As one man began to use deodorant prior to an online work meeting, he began to ask himself a few questions. Given that it is not yet possible to smell someone through a video call, is this perhaps, very very stupid? Is this just paranoia? Also, is this a silly thing to be paranoid about?
A generally held notion for online work meetings is that one must always be considered presentable. However, that is still limited to what one chooses to display to their peers. As it stands, we have five basic senses. Six, if we consider talking to the dead. The five agreed-upon senses are sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Of these, only two can be properly exhibited via the internet. We can see and we can hear.
Now and then Google will use April Fool’s Day as an opportunity to lie to us about a new feature where you can smell scents through your screen. Perhaps this is from where this man’s fear originated. He probably holds this memory in the back of his mind whenever he turns on his laptop, constantly wondering if the people on his screen know more than what he is showing them.
So before the meeting commenced, he decided that though it would be completely unlikely, he was going to empty a whole can on himself to make sure his peers do not sense his rotten stench.
“I do not know how but I feel if I didn’t, then they would somehow find out,” he later said. “I know it’s impossible for them to smell me through a video call. But what if today is the day it somehow becomes possible and I just missed all the announcements.”
There is no good in hiding a secret. Even if it is one that no one even cares to learn. Their lives don’t change if they find out he smells like a sweat bead’s sweat. But once they know, their opinions of him may change forever. He would go from “our coworker Bill who is all right” to “our smelly coworker Bill who is all right but kind of stinks”.
The Ipe Collection 