EXILED! The stories from Defected Fragrantican Members

This is exactly the reason why I left. I rarely interacted with the community really, so I had no idea anything was really going on until I saw them promoting Trump's new perfume and even calling him "President Trump" wayyy before the election. Yikes! That's just not the kind of people I want to associate with, and furthermore bringing aggressive politics like that to perfume feels odd. Many people in the comments as well were being really rude and belligerent to other people who dared to express their disagreement. I've found that the Parfumo community feels much nicer and welcoming.

Also, if you haven't figured it out, you type a # then type the name of the perfume (no space after the #) and it should bring it up. Like Pink Sugar Eau de Toilette

I had been looking at Fragrantica since about 2011, and began participating around 2016. Just a review here and there over the years.

Like many others, I became disillusioned by the strange politics and censorship in recent years (anti mask, anti vax, etc.) I stopped participating but still looked at other peoples reviews since it is the most active fragrance site. 

I began posting on the fragrance Reddit and eventually made a Parfumo around last spring. But I found that Parfumo didn't have as many reviews and wasn't as active so I kind of abandoned the site and went back to relying on Reddit and Fragrantica for reviews.

Recently I've decided to become an active participant of this site. I want it to become more active and have more reviews until it becomes the go-to fragrance website. So I'm going to help get it there!

I am also actively trying as an active participant on this site! I am aiming to visit daily and updating my SOTD etc but will also review things when I need to. I also rely on Reddit, sometimes Sniff as well but I find the latter to really lack in the database. I need more people to migrate to Parfumo.

I just discovered this post and I too come from Fragrantica. I haven't left it yet but I noticed that it was difficult to express an honest opinion because you get downvoted immediately and your reviews disappear... This doesn't help people who want to blind buy perfumes imo and is not at all constructive. Personally I like to have several opinions (good or bad) before blind buying a perfume.

Their political positions also bore me more and more, even if I'm not American. This is supposed to be a perfume site!

While looking for a new site I came across Parfumo and frankly, I am very happy with it and I am transferring my opinions little by little. The site is much more modern and the points system makes you want to participate and is very fun!

I left Fragrantica after realizing that the site is nearly unnavigable and sends me to scam popup sites on the mobile browser. It's ridiculous. Their UX prioritizes advertising and political messaging over fragrance discussion.

Wow, I was so interested to see this thread! I have been a lurker on Fragrantica for quite some time, and I was driven away by the homophobia and politics too! (Along with their UI and the fact that you get a "too many requests" error if you open too many tabs, which I do a lot when I want to compare fragrances.) I read a few articles over time, and without fail, the comments were really unpleasant and aggressive. The apparently notorious July article--and more specifically the comments underneath it--were the last straw. Once I gleaned that Jeca and Elena were one and the same, and that she ran the website, I felt gross every time I logged on. I'm glad I finally found a good alternative!

Welcome @LauraR ,

Elena (Jeca) is awful!!! Not to mention Fragrantguy I also hated their political views but also that 'vintage bla bla' concerning many perfumes, so 'snobby'! Also hated the fact that they never made a page for latest formulations of many, more classic perfumes. Hope you will enjoy this site, it is so much more friendly !

Yes, I think the one thing that guy likes more than fragrances is trolling!

I'd pretty much be preaching to the choir here on why I came to Parfumo haha

I recently got into fragrances and lurked heavily on the other site for a long time for suggestions to try, but was often weirded out by the rather toxic user-base. I think I made an account at some point, but never really used it all that much because I felt too green on the hobby to give my opinions on the site. Perhaps it might be because of how few reviews there are on here comparatively, but on Parfumo I feel more encouraged to post reviews and share my opinions on the funny smell-good liquids we all love regardless of experience (and I especially appreciate the option for statements on here - sometimes you only have a little bit to say about something, and having a separate spot for that from the long-form reviews is incredibly nice) 😊

Being able to choose nonbinary as an option when signing up pretty much sealed the deal for me. I feel goofy even bringing it up because it's such a nonissue compared to more pertinent aspects of this hobby but knowing people like me are acknowledged in this community makes it infinitely more welcoming for me. I follow my nose to fragrances I enjoy, no matter who it's "actually" for!

