EXILED! The stories from Defected Fragrantican Members

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I just defected today. I mostly just used the site to look at perfumes & keep track of what I had/had tested -- had no idea about everything going on with the  owners/admins. I only realised today when I saw a link on the sidebar to a review of Trump Victory 47 by Elena. I remember thinking something was fishy when I had a sample of Calvin Klein Everyone, so I searched it on there and the reviews were horrific. Now it all seems to be adding up.

Never had a bad experience (even though some reviews juste made me laugh) but the UI by itself keeps me away from this website now. It's just hideous and non practical. 

I still use it sometimes to cross some data but that's it. 

I'm way better here. 

I manly left a long time ago because the Spanish page is broken and no one seems to mind enough to fix it. And the UI here is better

I'm happy to find this thread here after a good few years on fragrantica, it feels like coming up for a breath of fresh air. Finally got tired of the perfume reviews and ratings being used as a culture-war proxy, the meaningless reviews carrying an air of vacuous quid pro quo commercialism and quite transparent partisanship. Like do we really need a review article every time some populist political figure (many, from all over..) gets a fragrance squirted out of some big corporate scent pissing robot? Citrus with a hint of fascism? anyone? nah... Happy to delve into actual fragrances with others who hold their noses above the cesspits

Oh, and the logout button being gone to some unfindable corner possibly, was the last stroke.

I just switched a few days ago and transferred my whole collection onto here🎉 I have some opinions as to why I switched...

1. Heavy discussions into politics in the fragrance reviews instead of the actual fragrance itself.

2. People (or bots) being flat out NASTY to each other, name calling and belittling in the fragrance reviews. 

3. The "reminds me" section is hardly correct on newer release and celebrity fragrances. 

4. Not much customization/organization/filters on my own page. (I like to filter out my collection to season/notes/etc.) 

5. The website is so hard to use on my phone! I constantly get "error 400" and timed out from browsing the site. To view the site I have to freshly delete my cookies and cache every time. 

6. I had enough 😂

The only reason I switched is the stupid balloon system. Unpopular takeaways on a fragrance are being downvoted to the point that it is being removed, leaving mostly overly positive opinions on niche fragrances and negative opinions on designer fragrances standing. 

(Also, the "news", specificially by AI Bot Eddie Bulliqi and supersnob Miguel Matos are a huge turn-off for me)

But...if I would give credit where it is due, which I do not fully defect fragrantica for, is based on the fact they even have news. I see blogs on Parfumo for selected fragrances, but not for any noteworthy articles. If I want to be up-to-date for any new fragrances, I tend to go to Fragrantica first as, in my opinion, Parfumo based on searchable fragrances or news is always late to the party.

Just to give an example: There is a fragrance from Dolce & Gabbana (Albeit heavily debated for obvious reasons) for quite some time, Fefe, not even registered in Parfumo's library.

Hahah, my thoughts exactly, it's insane that I left the F-site 2 years ago already because of these exact reasons and sounds like it's still similar there, I guess the place is just absolutely hopeless.

I left the dark side a few months ago, I was on the french side, but checked the US version from time to time. I couldn't stand it anymore, for several reasons :

- The wrong olfactive pyramids being the worst, and people in the reviews swearing they smell so clearly that one note, that is absolutely not used in the fragrance (coconut was written on F-site instead of cocoa (checked on the house website to get the real pyramid), which was not mentioned at all),

- Followed by the "I hope it doesn't smell like ...", "I want to smell this one so baAaAd" in the reviews. How helpful, right ?

- French people being really snobbish about everything but vintage juices.

I found peace in here 😁

I've been on the f-site since highschool in the early 2000s, and I actually like the old style of the site because it was nostalgic to me. then they changed the style to be more AI focused and made it uglier.  Overall its not a great experience on top of my list. I should have left either but here I am now! ☺️

Yeah I totally understand. I registered there in 2014 and started to be active then but I had been passively reading the site even several years before that. I still remember the "good old times" when people actually used to be supportive and nice and polite to each other and were able to discuss about everything in civilized manner without this stupid division that probably started about the same time as covid I think and is getting worse and worse when also all the political articles and insane censorship and favouring certain views started to appear. It's such a shame how a nice community can get into a state like that, I'm definitely missing the old good spirit there and all wonderful people, some of them are still active but most of them left even before me and I haven't heard anything about them ever since as I'm not using mainstream social media like Facebook or Instagram.

