https://twitter.com/StevieBlunder__/status/1777572921235677238
Anyone remember CrackGate from that one mtg event a few years back?
Also I used to work at a homeless shelter that was located very near a card shop. It's owners would go to the community meetings where we would have to justify to these NIMBYs that we deserve to be there - awful stuff. One meeting, the owners of the card shop made a shitty comment about how smelly the shelter must be, and clearly didn't want us there.
My boss wasn't having it. We ran the cleanest shelter in the whole damn city. I had practically dragged people to the showers when they couldn't keep their hygiene up, and that place was scrubbed floor to roof daily. So boss man gets out of his chair like "I run the cleanest shelter in this city. I have been to your Friday Night Magic events. We are not the ones with a hygiene problem here!"
Don't think it endeared us to the community, but it did shut them up.
This is one stereotype about gamers & tabletop/card gamers especially that is just so thoroughly true and highly cross-cultural. Any in-person events within the "nerd culture" halo exhibit this phenomenon as well. You'd think "oh just do a smell test on people entering the venue and bar smelly people from entering" but it doesn't work like that. Their smell develops over time as they sweat and the bacterial colonies on their bodies & clothing activate. Hygiene can't be a one-day thing, you have to keep those clothes from getting smelly for as long as you own them. Barring actually forcing people to take a supervised shower to ensure they soap their ass, put on deodorant & issuing them a clean set of clothing on entry this will always be a problem.
I just don't get it. I've been playing games my entire life and I've never had this problem. Why is this such a prevalent issue?
You don't even need to shower every single day (it's not good for your skin) unless you're a naturally sweaty person or do stuff that makes you sweat or get dirty, so it's not even a matter of needing to shower daily, this is just lacking basic hygiene. But damn man if I'm going out to a con I'mma make sure I'm fresh every day.
lacking basic hygiene
Yep
A lot of these guys don't even know how to do laundry because it's woman's work
And you better believe a lot of these guys refuse to wash themselves properly because it's gay
A lot of these guys don't even know how to do laundry because it's woman's work
This was me, not because I was worried about doing women’s work, but because my mom was so insistent on doing certain things for me that I stopped trying to learn until I moved out for the first time. It’s embarrassing to be a grown man and not know how to do laundry because of some random sexist bullshit you were submitted to. I thought for a long time that I was just ungrateful for my mom doing my laundry for me. But now I’m a parent and no, I was fully justified in being pissed. I had genuine interest in learning to clean and in being clean and my parents refused to teach me. That’s bullshit, especially when it was sexist on top of it.
have you considered some of them are just lazy and/or don't give a fuck about what others think about them?
Also to be fair theres at least some who have executive functioning issues (me) but thats not the majority of guys at these things lol.
As a fellow autistic I understand but also my tism compels me to be clean because I have sensory issues otherwise, I hate hate hate being dirty/having cluttered space/etc
idc of it's bad for my skin a warm shower is my one respite at the start of every monotonous shitty day
I have to take a hot shower every day or I feel greasy
And not in a fun way
that too. and my hair always starts smelling really bad at the end of the day, not that anybody is sniffing my hair or anything but the smell of hair is gross to me
Same. Unless I'm camping, I have to shower every night before bed or I feel gross and greasy. I don't get how people go weeks without it.
it might work if the hoses were drawing from a tank of pure chlorhexidine but that has safety issues
just so thoroughly true and highly cross-cultural
Dudes smell bad. Young dudes who are just going through puberty typically don't realize how bad they smell, because they didn't smell this bad until they started growing hair and whatnot. Only children and other kids cut off from older mentors or other wiser peers often don't realize how/why they're so off-putting. And when you combine smell with a host of other physical/social/intellectual hang-ups common to teenagers, its easy to see how "You smell bad" gets lost amid the crowd of other generic insults that get flung around.
Hygiene can't be a one-day thing, you have to keep those clothes from getting smelly for as long as you own them. Barring actually forcing people to take a supervised shower to ensure they soap their ass, put on deodorant & issuing them a clean set of clothing on entry this will always be a problem.
