i think the more you’re around it the more your brain starts to tune out the “basic” weed smell that every strain has and focus on the more subtle differences.

The number of times I’ve come across some incredible smelling strain that smells like straight candy to me and I’ll have one of my non-smoker or casual smoking friends smell it only to shrug and say “IDK smells like weed” lol

This is so real. I work in a dispensary. Before this, I could tell wildly different strains apart. I usually bought on the darkweb before rec and knew what I was getting. But if they’d substituted one Blueberry cross for another, they would have gotten away with it. Now I smell weed and read packaging 35-40 hours a week paid, plus whatever I do for my own use.

Now you might be able to get away swapping Blueberry Cookies for Blueberry Muffin, but you’re not gonna get me with Blueberry Headband. Mendo Butter smells kinda buttery, and the smell my wife calls balloons is what most growers call banana.

I also advise anyone exploring weed to take the indica/sativa/hybrid distinction with a very, very large grain of salt.

This drives me crazy sometimes, because terps and minor cannabinoids play a huge part in strain specific effects, but aren’t dictated strictly by those three categories. Those categories are dictated by genetic percentages, not what those genes provided. And a lot of budget weed is so low on terps and minors that it basically is all the same. But dumbass customers who think they know everything only know those three things and don’t believe that terps and minors do anything. So I can’t tell them that the hybrid with 2% Myrcene, 1% Nerolidol, and 2% CBN is gonna be better for sleep than the 60:40 indica in the blue bottle with total terps and minors adding up to less than 2%. Cannabis labeling and education has a long way to go.