'Smell Dating' Lets You Pick a Partner Based on Their Scent

If you find dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid to be a little impersonal, you might consider shoving your nose into a potential partner's dirty clothing before a first date. A new service called Smell Dating has arrived to prove that there's no shortage of angles when it comes to matchmaking services (clown dating, anyone?). It strips away all the pesky details (like appearance, job, mutual interests, etc.) and lets simple biology do the work.

To get started, a person looking for love needs to wear a shirt for three days without deodorant. Then, you mail the shirt to the company, where it's cut up into fabric swatches and sent out to potential matches. In return, the sender gets a collection of their own and lets the service know which smells are most appealing to their personal scent palette. If there's a match, the site will provide contact information to both parties and voila! Love at first smell. 

The quirky approach to dating is based off osmology: the science of smell. Humans give off pheromones, or chemical messages, and are subconsciously geared to pick mates based on scent. 

As the team behind Smell Dating explains on its website: 

At Smell Dating we understand the metrics of compatibility are chemical; connection is a matter of intercourse not interface. The Internet has replaced fleshy experience with flat apparitions, avatars and painstakingly curated profile pics. Smell Dating closes digital distance by restoring your molecular intuition. Our members make connections via deeply intuitive cues, perfected in the ancient laboratory of human evolution. Surrender yourself to a poignant experience of body odor.

Smell Dating is part of the publishing collective Useless Press. The ongoing series churns out one unique project a month. Previous endeavors include PCKWCK, a novel written in real time, and the Data Drive, a Facebook timeline from an alternate universe in which Mark Zuckerberg is on the run. 

Banner image via iStock.

[h/t Laughing Squid]