Its a bigger thing for men (especially hairy men) entirely because of physiology. And when you spend a lot of time around other men who also smell bad, you go a bit nose-blind.
Depending on the culture of the group you're in, this can be self-correcting or self-reinforcing. Teenagers with older brothers/sisters will often get the talk about why young dudes are gross much sooner. Kids with younger parents / younger aunts or uncles or cousins / big extended families often get clued in sooner, too.
But - historically speaking - these aren't the kids that gravitate towards CCGs as a means of peer-bonding, because they're chasing their older peers' hobbies rather than clinging to games made for the
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demographic
Events like this typically have refs and other staff in the room during games, so I think this might be solved if they were given the authority to eject people for stinking too much. Would take a while to be normalized and would probably see a lot of opposition initially. Would work well if official word on this came from Bandai/WotC but I can't imagine they give a shit.
The thing is they don't necessarily smell noticeably rank unless you sniff right up near the actual parts of them that are stinky. Instead their odour slowly percolates and builds up through the entire event space, like a durian. And it's usually multiple peoples' odour all working together.
For Yu-Gi-Oh they actually do have the authority to give stinky people a loss and demand they leave and only come back if showered and in clean clothes.
It's not an explicit rule for MtG though.
I'm also not sure if the rule is global or just NA only. But I'd think it'd apply everywhere.Duelists are expected to be showered and appropriately groomed when they enter a tournament. Neglecting to wash or put on clean clothes contributes to an unpleasant atmosphere at the event, as the tournament can be crowded, and the day can be long.
Duelists who neglect self-care to the point that they are negatively impacting the tournament may be asked to correct the issue in order to continue in the event.
All entrees must enter a designated showering zone within the venue. Like one of those decontamination booths at highly sterile locations
Since the current Yugioh meta is winning on your first turn, I have to respect the new meta of being so stinky your opponent forfeits before the game even starts
The few times I went to a card shop for magic events, the venue started smelling half-way through. Some of these were even casual af events.
Hell my roommate works at one of these shops and despite being pretty clean in almost every other aspect, this man never washes his hands. I've been living with him for over a year and not once have I ever seen him wash his hands in the kitchen sink, and I have never once heard his sink run after he uses the bathroom. I dread having to touch anything he frequently uses like the TV remote or his ps5 controller. I don't get why this needs to be the one stereotype people keep up.
this man never washes his hands
There's a frighteningly large number of people like that, most of them are men, and their numbers have actually gone up since the pandemic began.
Local man says he keeps his immune system strong by eating his own poop. More at 11
The few times I went to a card shop for magic events, the venue started smelling half-way through. Some of these were even casual af events.
The problem with a lot of these things is that the venues are unsuitable for them.
If you put a lot of bodies in a room without ventilation and aircon for any length of time people heat up the space and smells start to get bad. Throw into that some of these people are stressed about their matches too.
Yes some people have bad hygiene but if you put 20 dudes in a card shop without aircon and ventilation it is ALWAYS going to smell.
Smash tournaments have essentially the same problem but it's worse because playing is actually strenuous.
Oh definitely. A lot of these places are furnished like those 'temporary' american school bungalows so they retain a lot of the body heat from attendees.
no men in this godforsaken imperialism exporter country have any personal hygiene, i have friends that work at a gas station and they say none of the cis-het-male customers or employees even mention when the soap dispenser is broken in the mens room. no one washes their ass either, because its too gay or something. even as someone who does try to wash their ass with every usage, you can't really do it in public venues in america because nowhere has bidets and the sinks are in open view outside the stalls.
add to that the greasy snacks and caffeinated sodas at these kinds of events, with no one of course washing their face or hands, and its not a hygienic environment. and this is all just when alcohol isn't involved.
