Does Everyone Really Love Their Own Brand?

Years ago, I dated this guy who frequently made a show of acting like he was purposefully sniffing his own farts.  Afterwards, he would turn to me and gleefully exclaim, "Everyone loves their own brand!"  I was repulsed.  A: how many people actually sit around and smell their own farts?  B: assuming that there are people who sit around and smell their own farts, how many can actually say that they love the smell?  C: why was I dating such a first-class idiot?  It was a preposterous concept, but not out of line for this guy's thinking.  I then proceeded to date that moron for a year and a half.  Live and learn. 

Very recently, the subject of the smell of other people's poop came up while a group of us nurses were sitting around talking during some downtime at work.  I'm assuming the subject came up in relation to a patient with some rather foul feces, but with nurses you never can tell.  Sometimes we talk about bodily functions just for the heck of it. 

So one of my coworkers pointed out that it's human nature to think that everyone else's poop smells worse than our own, a concept that I had never once pondered in all my years of poop pondering.  How in the world had this ever escaped me?

I came home from work in the morning and there was Simon, roaming about the kitchen in search of something edible whilst caught in the throes of the after-work-munchies (trust me, that's a very dangerous thing).  I caught him unawares with my new epiphany on poop.  So I point-blank asked him whose poop smelled worse, his or mine.  He gave me this look that said, "For Pete's sake....what have I done to deserve the wrath of this crazy woman?"  He let out a long sigh, looked away, and said, "Yours."  What??  As delusional as it sounds, I thought there was no way that my poop could possibly smell worse than his.  I've smelled his poop, and I've smelled mine, and I'd come to the conclusion (erroneously, it would appear) that his poop smelled worse than mine.

Mind. Blown.

I briefly considered the idea that we needed a third party present, to smell both our poops to see which one of us truly had the most foul excrement, as if it was some sort of competition.  But that's just weird.  Right?  In any case, we'd probably find ourselves short a volunteer for that endeavor. 

Does this illustrate the point of the douchebag from so long ago?  Maybe not so much the part about loving the smell of one's own brand, but perhaps on a simpler level, that we are just able to better tolerate the smell of our own brand.

Something to think about.  Or not.  I'm sure most people don't really care to think about poop at all.  I guess I'm just weird like that.  Nothing new to see here.