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EXILED! The stories from Defected Fragrantican Members

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9 months ago 12

Hello everyone! I have also decided to ditch Fragrantica and join this community, for pretty much the same reasons as described above. I have never really read the blog posts but in the recent years it has become more and more apparent that they are showcasing their political agenda at every opportunity, and that just doesn’t sit well with me. 
The last straw was the Stetson cologne post by Elena, which was a clear rage bait (I have missed the Pride post but reading comments here about it made me sad).

Anyways, I am in the process of transferring my whole collection here and once I am done, I will delete my old profile there.

9 months ago 2
Heartrelease

Hello everyone! I have also decided to ditch Fragrantica and join this community, for pretty much the same reasons as described above. I have never really read the blog posts but in the recent years it has become more and more apparent that they are showcasing their political agenda at every opportunity, and that just doesn’t sit well with me. 
The last straw was the Stetson cologne post by Elena, which was a clear rage bait (I have missed the Pride post but reading comments here about it made me sad).

Anyways, I am in the process of transferring my whole collection here and once I am done, I will delete my old profile there.

Welcome Heartrelease! What was the Stetson cologne post about? I don't want to give them any more clicks.

9 months ago 10
TommieBootje
Heartrelease

Hello everyone! I have also decided to ditch Fragrantica and join this community, for pretty much the same reasons as described above. I have never really read the blog posts but in the recent years it has become more and more apparent that they are showcasing their political agenda at every opportunity, and that just doesn’t sit well with me. 
The last straw was the Stetson cologne post by Elena, which was a clear rage bait (I have missed the Pride post but reading comments here about it made me sad).

Anyways, I am in the process of transferring my whole collection here and once I am done, I will delete my old profile there.

Welcome Heartrelease! What was the Stetson cologne post about? I don't want to give them any more clicks.

Basically, it was a post about the various Stetson cologne ads over the years with embedded YouTube links and very little information. And in the end, for some reason, she decided to post the “one of top 10 US songs on Spotify”, that has a video with racist undertones (Jason Aldean - Try That in a small town) and caused some controversy recently.

She already pulled a similar stunt shortly before where she made a post about Elon Musk’s joke perfume Burnt Hair, which could have been a satire post, had she not thanked him for liberating Twitter at the end.

This is so obvious and I got so disgusted that the site owner is pulling shit like this, so decided to pack my bags and leave.

*edit: added correct quote 

9 months ago 15

Oh gosh, I don't get it... Why they want to make everything a political statement now? Seems like fragrances are not the priority anymore, it's the owners' political agenda... Sigh 🙄 It only gets worse and worse. I would have tolerated it if all the discussion about it would be moderated properly and only respectful factual conversation without namecalling, conspiracy theories etc. would be allowed but no, they just remove all those comments they disagree with and leave all hate speech comments. That's their version of "free speech", it's just pathetic. But well, it's their site, they are "free to choose". And I'm also free to choose Parfumo.

9 months ago 10

For me, personally, it was the fact that everyone would call a perfume bad just because it didn't suit them. I also quite seriously disliked the rampant homophobia I witnessed from people. 

The childishness of giving horrible reviews on a perfume simply because it doesn't match with your views is ridiculous. I also was quite fed up with the sense of "elitism". Certainly not as bad as Basenotes but still quite annoying.

This idea that everyone has to be haughty in their reviews.

But I did quite adore the games hehe!

9 months ago 11

Hi everybody

Same here: I decided to leave Fragantica as well because of their political 'agenda' hidden in their articles. I had to ask them to remove my account because you can't remove it yourself on Fragantica, which I also find a bit strange. I also find the reviews here more kind and objective. I'm glad I found Perfumo!! Such a relief!

Have a nice day everybody!!

9 months ago 7
Lempi

Oh gosh, I don't get it... Why they want to make everything a political statement now? Seems like fragrances are not the priority anymore, it's the owners' political agenda... Sigh 🙄 It only gets worse and worse. I would have tolerated it if all the discussion about it would be moderated properly and only respectful factual conversation without namecalling, conspiracy theories etc. would be allowed but no, they just remove all those comments they disagree with and leave all hate speech comments. That's their version of "free speech", it's just pathetic. But well, it's their site, they are "free to choose". And I'm also free to choose Parfumo.

