That’s a great question.
I’ve definitely had ‘stinky’ responses (people acting like something smells bad, even whispering under their breaths or mentioning it audibly to friends), but not so much with my own product. I usually try to limit conversions with natural oils that have anti-microbial effects.
I never did like the ‘ewwww’ response, but some people are willing to accept that if it means getting positive results in other contexts.
Also, many of my mixes, like A314, were mostly tested by a bunch of office workers who had no previous experience with pheromones. No doubt this changed the developmental leanings of my formulas.
BO is not appropriate in an office, but the office is really a GREAT testing ground. You are FORCED into social situations. You don’t have to depend on the ‘game’ or suaveness or reliability of the tester. As long as they show up for work, you’ll see results - period.
I’ve found that when I’ve used people who test for sexual results, their idea of testing is sitting on a bench on the mall, or walking around a store, or going to a bar and not doing much. They won’t initiate, so the failure s really theirs, not the product, because men always have the idea in their heads that it’s up to them to approach, not to be approached.
Some testers will lie and not approach, but when you use office people as testers, again, they’re forced to interact. You know they approached, and were approached. You know they lunched with actual human beings, you know they were in close proximity with real people. Less fudging.
I mention that because it’s actually important to how products turn out.
Now, there’s a high -none product out there that, in particular, is very smelly in a mostly negative way… to almost everyone. We’ve talked about it before. The smell alone makes it completely inappropriate for the office - you’d be sent home or fired for wearing a real spray of it.
It’s well known to produce the most obvious reactions, not just negatives but positive. It’s probably also the biggest product for producing “DIHLs”.
I think reactions become stronger and more POLAR when the synthetic pheromonal odor is obvious.
Also, people may not consciously enjoy bodily odor, but subconsciously, they could very well being getting off on it.
Most people (except fetishists) claim not to like foot odor, for instance, yet there’s a love affair wth cheese in many countries. Pizza is the only category of food not listed under ‘restaurants’, it has it’s own category. That’s how popular it is. 8 slices, 8 feet. Everyone wants a slice of foot.
Some of the accent cheese REALLY smell overltly of feet. Parmesan and romano are the big two. Asiago, feta (FEET ah), are found on the ‘fancier’ pizzas. The bigger you wallet and the more ‘sophisticated’ your tastes, the more foot you get.
There’s a big difference between what people respond to and what they’ll admit it.
That’s why I like to observe actual behavior. It speaks volumes, and it speaks far more honestly than words, which people fudge in order to make themselves ‘look good’ or at least ‘acceptable’.
When I’ve gone through periods of camping or whatever in my life, when I went without a shower… and my own bodily odor bothered me… I had mostly positive effects from others AFTER about the 4 day mark.
I haven’t done of that lately, but let me try to remember how my own BO works. First day, very little postives or negatives. Second day without showering, I’ll usually smell a bit, and not get many positives either. Sometimes I will. It’s a draw.
Third day, especially if I’m not changing clothes, my smell will get more repulsive, and it won’t have a positive effect on all people. On some it will…
A day or a few days after that, though, and something changes…
… results are less polar, and more positive…
No doubt the bacteria on my skin stop raging war (a daily shower with soap is really a daily attack, somewhat akin to taking antibiotics), and form a balanced culture… then, without warning, it seems like I have almost “social magic”.
People really like me, some lust after me, to what seems like an ovious and inordinate degree. My self perception of odor is generally pretty bad, and I try to avoid contact as much as possible. Few people seem as repulsed by, especially considering how much I view myself as being repulsed.
Honestly, the positive effects tend to make me jealous of grubs, especially
grubs who are comfortable with their BO, and can therefore make positive use of it. I’m not, so I don’t take advantage of it.
The fact that I could be bothered by own smell, when other people obviously aren’t (otherwise they wouldn’t be violating “my space”) really confuses me on this issue.
Then again, I’m trained, as good American, to detest body odor, especially my own. Obviously, I swallowed this pill whole, early on. I bought into some serious propaganda, moreso than even very clean, anal-retentive, precision driven Germans (who nonetheless say that American smell unnatural, like a barber shop) or the admittedly more ‘stinky’ (and even more socially successful) French.
Our bacterial flora, though, can certainly make for some super finessed, super INDIVIDUALIZED pheromone mixes that we’ve yet to see in a bottle yet.
Even if we could bottle those exact pheromones, and proportions thereof, I’m not sure it’d do much good… since they’d then have to mix into a new wearer’s own pre-existant pheromonal colors (example: the wearer is blue, the pheromones are yellow, so you’ll get green), and they’ll eventually be digested, reprocessed and effectively reformatted by the wearers own flora.
In summary to my tome: No doubt you’ll get positive results from a smelly synthetic pheromonal mix (as well as negative). I do think some super smellers must get charged up emotionally, even if they are disgusted conscously by an odor. But are there smelly mixes out there that can compare to someone who’s almost professional “unclean”, someone who’s out of the loop of modern, soap and antibacterial based hygiene? I don’t think so. Not yet.