Not defected but I haven't been active there for years. I grew tired of the Dutch site and indeed I have often wondered about certain reviews, mainly on the international site. My love of perfume had recided for a couple of years due to personal circumstances. I revisited the Dutch site a while ago but I felt out of place. No incentive to be active there at this point. Hearing what is now going on on the international site affirms some thoughts that I had and hearing some ***t that is going on there really turns me off.

I will go through these comments, but I'm on Fragrantica with over 1,000 reviews at this point. I do appreciate it in many ways, I love the shelving features, and I think it can be fun on that forum as well. But ultimately...

it seems like there's weird vibes on that forum a lot of the time. Lots of clannishness.

I also do agree that the bots and AI involvement isn't a good thing, it's weirding me out. 

I joined Basenotes in December and I enjoy it there, it's a slower pace but people seem more welcoming. Basenotes is down right now for a server move, and I thought...'Are there other perfume websites?'

I'm ready to spend a little less time overall online anyway, but it's nice to branch out. I haven't quit Fragrantica, but I want to explore other places. 

Can anyone maybe affirm for me that if I C&P reviews to this site as well as Fragrantica (and Basenotes) that it won't be a problem? I can totally vouch for my identity, but I don't want to write 3 unique reviews for each site.

It’s your reviews, you can share them wherever you want. Welcome to Parfumo! 

Thank you so much!

I read through a lot of these comments (and the 10 last pages entirely). I'm comfortable providing more details because many of you have had the same issues.

It's the mental/emotional equivalent of a middleschool hallway over there. People have no attention span and downvote anything well-constructed, or less-than glowingly positive. Many people are profoundly rude.  Security seems to be lacking badly, and it seems to attract people of a certain....disorderly disposition 🤣 

When I'm there, I feel drained. I had a lot more to say, but it suffices. 

Probably half of the people there are actually cool, but it's the fact that the other half runs amok that is concerning. 

BN has it's snobs or elitist people too, I think almost anywhere will, but it's at a more tolerable level, and it's never absolute pandemonium there. Maybe 20% of Basenoters are unsavory. And at least on BN people are generally more articulate. BN might die though unfortunately. 

I've seen Parfumo a few and I think I just haven't made an account until now because I should spend more time in the real world, and I drug my feet with BN too for that reason. Also, starting anew is a whole processm But this seems vastly preferable to FG. I will keep my FG account because I've reviewed so much, and it was important for me in years past, but it's always been a little sh*tty. I've taken big breaks at certain stages for my mental health. 

But I'm here and I'll chat, and add to the reviews along with Fragranticrap and Basenotes, thanks for having me <3

I stopped posting two or three years ago at the F-site when it became obvious the owners and their trolls were using the place as a tool to promote their agenda.  The censorship of any opposing viewpoints, leaving their rabid sycophants’ comments was awful.  The same questions and boring drivel became groundhog day.  The balloons and rude users in reviews were insane.  So i jumped at the chance to move when another user invited me over to Basenotes via a pm.  I then invited another dear friend once I felt safe in the space.

I kept my account due to the shelves and the ability to search-by-notes within my collection.  But having content there really haunted me.  Finally last week, the last straw broke the camel’s back.   I actually tried to get banned because I had heard it would be hard to get my account deleted.  I changed my avatar to an opposing viewpoint and posted a ridiculous thread in the general forum. A real nutter who truly belongs there tried to troll me back and I found one new poster I wish I could be friends with because they were funny in a good way.  But… All I got was a reminder and the thread deleted.  However, when I sent an email to request deletion, I was gone in a snap. 

I have been on Basenotes now for several years, but am exploring this as a second home.  I mainly hang out in the small cozy fem space at BN and sometimes in the general forums.  There is such a wealth of knowledge in the old threads that I enjoy searching old topics and reading those.   There are some awesome reviewers I love to read there.  And I have made some truly good friends. I love that political discussions are forbidden.  The discussions are intelligent and about scents.  Sometimes it can be slow there, but I kind of like it that way. Grant has been trying really hard to keep the news articles updated.

My username is the same across the platforms.  Thanks for having me here.  I hope I am able to add to a positive perfume focused environment.

I defected and transferred here over the weekend. I hadn't been active on the forums since 2020. I liked the shelf feature and some of the reviews were entertaining; I already like the features better here. And I won't have to see Eddie's tantrums- oops, I mean articles.