Agree, completely.  It's also rather worrying that they don't know the definition of hate speech, but have interpreted it as 'speech you hate', i.e. that those who disagree with them hate that that they speak!  The literal ignorance is rather astounding.  

9 months ago 6
Modernista
Lempi

Oh gosh, I don't get it... Why they want to make everything a political statement now? Seems like fragrances are not the priority anymore, it's the owners' political agenda... Sigh 🙄 It only gets worse and worse. I would have tolerated it if all the discussion about it would be moderated properly and only respectful factual conversation without namecalling, conspiracy theories etc. would be allowed but no, they just remove all those comments they disagree with and leave all hate speech comments. That's their version of "free speech", it's just pathetic. But well, it's their site, they are "free to choose". And I'm also free to choose Parfumo.

Agree, completely.  It's also rather worrying that they don't know the definition of hate speech, but have interpreted it as 'speech you hate', i.e. that those who disagree with them hate that that they speak!  The literal ignorance is rather astounding.  

Or maybe they just don't care about the actual definition of hate speech and prefer to make up their own. At least, that's how I interpret it.

9 months ago 11
TommieBootje
Modernista
Lempi

Oh gosh, I don't get it... Why they want to make everything a political statement now? Seems like fragrances are not the priority anymore, it's the owners' political agenda... Sigh 🙄 It only gets worse and worse. I would have tolerated it if all the discussion about it would be moderated properly and only respectful factual conversation without namecalling, conspiracy theories etc. would be allowed but no, they just remove all those comments they disagree with and leave all hate speech comments. That's their version of "free speech", it's just pathetic. But well, it's their site, they are "free to choose". And I'm also free to choose Parfumo.

Agree, completely.  It's also rather worrying that they don't know the definition of hate speech, but have interpreted it as 'speech you hate', i.e. that those who disagree with them hate that that they speak!  The literal ignorance is rather astounding.  

Or maybe they just don't care about the actual definition of hate speech and prefer to make up their own. At least, that's how I interpret it.

What struck me the most is their stubbornes. In many cases taken to laughable extremes.

Perfume hobby is what carried me through the pandemic and I mean it. I am immunocompromised.
Literally haven't seen my friends or even family past my parents for the good chunk od 2020.
The next year was little better in that aspect but still the interactions were very strict and limited.
Even with precautions, shielding and very limited human contact caught it two times.
I've partially lost my smell and recovered it mostly, but still suffer occasionally from chronic
nasal problems. There still are days when my smell just kinda shuts off. But to have a collection
of smells that could soothe, inspire, comfort, motivate and boost or even alter my mood was
a very important part of pushing through it all.

Seeing main admins of fragrantica dogwhistling antivaxx slogans on their site banner was upsetting
to say at least. A very bitter pill to swallow.

Yeah, fragrantica is near unusable, UI is undistinguishable from 2000's myspace highschool project,
feature creep and placing ads everywhere you can, people can be uncivil and rude, review bombing
- that's taken for granted, that's the internet. But staunchly defending "free speech" and giving
the permission to platform vile and blantant hate speech or dangerous lies is another thing.
It's not just washing your hands, it's a whole body opulent bath time. For the good part of my
fragrantica experience I was merely managing my collection and looking at the reviews, avoiding forums.

It's one thing to turn a blind eye to quirks and biases, everybody has them after all.

But that site is broken by design and by choice and the community sooner or later will follow
the trend (what I assume a part of defectors already noticed or felt).

And admins have chosen a vile path that I do not condone and want nothing to do with. That's it.

Also: hello parfumo community, I'm ferdynand.

9 months ago 3
Ferdynandamf Also: hello parfumo community, I'm ferdynand.

Hi @Ferdynandamf, welcome to Parfumo! ✌

 

7 months ago 11

As a Ukrainian, I had enough of their russophilia. They cater their content to the audiences that I don’t have much in common with. The quality of editorial is quite spotty too, but they do have quite a few community members who write amazing reviews. I hope all these interesting people come here and hang with us. 

