At Jason “RustyTrombone” Husisian’s first Super Smash Bros. tournament at a hotel in Easton, Pennsylvania, he was focused on out-manoeuvring his opponent when a nearby attendee’s smell filled his nostrils. “I get a whiff and I legit start coughing,” Husisian recalled. “It smelled like he worked in a crematorium.”
Wario in Smash 4 using his farting move.Image: Nintendo Everything
His voice getting louder, Husisian continued: “This was hosted at a hotel. How on Earth do they provide showers for people — free soap, free toothpaste — and people don’t shower! Have you gone outside? Have you met somebody?”. The next day, Husisian said, the same people still reeked.
Smash event attendees have been trashing each other about tournament stench for years. In 2008, a California tournament organiser put a rule into effect that, if players aren’t keep up with their hygiene, he has the right to disqualify them.
In 2015, a Tallahassee Smash event coordinator feared losing their biweekly tournament slot after locals apparently labelled it “stinky day.” Smash games can get intense, tickling players’ sweat glands, and that odor can become particularly pronounced around games for which opponents sit next to each other. Unfortunately, compounding upon that, it looks like some Smash event attendees don’t take precautionary measures.
It’s become such a big topic that community figureheads have felt the need to speak out:
for smash bros melee evo finals they should just have a judge smell the top players to see who actually took a shower and wore deodorant
— deuce papi (@lildom911) February 7, 2018
Damn, this anime con/smash tournament is in desperate need of a deodorant sponsor haha *__*
— leffen (@TSM_Leffen) July 10, 2015
Going to be writing a summer of smash mini guide for all of you that are interested in traveling #deodorant
— CLG Tafo (@tafokints) May 6, 2015
IT’S #Evo2017 WEEK!
PLEASE PACK / PRACTICE:
+ DEODORANT
+ DAILY SHOWER IN THE MORNING WITH SOAP AND SHAMPOO
+ repeat at night, plz
???????????? pic.twitter.com/ElFkZWwGSQ— Bear (@BearUNLV) July 10, 2017
Since the mid-2000s, Smash.gg’s tournament organiser Bassem “Bear” Dahdouh hasn’t seen a month go by without somebody complaining about body odor at a local, regional or major Smash tournament. It’s not that a majority of Smash event attendees smell, he told me over email. (He estimates that it’s only five per cent of attendees at any given competition.) In fact, almost everyone I talked to said the stereotype is overblown.
It’s that the players who stink tend to really stink, and worse, not enough attendees have the guts to let them know.
“I’ve told people face to face their BO is getting to me when I make the rounds around [tournament] Pools,” Dahdough explained. “If someone’s smell is so distracting to the point where others are complaining, I’ll gladly speak to that person to help remedy it.” At last year’s EVO tournament, Dahdouh reminded attendees to pack deodorant and shower daily with soap and shampoo.
But showering and using deodorant doesn’t always cut it; the body and its clothes both need to be clean to ward off the stench. Yesterday, Smash player and event organiser Richard “Keitaro” King gave Smash tournament attendees some free advice: “You can shower, but if your clothes smell like garbage, you smell like garbage. Wash your clothes before you wear them 5 times in a row.”
For players wearing jerseys — especially ones provided by sponsors of teams — fresh clothing options may be limited. Still, King punctuated his tweet with emojis of praying hands, ocean waves and a red “SOS.” Smash ‘N’ Splash tournament helper Thomas “Pooch” Puccio said that, since his upcoming Smash event takes place at a water park with plenty of showers, he’s hoping attendees won’t re-experience the “brutal instances of olfactory offences” he’s lived through.
The stereotype could come from Smash‘s grassroots background as a game played in basements and low-cost venues with poor ventilation, said Smash event organiser Pidge. Her old local venue was a repurposed karate studio, which had no air conditioning, small windows and poor ventilation on top of already smelling like sweat. Now that the Smash community has expanded, she said, organisers have been able to find venues better suited to hundreds of people playing a stressful, sweaty matches.
She’s also seen tournament organisers hand out deodorant.
