Dating can be the pits sometimes, but a venue in London took that statement literally Wednesday night when they hosted what is thought to be the world’s first underarm-sniffing speed dating event.
“Romancing the Armpit” invited participants to rate fellow attendees solely by the smell of their oxters.
“The Nose Knows” claim creators of the night in central London, describing it as a “small-scale revolt against a highly-deodorized world and online dating.”
Attendees donned paper bags over their head for the blind smell test and each participant used a card to rank the rankness of the candidates.
Apparently, there’s a bit of science behind this madness.
The molecules that influence body odor also influence sexual preference, with people tending to be more attracted to a completely opposite composition of molecules.
“There was a lot of smelly people. Only one person I liked the smell of and I’ve just seen him and I don’t think he’s attractive,” according to one lady, proving the blind test fails to overcome how picky and shallow some single people can be.
Different tactics were used by those involved, with some choosing to groom their underarms while others remained unwashed so as to ensure their true essence emerged on the night.
“This is dating chaos in the best way,” claims Sam Bompas, one of the organizers of the event which sold out in two hours due to the “huge demand for sniffing strangers’ pits.”
His firm Bompas & Parr specialize in “flavor-based experience design.”
The team was also responsible for Anatomical Whiskey Tasting, in which the spirit was served in the contour of a participant’s body, and sent coffee floating into the stratosphere attached to a weather balloon before bringing it back and brewing it as Earth’s first Space Coffee.
Time will tell whether the armpit sniffing will lead to any armpit babies, but we can only hope.
It may have just been a playground for those with an interest in armpit fetishes, known as maschalagnia, who we’ve all seen in London before.