I was trying to look for one of the recent gamer branded colognes released during the games showcase, but I just learned that a legitimate fragrance company has a fragrance named Gamer lol
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I remember back when I lived in the dorms for college and some of the horrific shit I saw and smelled is ungodly. I went to one of those "gamer" colleges and I had a pair of friends that I hated going into their room because it stank of feet, cum, and BO and it only got worse over the year. Then when I moved room the toilet was black with filth and I ended up spending >3 hours scrubbing it until me and my new roommate were comfortable even going near it, he was stuck cleaning other parts of the room in trade for me doing the toilet. I have no issue living cluttered and not living in an immaculate space, but I mean, have standards.
"gamer" colleges
Imagining the Harvard emblem but instead of "Veritas" it spells out the Gamer slur.
Then when I moved room the toilet was black with filth and I ended up spending >3 hours scrubbing it until me and my new roommate were comfortable even going near it, he was stuck cleaning other parts of the room in trade for me doing the toilet.
Thanks for reminding me I had (have, but we are basically polar opposites and thus only really interact during the rare times when our entire mutual friend group specifically hangs out) a friend who was 24, in a top 10 law school, and shared a 2br/2ba apartment with another friend. This man was the most disgusting person I've ever met and I am self-aware enough to admit that I am a pretty messy person (in the 'sometimes has piles of clothes on my floor' sense). But this was post-college levels of filth I've still yet to see topped.
Our entire friend group would hang out at their apartment pretty often and would tell new people "hey, don't use X's bathroom its traumatizing" because it was quite literally also black with filth & mold. To make matters worse though, the dude would use the SAME ceramic coffee mug daily but also leave it out with coffee in it - never once cleaned it. He'd at best dump it out and run it under the tap for a second, but was adamant that the heat of the new coffee would sterilize any bacteria/mold. Was generally the same way with dishes - to the point where his roommate (whose girlfriend is one of my very close friends) literally bought an entire separate set of dishes/utensils/cookware because anytime his girlfriend was over and they wanted to cook, there'd be nothing remotely clean.
Well - one day I went over to hang out and he wasn't at the apartment. "Go look in his bathroom, you'll see something really funny" His roommate's girlfriend tells me.
Behold.
ShowThat was the completed result after he'd spent like 2 hours cleaning the toilet with one of the brand new toilet brushes he'd bought a 2-pack of. Note how low the water level is in the toilet. Apparently he'd literally clogged it with accumulated filth in the bowl (it was historically never that clean as shown in the video and looked more like the entire inside of the toilet bowl had succumbed to rust as you can see by the dark upper crust around the bowl lmao) and when he called the apartment complex's maintenance out to take a look - the maintenance guy was apparently so disgusted that he (rightfully) demanded that since it was still somewhat able to flush it be cleaned before he did any work on it, which prompted him to go out and purchase the first toilet brush he had ever presumably used.
Anyways he's a lawyer now at a pretty notable firm in DC (with a girlfriend who presumably does all the housework...) and makes like 5x as much money I do in a single year
Note on toilet water, most other countries have substantially lower amounts of toilet water in their bowls. This looks like a normal amount of water to me. You can tell where the water is supposed to be by the scunge layer line.
I remember in college the programming floor of the dorm had a meeting about once a year. They'd bring in the most crass coding professors to tell everyone how to wash their balls (not just that they should, but like a tutorial). I think the shocking and embarrassing nature of the whole thing actually helped the young nerds stay cleaner, nobody wanted to be the person that made everyone go through that talk again
Smegma Male is a new Guy Type that just dropped. They are vastly more powerful than Ligma Males.
I still remember in the bus I was next to a guy that literally smelled like he didn't wipe or wash his asscrack as it reeked of feces and I had to get off the bus much earlier than my usual stop. Is there some like unspoken rule that some dudes don't wash their ass? Because that is not what I was taught as a kid with respect to basic hygiene.
There literally is yes. They're in the minority as far as I'm aware but it is a thing some people just don't wash their assholes (men or women, definitely more common with men though). I try to give people the benefit of the doubt maybe they just never learned and have never been called out, maybe they suffer from depression, there can be all kinds of things, but definitely a subset know and don't care
You've never seen the "washing your ass makes you gay" type of guy!
Wait that's actually a thing? Dear god we really need some re-education centres for TCGers.