Pidge added that, while tournament stench is sometimes an issue, what’s really obnoxious is how incessantly Smash players tweet about it. “Like, ‘OK, we get it. You want everyone to be reminded constantly that the smell isn’t you. Relax.‘”
Comments
19 responses to “Smash Players Plead With Each Other To Please, For The Love Of God, Stop Smelling So Bad”
Gamers in general need to learn how basic hygiene works; too often at evens it smells like sweaty ballsacks/taco flaps, teeth that haven’t been brushed in a week and bodies that haven’t felt the touch of a shower in months.
I can’t agree enough with this post. How people wear the same clothes more than once without washing is beyond me, unless it is a weekend and they are pajamas (that really is a weird sounding word) and I’ll also make an exception for jeans for not more than 2 days.
Keeping a weeks worth of unwashed clothes stashed in a basket with damp towels. Letting unwashed or rinsed dishes pile up to the point of mold developing. Not washing bedding or airing out a room from time to time.
The worst part is that it is almost all exclusively caused by laziness, and that taking 10 minutes every 2 days away from your computer to perform basic hygiene would make the world of difference.
My clothes smell better the second time I wear them.
For me jeans last a month and chinos last 1-2 weeks and im a freak who showers twice a day.
Everything else gets worn once.
TIL I’m a freak 🙁
I think the whole washing clothes thing depends a bit on weather, season, how long you wore them and what you did in them. For example, if you had a shower and put on a change of clothes to go to the air-conditioned shop to buy a loaf of bread then immediately came home and changed back into your PJs then why wouldn’t you wear that change of clothes again?
If it’s like an hours wear and you were clean when you put them on and you didn’t sweat like a pig or spill crap on them they’re still going to be clean. On the other hand, if it’s midsummer and you went jogging then, yeah you need to wash those nasty clothes.
Damp clothes/towels are a pain. I had to throw some brand new clothes out because I did a load of washing that somehow got forgotten and left in the machine for a week. They were rank and no matter how much they were washed afterwards the mold smell (and discoloration) just wouldn’t come out.
Jeans can be worn for a long time. If they get dirty, spot clean them, occasionally hang them on the line to air them out. If they smell, you are doing something wrong.
-CEO of Levi’s jeans
Although hygiene practises reduce body odour it is usually caused by genetics and diet.
Some Asian people’s such as Koreans and Chinese have fewer apocrine sweat glands which reduce their odour, where as people from warmer climates have more. So although washing will rid it they will regain their odour more rapidly, especially in hot humid conditions such as a packed areas.
Be careful not to over wash though as riding to much of your bodies natural oils can lead to things like dermatitis and other skin conditions.
Is this a new thing? I remember going to the QGL lans back in the day with literally hundreds of gamers stacked in a hall hunched over their PCs gaming all day (sometimes two days). I don’t recall ever bumping into anyone who smells the way these people are being described. Even on the LANs where people slept at the venue and weren’t able to shower.
Are the tournaments week long or something? Held in venues with no aircon? Serving parmesan, garlic and beans as the sole foods?
Nahhh just a lack of fucks that runs in the gaming community these days.
So the shelf stackers at coles must be smash players.
Ah, man… I work nightfill at woolies, and some of coworkers ughhh..
Some of them do a full 8 hour day at another joint then come to the supermarket and start doing physical work with no showering in between…
I’ve done a few dirty gaming marathons in my day, but in the smelly comfort of my own house bound juices.
When it was time to go outside then it’s homeless makeover montage time.
This article stinks.
I thought part of it was tactical stank to distract the opponent?…
These grots are really helping the stereotype of gamers who don’t shower and stink up their mum’s basement.
Man-children.
Sounds like any type of fan-types in general. One of the conventions I was part of when I lived in Texas had as part of their shtick homemade soap that went into con-bags as a friendly reminder for attendees to shower at conventions Personally, I don’t really understand how people can not take care of their hygiene of all types.
I think the worst was when I was hanging out with a girl I had a sorta thing going with, and I had to hold my breath every time she spoke near me. Ye gods… Death breath is a real thing.
I’ve read somewhere that there is a mutation where people literally cannot actually smell their BO. Sounds like these people are also attracted to Smash.
But if I was one of those people, I would shower twice a day to be safe.
I don’t understand why people wont shower or wash their clothes? like, don’t they feel gross? Can’t they smell themselves? It’s baffling…