So to recap: smoothing is not stored in the OBJ, it is a algorithm by the renderer to express geometry in visual form. As for my problem, with wonky normals: if you're making extremely low poly meshes, you want to turn off smoothing per the renderer you're using, because YOURE deciding to be unorthodox by making shapes five polygons long by five polygons wide, and realistically and ideally, a person needs to not really touch program's smoothings mechanisms, and instead should simply add rows and columns of mesh polygons, fair enough?