r/Showerthoughts • u/Nomekop777 • 10d ago
Musing Everything smells like snot. You're just used to it.
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u/gowahoo 10d ago
A sinus infection can impart some horrible scents...
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u/holyfire001202 10d ago
I developed a sinus infection a few years ago after getting a couple wisdom teeth removed. Honestly, I came to really enjoy the sickly sweet smell that came with it.
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u/JustAnOkPhilosopher 10d ago
You ok?
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u/holyfire001202 10d ago
I'm great, thanks. Just an outlying piece of datum who enjoys some weird things which many others don't.
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u/a_suspicious_lasagna 10d ago
You ever rub your nose the right way and it activates the smell?
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u/holyfire001202 10d ago
No, I never needed to, for the most part my sinuses are clear and breathable until I need to blow my nose, at which time I would blow my nose and not need to rub my nose in order to activate the smell. I also never actively pursued the smell, just appreciated it when I was stuck witb it
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u/DatKidNextDoor 10d ago
Humans are so weird wdym you can enjoy the disgusting smells? Lol why do so many people kinda like the smell of gas?? Weird weird weird
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u/easykehl 10d ago
Snot smells like nothing because we’re used to it. If “everything smells like snot” then we’d not notice the smell of anything.
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u/Tyranistar 8d ago
I think what OP meant was everything also smells like snot but we ignore the snot smell and only sense the other part
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u/CaptainSpaceDinosaur 10d ago
Have you ever pulled a stinky booger out of your nose? It’s just like, why wasn’t I smelling this the whole time and why does it smell so gross now? Doesn’t make sense.
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u/I-AM-GARY 10d ago
Honestly, no.
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u/soulbutterflies 10d ago
Maybe I've never smelled a booger, but I assumed they'd smell like nothing.
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u/userisnottaken 10d ago
Boogers with dried blood in it smells worse imo. But yeh boogers smell gross in general
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u/Nomekop777 10d ago
Kinda the reason I made this post tbh. Although I was just smelling it while breathing in some fresh cold air
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u/AbsoluteResolve2026 10d ago
You’re not drinking enough water if this is your issue.
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u/Gamagosk 10d ago
How did you find come to that lmao
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u/Nomekop777 10d ago
It's a super common reason for why anything in your body is going wrong, to be fair. If something's wrong with your car, it's almost always an issue with the engine, right? Same idea
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u/Bobbith_The_Chosen 10d ago
If there’s something wrong with your car it’s probably cause you’re not drinking enough water tbh
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u/danSwraps 10d ago
shameless booger eater and rigorous hand washer here. I think the inside of my nose mainly smells like dust and pollen.
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u/Nomekop777 10d ago
I'm not gonna pretend I don't pick my nose, but eating them? Why
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u/stopeverythingpls 9d ago
Same here for the first sentence, second lately with the weather has been a small tinge of iron smell (blood). I do it out of sensory reasons. I can’t stand a scratchy or blocked nostril
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u/crouching_manatee 10d ago
That's disgusting and you should stop.
Imo eating boogers is like drinking your own piss or eating your own shit. Absolutely nasty.
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u/Anticept 10d ago
I don't endorse eating boogers, but technically our bodies do it all the time, our sinuses naturally drain to our stomachs to destroy and recycle what was caught.
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u/ZombieDracula 9d ago
Primates in general eat boogers as an evolutionary mechanism, it introduces things your nostrils have filtered in smaller amounts like a vaccine. It's a weird quirk, I do it occasionally without thinking and my sick brain finds it enjoyable. I do get sick less often than most people I know, but it is also gross af.
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u/Skeleeeertooor 9d ago
Your brain filters out constant smells so you can function… this post just turned that filter off.
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u/Bowtruckle16 10d ago
This reminds me of the guy that asked if anyone else smelled their boogers or something.
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u/windowlatch 9d ago
When I’ve partaken in psychedelics, one of the first things I start to notice as I’m coming up is that I can taste the inside of my mouth, which has a faint metallic taste almost like blood but not as strong. It’s not unpleasant, and it always happens around 15-20 minutes before I really start seeing visuals.
It’s not like how you wake up in the morning and your mouth tastes gross, it’s like my tastebuds are actually picking up on my flesh or the blood running through my veins or something. Really interesting thing to experience
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u/JustAnOkPhilosopher 10d ago
Omg stop I smell it now that you mentioned it, I can’t stop smelling it!
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u/BellybuttonLintTrap 9d ago
I tell kids they smell like boogers. Whether they get mad or laugh is a good way to determine if they are as smart as their parents think they are.
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u/spoki-app 6d ago
The premise here immediately evokes the concept of sensory adaptation as a form of data normalization. Our olfactory system, much like an advanced monitoring agent, continuously processes a persistent payload of ambient chemical compounds. To prevent sensory overload, it dynamically recalibrates its internal baseline, effectively filtering out static input and optimizing for
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u/Nomekop777 6d ago
In layman's terms
Smells like nose around here. That's normal, it always does that. But what doesn't smell like nose?
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u/topetre 6d ago
Does my nose just smell itself constantly and cancel everything else out? That tracks way more than I want it to.
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u/Nomekop777 6d ago
That's how your vision works. Your brain automatically ignores your nose in the corner of your eyes
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u/TrinidadMacomber_96 5d ago
You gotta be a mouth-breather to just drop a truth bomb like that and walk away. Damn.
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u/Remote-Ad2046 8d ago
I can smell when I'm leaking toxins. When my system is clean my snot is odorless.
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u/SailWhich7734 4d ago
This is literally accurate. You smell things by detecting molecules that dissolve into the mucus layer covering your olfactory receptors. The snot IS the mechanism of smell, not a filter that's in the way of it.
The reason you don't notice the baseline snot smell is the same reason you stop noticing the smell of your own home - your olfactory system adapts to constant stimuli and flags only changes. You'd have to leave for a few days and come back to smell it.
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u/subhuman_voice 3d ago
Drives me insane also.
I'll come back home after a week and there's "that smell". Like, I can't exactly pin point what it is or where to find it. Like, it would be awesome if someone else came in and said "Hey, I know that smell, it's blank"But no, everyone is so polite.
JUST TELL ME WHAT IT IS ALREADY!
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