Setting aside politics, navigating that site without an adblocker (let alone on mobile) is downright awful to navigate and it relieves me knowing that others also take issue with it 🤢 and this is coming from someone who goes out of their way to try and navigate The Cutting Room Floor (which doesn't even have a vertical layout) on mobile to kill time. Yuck!

I’m “active” on both platforms. I recently discovered them both after buying a bunch of new fragrances and searching for an app to catalog them. 
I haven’t noticed anything of the things I read here, but I think it’s because the Dutch part of the forum. That is very friendly until now. 

One thing I can say in advantage to the other site is, that in my opinion it is easier to add new fragrances. 

As a queer person, please don't accuse violent homophobes of being closeted. It's a pervasive andfrequently untrue myth that, intentionally or not, saddle queer people with responsibility for our own oppression.

Otherwise yeah, it was a lot of fun messing with that asshole while I could stomach being on that website :p

Please accept my apology for my oversight and for the correction regarding FragrantGuy possibly being closeted. I did not think that one through thoughtfully or carefully. FragrantGuy is plainly and simply a hate-filled asshole. Period. Along with several others. 

Stopping by to say that I too have located Parfumo after finding Fragrantica a bit of a hotbed of misery. 

I do like the daily tracking there so I can view my history of perfume wearing. But as for the rest of it, I'd rather just leave it be. Unprofessional and lopsided reviewing, certain houses often maligned with absolutely no reason other than to be snide or hostile and unprofessional politicizing by the site owners. 

Looking forward to seeing what kinds of perfume tracking I can do here also. 

Adding on to say: if you go to the beginning of the thread, the complaints go back 12 years. Even then, people were complaining about the site owners being immature, the UI being clunky, and the reviewers infighting with the “balloon” system rather than just focusing on perfume. 
You go back 8 years, on like page 5 or 10 of the thread, and there’s a link to an insane thread on Fragrantica with co-owner Zoka where he responds to people asking for a “community perfume addition” feature by telling one of the people who made the request that they should review the perfumes in their collection before asking for more…and also accusing Parfumo of plagiarism and breaking the law. All without mentioning the name, because of course you can’t mention Parfumo on Fragrantica. 
Then, you go back 4 years and Fragrantica’s owners are using their site as a platform to be antivax, and you go back two years and they are using a JPG Le Male article as an opportunity to let gay people be called “groomers” while deleting any commentary that says “gay people are not groomers, actually, and you are being insane and homophobic .”

Basically: FG, though it claims to be about free speech- that’s what “free to choose” is in reference to- only offers free speech to right wing opinions. Not only that, trying to improve the platform may be met with immature personal attacks by the owners or even insta deletion and restriction. 
I don’t want to participate in forums where reasonable suggestions are met with disrespect and deletion. I also don’t want propaganda to be shoved down my throat while I just want to review and enjoy perfume. 
This, so far, has been a much “freer” speech platform for me because I can actually see people making suggestions in the forum, and there are folks adding to the database through the research section. 

The only thing that Fragrantica has going for it is it has “more.” More people, more perfumes being added, more controversy, more ad clutter. However, this can change. For example, Twitter was also owned by a nut bag who totally ruined the site user experience by firing needed staff, prioritizing ads and allowing bots. Two years ago it seemed impossible to imagine any alternative to Twitter: now, BlueSky is big and growing, and people are discovering a much higher quality community. 
I don’t know that the same exodus will happen, however, I will do my best to support Parfumo by adding more reviews. 

Honestly, after a few months on Parfumo, I couldn`t understand why I was ever on Fragrantica. The only thing I miss is the Romanian version of that site where I could express my thoughts in my native language. I had stopped being active on the English F-site long before the Strump insanity. I found the editorials inane and weird (man, that Ed Bulliqi could use some writing classes or be replaced by a ChatBot and I`d vote in favor of the tech just as once), the users mean and childish, the reviews stunted and useless, so there was no joy or satisfaction in participating on that forum. And that balloon system...What, are we in kindergarten?! Quantity over quality, more, more of everything and just a lot of hot air.

It would be really wonderful for there to be a Romanian or other languages' version of this site. It's just so hard when Fragrantica seems to have so much of the market. I think they are so big simply because they have invested in hiring mods and contributors from different countries, and then after years of doing this, their site is practically the only place that you can go to talk about this stuff! Have you had any luck on other platforms or blogs for people talking in Romanian about fragrance? 