Not even just among g*mers and nerds, it is a common toxic masculine thing. Used to see askreddit threads and relationshipadvice posts and stuff all "my(27f) husband(46m) of 10 years has never washed his ass and I'm finally sick of his dingleberries getting in the bed all the time. What can I do? I tried telling him to wash his ass, but he said he 'won't let me turn him into a force feminised soy gay male' in response."
. Holy fucking shit, ujodhfsuidlgh lisdugh I can't.Hey at least I know why I am trans, I was turned into a "force feminised soy gay male" by washing my ass.
That is honestly sad and worrying (excluding people that could suffer from depression or others that impede them from cleaning themselves). The fact that basic hygiene is somehow considered "gay" or not washing is "masculine".
They ran out of Dude Wipes and couldn’t wipe for the month because it’s gay
i can't remember the context but i once saw a reddit post with a picture of a guy with white jeans and white underwear (partly showing), and the top comment was something like 'wow, imagine having this much confidence in your wiping skills'
Is there some like unspoken rule that some dudes don't wash their ass
This is embarrassing but I didn't wipe until I was in my twenties and saw a reddit post of girlfriends complaining about how none of their boyfriends wiped and how they all had underwear streaks and other hygiene issues. I've kept my butthole clean for over ten years now but I have no doubt that that's still a thing, and that there's some kind of machismo "being clean is for betas and females" thing that causes it.
I went to see a premier of an episode of pure pwnage many many years ago in London. That room also fucking stank.
I went to an anime con a while back. Most people were basically clean and normal. But I sat next to a guy at a panel who just really fuckin stank. Like full on cheesy funky loud smell. I had to leave the entire panel room, it wasn't worth it.
One nasty mfer really can ruin it for dozens of normal people
Is it true that many guys only wash their bedding a 3 times a year?
LMAO 3 times a year? IDK, that kinda sounds like a lot.
Almost half of single men said they don't wash their bed sheets for up to four months
Alright, seems so.
Dr Browning says your bedroom should be a "sanctuary" for sleep, and "a wonderful, pleasant place where we feel happy".
I take serious exception to this concept. Most people can't afford to have a room set aside as some sort of sleep fantasy world. There is a global housing crisis going on. Rooms are multi purpose. People live in bedrooms, sleep in living rooms.
I don't see the problem with saying that a bedroom should be a sanctuary for sleep which makes it's occupant feel wonderful and happy.
Just like I think everyone should be able to eat enough food to feel happy and satisfied, even if there is a global food distribution crisis going on.
Sometimes i will go a month without washing my sheets. I have extra sets so i can immediately put on fresh sheets, but it's such a shitty and time consuming chore and I hate it. Laundry is the worst chore, but you reach a point where you have to clean your clothes because you have no clean underwear. Bedding is easier to convince yourself you dont really need to do.
Roughly, I suppose. Between a somewhat dirty job and a hobby of running, I do a lot of laundry as it is. Factor in me being the cook of the house and as politically involved as I can, some stuff is neglected. I'd say 4-5 times a year in my case, though.
I think I once went over a year
Now I typically do it every week, sometimes I’ll put it off for 2 weeks.
I'll admit that's me when I'm depressed. It's one of the easiest things to let go, and I'm the only one who sees my room anyway.
Many years ago I was a YuGiOh player, a mix of someone who likes to collect cards + play a few matches against friends and all, never a sweaty (no pun inteded) tryhard who plays only meta decks, I'm a romantic who plays Red-Eyes B. Dragon decks as if it was 2006.
So I went to a card shop with two friends that I've never been in to trade some cards and maybe get a game in. The shop was small, it had no windows apart from the main entrance. Only a fan was there to move air around. Then it began to fill with people, and the odor was insufferable. I just couldn't stand it, the air was dense, the odor was intense, it all smelled like fart and people who did NOT clean themselves. It was suffocating for real, I had to leave. Me and my two friends were probably the only people in that place who took a bath, christ. Never again I set foot inside a card shop.
Every time I look at my folder filled with cards I remember that foul stench.
now.