7 months ago 5

@Sopelka Couldn't have said it better myself, I 100 % agree with everything you said. So glad to have you here, darling! 🤗🥰

6 months ago 5

Sadly, I find myself still checking Fragrantica more often than I'd like, simply because there are perfumes I'd like to know about that have zero reviews here. And every time I find myself popping back over there I'm like UGH because the pages take forever to load (especially if you're on mobile... it'll just break the page instead of loading). Too many ads and shit crammed onto their pages. 

I wish I never had to go back but like I said,  some perfumes just don't have any info here (yet). 

6 months ago 6
Stacia

Sadly, I find myself still checking Fragrantica more often than I'd like, simply because there are perfumes I'd like to know about that have zero reviews here. And every time I find myself popping back over there I'm like UGH because the pages take forever to load (especially if you're on mobile... it'll just break the page instead of loading). Too many ads and shit crammed onto their pages. 

I wish I never had to go back but like I said,  some perfumes just don't have any info here (yet). 

Welcome!

It's a group effort that will take time but I'm certain Parfumo will surpass Fragrantica in number of reviews.  I remember when Fragrantica had few to no reviews.  I'm moving my reviews from there to here.  If there's anything you've tried or something you own that's worth reviewing, please do!  As an added bonus, there's no balloon system to erase your reviews AND there's an option to have direct interactions with people regarding your review.  It's such a nice feature.

6 months ago 4

Yeah, I still check Fragrantica from time to time, too. Even though I have the advantage of being German so I can read Parfumo.de, which is more active than the English version. But hey, it's better to only use it to look things up every now and then than to actively contribute and go there every day!

I don't think Parfumo will have more reviews than Fragrantica anytime soon, but that's fine, there are no quality standards on Fragrantica, so some reviews are really useless. We don't need those here. We do need more quality reviews though.

If everyone who complained about this wrote a few, the site would fill up quickly. I'm not talking about this thread, but mainly the people on other social media who ask for an alternative to Fragrantica and then complain that Parfumo doesn't have enough reviews or has too many long-winded auto translated German reviews. I do think the auto-translated reviews are a problem and there should be an option to hide them, but I don't understand how people complain that there are so few reviews and not just add some.

Last edited by DogiCoco on 18.10.2023, 09:10; edited 1 time in total
6 months ago 9

I’ve added 93 reviews here so far and intend to keep adding. 

I like to think my reviews are interesting and helpful and that Fragrantica lost a lot when they lost me! 

6 months ago 3

@Stacia  I like your reviews very much!

6 months ago 5
Stacia

I’ve added 93 reviews here so far and intend to keep adding. 

I like to think my reviews are interesting and helpful and that Fragrantica lost a lot when they lost me! 

They are! I'd love to see more of your reviews on here.

6 months ago 2

Hello to every member here!.

I have read the latter posts in this thread which i find interesting for their content generally, but some answers gave me some sceptical feeling which i would like to share with all notable members of Parfumo community in public because i am tired of keeping my silence for a long time with no reason at all. Therefore i am going to tell to everyone here, everything the greek administrator and her weird clique did to me and to other ex - greek fragnatica members because well.. someone has to do it!. I used to wrote in greek Fragnatica and i had the joy to co - exist with the majority of primary members there, who were normal people in general and seemed like they were able to follow the basic rules of respect and civilised manners in a converation - unlike their greek administrator and her inner circle whose tactics and character i will present latter on . One of the primary members and unfortunatelly forgotten on purpose by the greek administrator, has a spesific place in my personal code of ethic and in the heart of some other "primary" ex - fragnatica members for many reasons. His name was Konstantinos, known as the unique and fascinating (GothiqueHeart) and as far as i know he was an active member in Parfumo site too, and he interracted with many members of Parfumo Community. This fact alone, shows the auntentic love this man felt for perfumes in general without deviding them in "poor" mainstream or "wow"niche ones, "best sellers" or "elitistic perfumes", he had real love for perfume and his open - mind perception where arrivals or opposite "sites", has no place in the perfume field. He had a kind, selfless, cultivated and generous personality and we had the pleasure and the special luck to be witnesses of his unique charisma. The greek administrator and her strange moderative team, with the help of some peculiar newbies members did everything in their power to give to this honorable person the figure of a non - existant man, like a vague shadow and they seeked to many ways to forgot him totally and transfer this twisted idea to the newers and to some old fragnatica members without shame and did really rude things to "burry" his general offer to the greek fragnatica community. This shameful actions of greek fragnatica administrator and her "favorites" speaks volume for her disrescpectful, petty and uncultivated character they have and the rude behavior they have to members who have offered unconditional so many in greek f- site and how the greek administrator paid this back to him. It is shocking how far they can go to their site to achieve their unethical aims.

