pleasant smell. Some protective oil on the coils I assume.

Another is suede or something similar. I can't quite pinpoint the exact source of it but I remember my cousin's doll house having this kind of "electric" smell to it and now few years back I bought this used leather jacket that smells quite similar.

Also the battery compartment of most remotes.

EDIT: This isn't even answering the question but whatever

I love the smell of basements. The humidity and the green, decades old moss on the wall gives off this refreshing yet mature scent. As a plus, it's also often cooler than the air at ground level. Mmmm.

I grew up in a post-Soviet European suburb where almost everyone kept some kind of farm animal. The smell of chicken manure gives me the good kind of nostalgia.

On the negative side, both the smell and taste of strawberries is offensively generic.

A bagel covered in cheese and toasted is a heinous smell. I love cheese and I love bagels but for some reason it makes me gag.

Lilacs. They smell just like shit to me. I grew up near a house that had a huge section of them and had to walk by them frequently.

Can’t do microwave popcorn. Gives me a migraine. Traditionally popped popcorn like in those little trolleys or whatever? A-OK.

I am absolutely repulsed by the smell of cucumbers

I was just thinking yesterday that for a somewhat tasteless vegetable consisting mostly of water they do have a pretty strong odor.

I also like the smell of gasoline and bleach, most likely from the association with riding dirt bikes and swimming as a kid. Fuel for the bike and bleach to clean the tshirts before going for a swim in the public pool!

I dislike the smell of Fenugreek in people.

In food, it's fine. But if you cook with it, it lingers on your clothes. And that bothers me.

In college, I worked at a little aerospace manufacturing place running an NC milling machine, and I really like the smell of the cutting oil/lubricant they spray on the rotating cutters. I now work in software engineering at a company that makes rocket engines, and I like walking through the shop and smelling that smell.

Yeah, I can still smell the lubricant we used in our high school machine shop. It was water based and we called it blue juice

I like the smell of ammonia. I use ammonia based cleaners almost exclusively. Bleach smells like nothing to me, like if TV static was a smell.

I dislike strong perfumes, and I hated doing laundry for a long time and would put it off as long as I could before my grandma introduced me to scentless detergent. I don't use scented dryer sheets either. I shouldn't be able to smell my clothes after a wash. It's gag-inducing.

Oddly sweaty people, not like a sour unwashed sweat, but a showered person just lightly sweating on a warm day is weirdly endearing.

I love the smell of diesel exhaust. Not from cars but from big construction machines.

Eucalyptus. Makes my asthmas flair up badly. Strong enough and it closes my airway. No Vicks vaporub for me. Obviously it’s not a smell I like.

I can't stand the smell of garlic to the point of retching if I do. Just the thought of it makes me unwell. It's a long story, why I'm like this xD

Love the smell of petrichor, the smell of the world after a good rain, especially if the temperatures are cool and crisp. Bonus if it’s deep in the temperate rainforests of the Canadian PNW, with no civilization near.

Love the smell of fresh-cut grass, reminds me of my youth even if it’s one of the only things that makes me sneeze uncontrollably (my only known allergy).

Marigolds bring me all the way back to childhood, as my mother had them planted around the entire house. I take one whiff, and for the briefest of moments I am a five year old without a care in the world. To this day I collect and re-sow their seeds everywhere I can. I particularly like the small ones with the dark orange and deep crimson flowers.

Hate the smell of tar with every fibre of my being. I could never be a roofer or a road worker or a street resurfacer for that reason. It makes me gag uncontrollably with even the faintest whiff.

I hate the smell of freshly sliced bell peppers. I can’t really explain it. It just smells so wrong for a vegetable.

I love the smell of dittos, it's unlikely I'll ever smell that again. I also love the smell of garages.

I hate the smell of food after I've finished a meal. Every weekend I make protein blueberry pancakes. The house smells delicious until I'm done eating, and then it feels cloying.

I reaaallly hate the smell of other people, except my husband. I feel like I have an extra strong sense of smell, and I really hate the scalp smell some people have, especially during a humid summer. Nauseating! And forget about it if I can smell your feet through your shoes, I will definitely make some excuse and leave. And body odor, especially from people who don't use deodorant or shower every day. I know that's a personal choice and I should be tolerant but it's so overpowering, I really hate it.

Now that I think about it, I guess these aren't too uncommon after all.

I like the smells of tiger balm, kimchi, and fish sauce.

I think this is an outlier because I've been asked to never bring that stuff in the office anymore.

Love the smell of n-hexane and pet ether (worked in a chemistry lab). Though don't like the smell of gasoline. I kind of also like the smell of chlorinated water. Also chloroform, though not as much as n-hexane.