I heard there are perfume groups in Romanian on Facebook, but frankly, I prefer Parfumo. It's better streamlined, less ads, less noise, and for me, it's a good size forum. The F site is too big, too weird,  too impersonal. I even wonder how many of those accounts are actual users, not just bots. I mean, some of those reviews... This is a place where I can still "be heard", and hear others, instead of drowning in 300 reviews per minute that communicate almost nothing.

I have a question: 

How do I block F^*k.rant.ica in my browser settings? I don't want to see links to their website when I do my perfume Google searches. My preferred browser is Chrome. Or Duck Duck Go Go.  I've watched some YouTube videos with instructions, but nothing seems to work. If you have a solution, please, let me know!!! Please, please, please... 

(They are profiting off of invasive ads, so I don't want to accidentally click on the links. It's (almost) 2025, we're in the Age of Aquarius, and I'm only supporting companies that deserve it. Free to choose, if you know you know LOL)

If you turn on the ad blocker on your computer, they won't make any profit if you view anything on their site. Still, I wouldn't want to increase their site traffic in any way. There's big Russian money that has helped that site expand and grow, like so many other awful things on social media that promote hate and division around the world. I have no idea how to stop them. Just being aware of it and avoiding it, spreading the word to others, I suppose is all we can do.

Sounds like quite a bit of conspiracy but hey I just hate those adds. Plain and simple I can’t understand people even  going there.

Just to clarify.... I don't visit that site (boycotting it)... But when I google and type various perfume names, F**k.rantica links show up on my search results feed. I just wanted to exclude them from my Google search results. For now, the best way to do so is just typing Parfumo + the name of the perfume. Also, sometimes I accidentally click on F***ca forum links because their red logo looks like Reddit forum links. I wanted to avoid that, too. Oh well. If I figure out how to exclude them from Google search results, I will share it here. 

If you guys use uBlock Origin, add the following filters to My Filters:

google.*##.g:has(a[href*="fragrantica."])
google.*##a[href*="fragrantica."]:upward(1)

duckduckgo.*##.g:has(a[href*="fragrantica."])
duckduckgo.*##a[href*="fragrantica."]:upward(1 )

Doesn't really help with Mobile et al but for web browsing this works for me

Likewise uBlacklist is a good choice for blocking sites en masse (forgot I actually used both as I use it for filtering out AI results on Google whenever I search up art references til I made this very reply lol). Even gives the option to automatically block results on other search engines like DuckDuckGo. Just add the following to your list and you're good:

*://*.fragrantica.com/*

I haven’t 100% made the transition but it IS happening. The politics are just dumb. The site is also so poorly managed. I don’t know hiw many posts Ive made that just get wiped before I save lol. 

I just made the decision to learn this website and the more I learn how to use it, the further the transition goes. I plan on just tracking, reviewing, and getting involved in the forums and I don’t really care about the numbers of people on one site vs another.  I feel like a lot of people over there speak of coming over here but never do it (that once included me) but I think they would if they’d just get over here and learn the UI. Admittedly it’s like going from Windows to Mac but you just have to get to it. 

If anyone wants to properly delete their Fragrantica account rather than just log out indefinitely, here's how I did it about a year ago. (At that time there was no direct way to delete a profile, dunno if that's changed but I suspect not.) 

I changed my profile picture to a simple graphic that read "Let's Leave Fragrantica!" - then I made a forum post encouraging people to ditch the platform with me and listed a few top grievances.

BOOM - admins deleted my account within 24 hours. Problem solved!😜

Like many people here, I finally got sick of the pop-up ads and the "free speech for admins, but censorship for users" AKA "no politics, except for admin politics" hypocrisy. 

This is actually my first Parfumo post! I am a 10+ year-old Basenotes user, but that platform is dying a slow death it seems so I decided to compliment my activity there by also joining here. The Parfumo phone app actually works, so that's a big plus.

OMG, that's a fun way to delete an account 😄! Served them right. I had to ask them to delete it after Jecca/Elena (who threatened me with 'a ban' (because I had a different political opinion) refused to delete it when I asked her...

That site is horrible!!!