She did'nt stop there of course. She tried abuse of power to the extreme level that exists in human planet and science of psychology to expell me from her forum because i dared to say my opinion freely and without be affraid of her fixarion and vengeful insticts. I spoke up on an insignificant gossip subject in wich the greek administrator and her clique made laugh about a woman customer and her husband when the couple went to a prestigius greek fragnant store in Greece to try somoe fragnances of Tom Ford brand and she witnessed the harrasment of the client at her husban and this is a serius matter. The administrator and her clique without never have met the customer in person made laugh about her and used misogynistic expressions against her and said really bad things about the couple. Those acts are not acceptable for someone especially in the position of administrator, moderator or perfume member. Also to act in an immature and uncultivated manner right?. That was the only reason I decided to spoke up because I felt annoyed and ashamed of their bad and rude manners and how the "innocent" sense of humor tranlated into their disturbed minds synonym of mocking someone complete stranger because the administrator and her marionettes were bored and they wanted to just have fun that was the administrator's statrment as an excuse for her's and hers' clique stupid act. Then the cyber buillying started against me from her clique and the administrator hershelf. When i wrote to participate to general threads for fragnance topics, i don't care for their gossip topics, or to help some members to their seek to find the fragnance they searched, the clique was behind me and canceled my effort to help other members and that put me in umcomfortable position a few times. Even when i shared a song, or simply to interact with other members to tell them "good morning" or even when i picked a song they were straight behind me harrasing me and attacking to me all the time!. It was annoyng and suffering feeling i am telling you!.

To make it even worse this circus didn't stop there. She even cried for help and turned to "mighty" Zoran who terrified me and he even said through her in his very own words that "if I don't close my mouth (!) he will make me dissapear from their greek site !". "You are shocked right" ?!.. Well, it seems like I was in complete and utter shock as you are now while reading these words and as I am now I'm writting this essay and as I am now i am recalling the totally negative experience i had when i received his bland, rude and threatening e -mails and as I am now i am bringing again on surface the negative feeling i felt back then when those people and her "army" were contantly threatening, harassing, cyber - bullying me in their terroristic space. She and Zoran also put some redicilus restrictions on my account in order to make me unable to answer to other members who seeked for some fragnances and i wanted to help them to their prompt to find it and i could'nt and worse i couldn't defend my self to their's and theirs' "army" attacks, public defamation against my reputation, orchestred intrigues, fabricated lies, rude comments and misogynistic bublic statemenst against my feminine side and personality. This action was beyond unfair, low and coward and I have a lot more to say about their sick, toxic, problematic envroment, shady tactics and disturbed personalities they share but I prefer to tranfer the facts directly to Administrator and Moderative team of Parfumo in order to preserve the safety and unity of Parfumo from invaders and toxic suspicious strangers that exist among us in Parfumo(!).

I decided to speak up and to write publicly my very personal, survival story to the community of Parfumo because it is our right to speak freely and without any tittle feeling of fear of no one whoever he/she is or how much power he/she has on his hands or how many money he/she has in his/her bank account, it does not matter at all!. We all have to behave to each other with respect, civilised manners, politeness and dignity and to sentence, not tolerate serius social matters like cyber - bullying, abuse of power and extortion whereever and whenever we confront those bully, uncivilised, bland and coward bevaviors in our lives. Those facts show crystal and in great spectrum the real colours of Zoran and that greek woman administator share and everyone else who is alike. I strongly believe they have no place in the perfume field. I don't care for them, i do not have any desire to reach for their abormal asylum they live in Fragnatica and i don't have or want any relation with them at all. Give time to Parfumo to blossom. Don't be hasty and small problem that occur from time to time will be solved from the experienced Parfumo Moderative team. The enviroment here is cool, kind, friendy, democratic, non - racistic and everyone with every ethnicity, every sex orientation, every religion believes, every social class from every corner of Universe come from is welcomed here with no exception. Everyone is sick of superficial, "phony", bully characters with totally unnecessary exhibitionism and people who boast for no reason. Now more and more than ever, people seek for something real and original essential that brings us unexampled feelings. Is it Fragnatica the right place to be part in ?! .. i strongly boubt it.

