What a peculiar defense. The next time you use a bathroom that has gone far too long between cleanings, just remember that your response to the odor is all mere conditioning and that you just need to make a risk assessment. Inhale deeply, my friend. Take it all in. Let the fresh shitsmelling air cleanse your thoughts. It's not dangerous after all.
> Unless you have an allergy or something, this is entirely in your head.
The fraction of the population with asthma is easily high enough that there's plenty of people for whom it's not in the head.
Personally I just hold my breath and speed up until I've passed those people, but its most definitely unpleasant.
The narcissism of tobbaco users is emminently obvious to non-smokers but completely invisible and incomprehensible to them and their gratification. Just like how cigarette butts are the most common litter, and chewing tobbaco was curtailed due to concerns of tuberculosis from spitting it everywhere. It seems to be an effect of the drug more than anything sociological that all dissenting evidence is mentally erased.
Unless you have an allergy or something, this is entirely in your head.
Some people also “involuntarily gag” when they think about interracial marriage or a person eating pickled cabbage. This kind of paranoid disgust is a conditioned response, not a reasoned risk assessment.
* * *
Note: I am not defending tobacco advertising, smoking in enclosed public spaces like restaurants, smoking in a car with kids inside it, smoking on primary school campuses, etc. (For that matter I’m not defending spending time near an indoor wood cooking fire, etc.)
It is clear that getting significant amounts of second-hand smoke is bad for anyone, and children are especially vulnerable because they can’t make choices about where to go.
But desire to avoid dangerous levels of smoke doesn’t excuse being a jerk to people who are engaged in a behavior (outdoor smoking) which they have a physical addiction to, and is predominantly harmful to themselves alone.