I used to have a job adjacent to the gaming industry, I went in a number of gaming stores to try to find partners for the products we were selling.
I could talk at length how sad and strange gaming stores are, but I just wanted to share one incident where I was in Phoenix in August and entered a small shop in a business plaza that looked relatively clean and new on the outside.
On opening the door I was hit with the worst BO wave that has ever crashed over me, and having been in gaming stores before, this says a lot. There were some young guys sitting at tables surrounded by backpacks, which I can only assume were full of fermented roadkill, and playing various games, looking up curiously as I tried my best to smile and nod a greeting. My eyes watered and I left immediately because I felt like I was going to vomit.
I checked up on the store 6 months later and it had closed doors pretty fast. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t get business.
The memes and jokes are not an exaggeration. Gamer boys are TERRIBLE at self-care and hygiene. I don’t know why it’s so hard to reinforce the concept to people that just because you can’t smell yourself, it doesn’t mean you don’t smell, you NEED to shower, change clothes, all of them, including and especially socks and underwear, and you need to clean your fucking rooms, your rooms are stink nests and that smell seeps into EVERYTHING.
You know how angry incels will vomit spiels online how frustrated they are that they get the advice to “just shower?” I love this common exchange because I know for a fact that probably more than half of these boys screaming online how nobody wants to touch their weewee are also completely disgusting and do nothing to maintain and manage themselves.
Pre-pandemic, we had a couple (as in they are together) over for supper. They’ve been friends with my wife for over twenty years now. They’ve always been into board and video games (each has their own gaming rig and every console), and overweight. Something had recently changed because their higiene had been ok so far. At some point in the conversation, it came up that they had done some research and found that IT WASN’T HEALTHY TO SHOWER EVERY DAY. They were now doing it once a week since “they didn’t exercise anyway”. Obviously, they smelled and I made that clear. We didn’t hear from them for some time after that.
These were two adults who had jobs and owned a house. Mind you, their house cleaning habits had also deteriorated.
They’re not wrong necessarily that it’s not strictly necessary to shower every day, depending on a variety of things like your daily habits and work, your overall environment and how clean you keep everything around you, how often you change your clothes, if you sweat a lot or have a lot of body oils, if you cook a lot, and so on. You can get by fine with light cleaning and a shower every other day if you have a simple, inactive lifestyle that doesn’t make for conditions that make your body smell, and it might be healthier for your skin.
But jeez, always shower before going out to socialize, that’s the part that baffles me… sure you can live fine with… once a week(?!) if you’re at home and not expecting company, but to use that as a rationalization for being that lazy is just a sad glimpse into people with problems.
The general rule of thumb is to assume you can’t smell yourself but others can, and if you CAN smell yourself a little bit, others can smell you a LOT.
That said, I wouldn’t use this as a rule, people have very different sensitivities and you may never get a whiff of yourself even if you’re fermenting. Your nose is particularly good at tuning out regular smells like your own room, clothes, bedding, and most of all your own BO. It’s better to take preventative actions than trust that you will be able to tell when something is bad.
That’s because there’s some times when you don’t stink, so you’ve had time to learn the difference. Some people always stink, and they forget what clean smells like
When my parents bought their house, there were hoarders renting out the lower flat. when they opened the door, it smelled awful. Kids being kids, I just flat out asked one of their kids “Why does your flat stink so much?”. They told me, it does not stink ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So you can get insensitive about stuff like that.
On another note: my wife can taste stuff I cannot taste. I can see better than other folks while my hearing is really bad. So senses work differently for different humans. So while I can smell myself as well, that does not need to hold true for others.
I think a lot of it has to do with the hobby itself being of escapism. People who delve into things like miniature or card gaming or tabletop RPG’s are rarely people with strong social lives, athleticism or stable home lives. (No Henry Cavill, you sit the fuck down)
So you’re going to see more people with crappy lives trying to escape or have some kind of social connection with others. Kids who were never taught by a parent figure how to properly maintain their lives and bodies, neurodivergent people who have a very hard time with some personal care, people with particular kinds of anxiety or depression.
My father was a big, wealthy narcissist a lot like Trump, he had “people” under him, he owned land and restaurants and all that, was always the drunk, coked-up “big man in charge” and grifted people out of millions of dollars in his life. He could barely read and was incapable of telling the truth, he was obviously neurodivergent in some way but was a literal baby boomer and never got any kind of care as a child other than regular beatings, so he was a mess. One thing that was particularly weird was his aversion to showering and wearing clean clothes. He hated cleaning, he often smelled like livestock, people pretended not to notice because they wanted to stay in his good graces but it was rancid.
He only made one comment ever about it that stuck to me, because he rarely said anything with any level of honesty but this seemed to have a kernel of reality. “I don’t like being in the shower because I feel like I might miss something.”
And that led me to realize that being in a shower or maintaining yourself means being alone with your own thoughts, being focused on yourself as a person, paying attention to your body in space and separating yourself from the environment and world around you, thinking carefully about how others view you, looking in the mirror… If you’re someone constantly escaping those kinds of potentially existential moments of self-examination, self-care can feel like emotional torture, a laborious exercise in trying to revalidate all of your decisions and feelings.
My theory was that it was so many teenagers traveling a long way to a big tournament who couldn’t afford to just get a hotel room the night before. So they’d sleep at their friends house or whatever, and then just show up in whatever condition.
But having the problem at the local game shop kind of defeats that theory.
I used to have a job adjacent to the gaming industry, I went in a number of gaming stores to try to find partners for the products we were selling.
I could talk at length how sad and strange gaming stores are, but I just wanted to share one incident where I was in Phoenix in August and entered a small shop in a business plaza that looked relatively clean and new on the outside.