This message was long - winded answer but there was a reason i prefered this form of writting the message.

P.S: The only thing that matters to me is that the greek woman adminstrator and Zoran dared to do the unacceptable, disrespectful, heartless action against me.. They dared to delete one very special fragnrant review which had and always will have a very very special place in my heart, mind, soul, personality and in my entire life as a whole. This review I dedicated to my dad's memory who i adore endlessly for an eternity and i am thiking of him every second of every day and i have this undesired feeling of missing him until the day i meet my dad again and we will be unseperated!. They dared to do this that's say's all.

Last edited by ExUser on 02.11.2023, 16:57; edited 4 times in total
6 months ago 2

@Nidodelia I am really sorry that happened to you.  Tjere is bo excuse for bullying.  That site has the worst priorities.  

6 months ago 4

@KathrynA66 thank you for your thoughtful answer. It was displeasing experience in general. Mostly I feel bad for the notable member who did generous actions for their forum and they behaved so ungratefully and petty to his memory and to all primary members of their forum also. I don't care for them, i feel free at last to speak freely and I am really tired of their racist, snobbish and superficial image. Never before in my life i have experienced an insanity at an extreme level like their's honestly. That is not a place for me or for anyone else to be there and no one should tolerate or even worse support their bullying, manipulative bad manners. We who are mentally stable and have strong mind and nice heart have no relation with them there.

Parfumo is nothing but a cool, democratic and open - minded community which is dedicated only to perfumes. It is by far functional with really cool features and a hard - working with a strong work ethic, respectful expert team and pleasant members from all around the world. I feel happy to be here with all of you fine people and to explore Parfumo!.

My warmest regards to you all from Greece!.

Ioanna.

💗

6 months ago 5

@Nidodelia I'm terribly sorry to hear that such awful things have happened there. At the same time, sadly, I must admit that I'm not surprised. Similar bullying, deletion, favouring etc. happen at English Fragrantica all the time, too, unfortunately. Seems that bullying is very common all over Fragrantica, and I have been bullied too. The moderators either don't listen or they take the bullies' side. I have made so many lovely friendships at Fragrantica during almost 10 years which makes me sad to leave the site permanently after this month but it's a moral dilemma to support such site, I simply can't anymore because I have a zero tolerance for all kinds of bullying, discrimination and racism. So glad we have Parfumo, and happy to have you here too, dear Ioanna! 🤗🥰

6 months ago 3

Dear @Lempi thank you for your compassionate and warm message!. 🥰 That place accumulates the worst quality of people in general with only a few exemptions but this in not even enough to change their mind - set. Also i have to add that when i used to write there almost no one cared for perfume critics on the contrary many of their members and also their greek administrator liked to gossip other's perfume choices and used racist and insulting expressions i cannot even write.. I had the same thoughts with you about the morality issues and the transparency that a perfume - dedicated site has to follow and i hardly believe they meet the criteria, i see that they are lost there. I am terribly sorry to hear your bad experience there and i wish you will fill your heart with happy, cheerful and positive feelings here from now on!. I am glad to be here and to interact with all of you!.

My love to all!. 🥰👌🏻💝

6 months ago 4

Hello everyone!

I decided to stop using greek Fragrantica since it pretty much changed from what it used to be. I don't have a fancy story with arguments or political quarrels I just didn't feel alright communicating there anymore. I don't want to sound ungrateful, I learnt lots of things about perfumes and the greek reviews helped me a lot. However the old members with whom I was close do not log in anymore and it seems they abandoned the site, some of them for good. We had common tastes and we talked in private messages as well with some of them. Therefore I was left with a community with different interests and no common ground. As Nidodelia said there is sort of a weird clique going on and of course if don't belong to it you feel cut off. I don't want to talk more about it since it's no one's concern but it was very common to post something and be completely ignored whereas this didn't happen with other members.