I finally made the switch this weekend after thinking about it for a long while. I have used US fragrantica for years but the last year or two with the politicizing & hate towards specific communities it was pretty unbearable. Once even the perfume reviews/ratings/editorials became biased - negative ratings before the perfume is even released, editorials about how mens perfume have stopped being manly, praising trump perfumes and giveaways, I basically stopped using it for anything else besides maintaining my wardrobe. Then the whole AI slop popped up, wrong notes, bad info etc. It took me time to move things over but I did it and deleted my fragrantica account. Well, you cant really delete your account but you can ask the admin to do so which I did. Happy to be here now ☕😅

hiii!

i also officially made the switch from the bad place over to here just a few days ago. i actually did sign up for an account here a couple of years ago, but i wasn't active on here much. and to be honest, i wasn't active on the f-site either - i believe the last time i commented on the forums was 2.5 years ago?. like many of you, i was becoming more and more turned off by the views, censorship, and overall dangerous rhetoric over there. for me, i can only be nice and polite for so long until folks who consistently spew harmful sh*t make me hit my limit.

anyways, i'm happy to be here. it's been a welcoming, kind and compassionate experience so far, and i'm grateful for it! 💛

It has been nearly a year since I joined Parfumo, and I have never enjoyed fragrance more than I do now, thanks to this community!

I never had any bad experiences on Fragrantica that directly involved me, but the tone of the site in general pushed me away. For one, the constant, and oftentimes questionable political rhetoric they embodied was not for me. Not only that, but the fact that they clearly allowed discrimination and harmful language towards specific groups of people in the comments/threads was a big turn off. I don't want to be around that kind of rhetoric, especially when it involves my hobbies.

The state of the website was another big issue. I mean, that website looks and performs like it's coming straight out of 2005 AOL era internet. I have a high performance desktop PC for work that can handle pretty much anything you throw at it, but there was one time that Fragrantica was making the CPU run at max capacity. The fans were going crazy and that thing was getting HOT. I've played graphically intense video games on that thing that ran better than Fragrantica did.

I'm currently in the process of moving over and what spurred this was the ads were so bad that I thought I had malware installed on my phone so I actually got a antivirus and anti-malware program installed on my phone and thankfully I didn't have anything bad.  The ads were just so bad they would redirect me from the website to in some cases malware like sites that would tell me to install a critical update.  

To top it off the administrators/moderators of the forum erased every single post I made about the issue on a dedicated thread devoted to talking about it.  Then I discovered their politics which I was always suspicious of but didn't really look into until the whole ad thing and that just reinforced the fact I needed to make the switch.

Update:  Wow, either they saw my one star reviews or they deleted my account because I mentioned they were deleting my posts.  Or saw my post here and decided to be little you know what's.  Either way I guess they decided to ensure I wouldn't call them out anymore for covering up their malware type ads.  Truly unbelievable, I've never had an account deleted without my permission before in my thirty years of using the Internet.  I'm truly a bit shocked right now.  Talk about ripping the bandaid off, lol.

About a month ago  I had a review with 3-4 mild sentences about liking a fragrance that might lean a little unpopular overall. Did not mention ANYONE else but me, just mentioned it made me happy and nostalgic. Not only was it completely buried with downvotes (who cares, not my point) but at least TWO people started following all my future reviews and harassing them, following EVERY review I had with mean, rude comments, downvoting everything I did. 

They said I was "tiktok brained" (I have never downloaded tiktok even once) and a "moron" and a "shill." For THREE SENTENCES THAT I MILDLY LIKED SOMETHING. I am so removed from influencers/tiktok that I didn't even know this particular fragrance was hyped up by influencers. They somehow convinced themselves that everybody hates it and you must be addicted to social media and 'influenced' if you like it. It took me a while to even figure out what the hell they were talking about when they kept harassing me.

Not ONCE did I engage with them. My sin was saying "I like this and it makes me nostalgic."  People need self-reflection journals, I swear, who the hell thinks they're doing something positive by harassing someone on a perfume site. 

Now I'm super curious which fragrance that was 😆

As you can imagine, I was super hesitant to say because of what just happened, ugh, not trying to be coy just feeling sensitive given what happened. It's Missing Person from Phlur, I totally missed that there was a media frenzy  around it in the 'skin scent' genre a few years ago, I just didn't know any of that when I wrote the review.

It reminds me exactly of me being a kid in a too-hot summer lounging on an old couch and made me feel nostalgic for younger me. But what I didn't KNOW was a lot of people are anosmic so they just go around accusing me of parroting influencers I didn't even know existed and making the whole thing up?! Who makes up that they smell like their childhood couch?!