On opening the door I was hit with the worst BO wave that has ever crashed over me, and having been in gaming stores before, this says a lot. There were some young guys sitting at tables surrounded by backpacks, which I can only assume were full of fermented roadkill, and playing various games, looking up curiously as I tried my best to smile and nod a greeting. My eyes watered and I left immediately because I felt like I was going to vomit.
I checked up on the store 6 months later and it had closed doors pretty fast. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t get business.
The memes and jokes are not an exaggeration. Gamer boys are TERRIBLE at self-care and hygiene. I don’t know why it’s so hard to reinforce the concept to people that just because you can’t smell yourself, it doesn’t mean you don’t smell, you NEED to shower, change clothes, all of them, including and especially socks and underwear, and you need to clean your fucking rooms, your rooms are stink nests and that smell seeps into EVERYTHING.
You know how angry incels will vomit spiels online how frustrated they are that they get the advice to “just shower?” I love this common exchange because I know for a fact that probably more than half of these boys screaming online how nobody wants to touch their weewee are also completely disgusting and do nothing to maintain and manage themselves.
Pre-pandemic, we had a couple (as in they are together) over for supper. They’ve been friends with my wife for over twenty years now. They’ve always been into board and video games (each has their own gaming rig and every console), and overweight. Something had recently changed because their higiene had been ok so far. At some point in the conversation, it came up that they had done some research and found that IT WASN’T HEALTHY TO SHOWER EVERY DAY. They were now doing it once a week since “they didn’t exercise anyway”. Obviously, they smelled and I made that clear. We didn’t hear from them for some time after that. These were two adults who had jobs and owned a house. Mind you, their house cleaning habits had also deteriorated.
They’re not wrong necessarily that it’s not strictly necessary to shower every day, depending on a variety of things like your daily habits and work, your overall environment and how clean you keep everything around you, how often you change your clothes, if you sweat a lot or have a lot of body oils, if you cook a lot, and so on. You can get by fine with light cleaning and a shower every other day if you have a simple, inactive lifestyle that doesn’t make for conditions that make your body smell, and it might be healthier for your skin.
But jeez, always shower before going out to socialize, that’s the part that baffles me… sure you can live fine with… once a week(?!) if you’re at home and not expecting company, but to use that as a rationalization for being that lazy is just a sad glimpse into people with problems.
The thing is you can smell yourself. I can smell when I stink. How can you not notice that rancid smell following you is you?
The general rule of thumb is to assume you can’t smell yourself but others can, and if you CAN smell yourself a little bit, others can smell you a LOT.
That said, I wouldn’t use this as a rule, people have very different sensitivities and you may never get a whiff of yourself even if you’re fermenting. Your nose is particularly good at tuning out regular smells like your own room, clothes, bedding, and most of all your own BO. It’s better to take preventative actions than trust that you will be able to tell when something is bad.
That’s because there’s some times when you don’t stink, so you’ve had time to learn the difference. Some people always stink, and they forget what clean smells like
When my parents bought their house, there were hoarders renting out the lower flat. when they opened the door, it smelled awful. Kids being kids, I just flat out asked one of their kids “Why does your flat stink so much?”. They told me, it does not stink ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So you can get insensitive about stuff like that.
On another note: my wife can taste stuff I cannot taste. I can see better than other folks while my hearing is really bad. So senses work differently for different humans. So while I can smell myself as well, that does not need to hold true for others.
I’m so curious about this. Why are they like that? I don’t understand how that happens, and what specifically about gaming makes it more prevalent.
I think a lot of it has to do with the hobby itself being of escapism. People who delve into things like miniature or card gaming or tabletop RPG’s are rarely people with strong social lives, athleticism or stable home lives. (No Henry Cavill, you sit the fuck down)
So you’re going to see more people with crappy lives trying to escape or have some kind of social connection with others. Kids who were never taught by a parent figure how to properly maintain their lives and bodies, neurodivergent people who have a very hard time with some personal care, people with particular kinds of anxiety or depression.
My father was a big, wealthy narcissist a lot like Trump, he had “people” under him, he owned land and restaurants and all that, was always the drunk, coked-up “big man in charge” and grifted people out of millions of dollars in his life. He could barely read and was incapable of telling the truth, he was obviously neurodivergent in some way but was a literal baby boomer and never got any kind of care as a child other than regular beatings, so he was a mess. One thing that was particularly weird was his aversion to showering and wearing clean clothes. He hated cleaning, he often smelled like livestock, people pretended not to notice because they wanted to stay in his good graces but it was rancid.
He only made one comment ever about it that stuck to me, because he rarely said anything with any level of honesty but this seemed to have a kernel of reality. “I don’t like being in the shower because I feel like I might miss something.”
And that led me to realize that being in a shower or maintaining yourself means being alone with your own thoughts, being focused on yourself as a person, paying attention to your body in space and separating yourself from the environment and world around you, thinking carefully about how others view you, looking in the mirror… If you’re someone constantly escaping those kinds of potentially existential moments of self-examination, self-care can feel like emotional torture, a laborious exercise in trying to revalidate all of your decisions and feelings.
Sheeeesh daddy-oof
Glad you turned out good enough for the both of you!
TY, I learned a lot in the two decades I was stuck in that world.
Went to PAX, the rest of the convention floor smelled fine. The smell at the tabletop game floor hit hard.
My theory was that it was so many teenagers traveling a long way to a big tournament who couldn’t afford to just get a hotel room the night before. So they’d sleep at their friends house or whatever, and then just show up in whatever condition.
But having the problem at the local game shop kind of defeats that theory.