I very sorry that @Nidodelia experienced this. I can confirm that the incident with the 'Tom Ford gossip' happened. It was kind of a big thing for a week and everyone talked about it even in Facebook. Everyone in the forum thought it was fake and were ironic about it. Nidodelia expressed her doubt because we couldn't be sure what exactly happened. That's why they became critical of her. What I most disliked though was that they supposedly gave her a chance to come back after they partly blocked her. If she could provide the names of some members they wanted her back, they would allow her to return. I was happy to give her a vote of confidence on that. Although she managed to gather some people, the administrators didn't fulfill their promise and blocked her all the way unfortunately. When I raised a question about it they responded that the permanent block was Zoran's decision.

The previous months I experienced some weird blocks. Suddenly I couldn't search for new posts, submit new topics, search users or see their profiles. All of these for no reason. After some months I regained access to these option but after I posted a review I got blocked again for a while. This made me so mad and I didn't want to deal with them anymore. I was also tired of getting that warning spam message because I opened too many tabs in a short time - I mean that's how I work with browsers I was not trying to pull anything weird!

In general Fragrantica doesn't work for me anymore, the people, the UI, the reviews everything is too much. I check it out from time to time only to transfer my reviews and inform some old friends (if I find them) that I won't post anymore there.

6 months ago 2

Dear @AnyaK 

I would like to thank you for sharing your own testimony in the thread. Thank you for confirming through your writings the incidents that I experienced within the Greek fragnatica environment. It is an important fact for the credibility of the incidents that I made public regarding the prestigious and famous in Greece Attica fragnance boutique shop where the abovementioned incident took place and due to its' notorious content got a lot of coverage in the Greek social media.

I also would like to thank you for your public testimony regarding my personal case and the assault I experienced in greek fragnatica. Indeed the administrator made false promises to me and in front of my eyes came to me personally and sent me a personal message in my personal mail and officially committed herself to remove the restrictions she imposed on my account if I gave her a list of members (which from her point of view is an act of extortion and violent imposition) who wished my return and had detected my absence from the first days of the restriction and they were looking for ways to contact me but were not allowed to do so by the administrator or her strange clique and some of them experienced blocking tactics as well from the administratos. In the end i collected the list with the members and gave her the list she demanded to get with the names of the members. While I was waiting for my account to be restored and my smooth reintegration into the fragnatica environment she did not keep the promises she made and if this was not enoug without real reason she deleted my account and did the unspeakable act to delete my fragncance reviews i wrote and i had put my devotion, personal time and mental work to write. We who are serius about fragnances now how difficult it is to write in depth fragnance reviews. This is a serius issue because no one is allowed to do things like the greek administrator did. It is an undemocratic act and a violation against the rules of Greek fragnatica on the part of the greek administrator.

Futhermore, I am aware of the restrictions imposed on Anna's profile for no real reason as well as the unjustified deletion of a review that should not have been deleted because it had nothing negative in her text and was wrongly deleted. On the contrary, I had seen many reviews with offensive content by several members almost bordering on racism being referred to ironically about people who choose certain perfumes and remaining published with the consent of the administrator which I find unacceptable in general and no one reacted to these actions. Anna is a considerate person with a sense of humour, and good writing in her reviews and no one should have done an act like the one she experienced.

I am also aware of the difficulties Anna refers to while she encountered quite often in navigating fragnatica and I myself remember when I was a member there that their site was not functioning properly in general. It often crashed, did not display many threads, neither could personal messages be read nor p piblic texts either and in general it has many problems which many users had reported several times in the past. This shows the general picture of the general problematic and sloppy operation and the amateurish design of the greek fragnatica website.

Finally, I acknowledge the practical help given by the initial members (who completely abandoned fragnatica for good) to the newer members and to the Greek fragnatica with their reviews and I would be satisfied if the greek administrator herself would acknowledge and respect them and their contribution which she does not. The same happened in international fragnatica in the case of editor Patrick which was a disrespectful act to him and I felt bad for him because i used to read his articles. Greek fragnatica has changed its content from focusing on fragrances turned into social commentary and politic quarrels where these issues have nothing to do with fragrance in general. Greek fragnatica failed to maintain the unity of the community and succeeded in reducing the site to elitism exhibitionism of their life - style, to buy and sell ads  and to low level cosmic gossip. I don't want to be a member of such a place. I wish the older valued members would clearly see the real sad picture of fragnatica and visit the Parfumo page.

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