Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously
January 7, 2022 12:56 AM   Subscribe

 
eponysterical.
posted by bendy at 1:03 AM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


Best of the web, indeed. (I did snort audibly after reading this, so thanks for making my day a little lighter!)
posted by gakiko at 1:21 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


How long do farts last in jars?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:21 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


How long do farts last in jars? you can check with a little lighter!
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:25 AM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]


Ctrl-F "NFT"

Check.
posted by chavenet at 1:28 AM on January 7, 2022 [25 favorites]


Best of the web, indeed. (I did snort audibly after reading this, so thanks for making my day a little lighter!)

I usually don't read the article when the headlines are this good, assuming that the facts will be a let down. This is one case, though, where it is worth it to read the whole thing.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:31 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


90 Day Fiancé Star Has Medical Emergency After Farting In Jars Too Much For Side Business

I mean, I know all these words, but somehow they stop making sense when you string them together.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:31 AM on January 7, 2022 [47 favorites]


How long do farts last in jars?

Twenty days, same as in town.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:42 AM on January 7, 2022 [35 favorites]


hurdy gurdy girl: "I mean, I know all these words, but somehow they stop making sense when you string them together."

That's Chomsky for ya.
posted by chavenet at 1:44 AM on January 7, 2022 [13 favorites]


“I honestly could not believe the demand. I think a lot of people have this fetish in secret. I began this venture by eating mostly protein muffins, shakes and also hard-boiled eggs,” Matto continued.

Not entirely coincidentally, perhaps, this diet is how Chomsky starts every day, before he ventures into the heady thickets of his own nonsensical but lucrative headline-writing side hustle.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:05 AM on January 7, 2022 [12 favorites]


The people are the means of production!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:24 AM on January 7, 2022 [6 favorites]


Not only the news item we need, but also one we deserve.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:51 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


Hopefully she was setting aside enough to cover the carbon offset for all that methane.
posted by allium cepa at 2:53 AM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


This should only ever have been a comic in Vis Magazine.
posted by brachiopod at 3:08 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


remember the writers? the people who've been coming up with all the wonderful things we've been reading since trump got elected?

they're having a collective nervous breakdown
posted by pyramid termite at 3:09 AM on January 7, 2022 [17 favorites]


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be kept forever as NFTs, like farts in a jar... Time to die.
posted by srboisvert at 3:16 AM on January 7, 2022 [47 favorites]


So for those unaware: Twitter's web interface has something of a "sidebar", where trending hashtags or topics get listed. Sometimes the Twitter staff adds a bit of a note to these hashtags to explain things briefly: like, if it's a politician's name like "Ted Cruz", it will be "People are discussing his interview on Tucker Carlson", or if it's a beloved-but-older celebrity's name, they will say "They're alive, don't worry! They just did thus-and-such".

For this, the note was "we promise this is a real news story".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:02 AM on January 7, 2022 [41 favorites]


"Hopefully she was setting aside enough to cover the carbon offset for all that methane."
posted by allium cepa

What do you mean? She was actively capturing her emissions!

Shouldn't it be the folks buying and, presumably, sniffing(?) the farts that should be buying the methane offsets?
posted by Grither at 4:46 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


Well, that's certainly a unique alternative to a Leyden jar.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:10 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Time to revive an old idea, or is it only so much hot air? Collecting Cow Farts: The Stupid-Brilliant Solution To Global Warming – As the world eats more meat, methane emissions from livestock are becoming a bigger climate concern. It’s time to take that seriously., Ben Schiller, Fast Company, 12/10/2015.
posted by cenoxo at 5:31 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


As far as I know Le Petomane never farted himself into the hospital; she sounds like an amateur.

Also, I guess you could say she released her own fragrance.
posted by TedW at 5:44 AM on January 7, 2022 [9 favorites]


This Is Just To Say

I have inhaled
the farts
that were in
the glass jars

the purpose
of which
I’m still struggling
to fathom

Forgive me
they were disgusting
so rank
and so foul
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:48 AM on January 7, 2022 [18 favorites]


I have no idea how these people got their farts wedged into their glass jars, or why.
posted by Lanark at 5:51 AM on January 7, 2022 [9 favorites]


I am personally mystified that she didn't just, like. Lie? About where the gas was coming from? Like, is there some reason she wouldn't have been able to pipe a little bit of hydrogen sulfide at well below toxic levels into a jar? A tiny bit of methanethiol? This shit is really really cheap to manufacture, the hardest thing would be just diluting it safely and not making yourself miserable in the process, and like, clearly that wasn't a concern...?

I AM MYSTIFIED. It's a victimless crime! It's sex work that scales! I mean, sure, you're selling a fantasy, there's a certain amount of careful management that goes along with that and some reasonably noxious emotional framework, but there's no reason to actually fart in a jar more than like, maybe twice on video to sell the veralisimilitude. Probably safer as well to just chemically produce a fart smell at medically safe concentrations! Look, I've opened a bottle of mercaptoacetate and cleared an entire floor of my work building in seconds on several occasions, and that shit only cost maybe $50 for more mercaptoacetate than you would ever need to create whole warehouses fill of fart jars! It lingers, too! You can smell it clearly diluted to like, 15uL in 50mL of saline and also frozen! Probably people would believe its veralisimilitude more than actual farts that had to be shipped cross country!

mystified.
posted by sciatrix at 5:53 AM on January 7, 2022 [58 favorites]


sciatrix: "This shit is really really cheap to manufacture"

This is a whole other customer list, methinks
posted by chavenet at 5:58 AM on January 7, 2022 [14 favorites]


Hold on a second. Something doesn't add up here.
Matto began selling her own farts in jars weeks ago ... The star of 90 Day: The Single Life allegedly farted in 50 jars a week in order to keep up with the demand for her jars. As we previously reported, Matto sold each jar for $100 and had amassed somewhere in the ballpark of $100k in mid-December. At the time of her alleged retirement, Matto walked away with around $200k in profit.
$200K / $100 = 2,000 fart jars. (farts jar?)
2000 jars / 50 jars per week = 40 weeks

So either she's been doing this for nearly a year, or they're underreporting her supply capabilities. 7 jars a day is a pretty reasonable number, especially if you're eating nothing but eggs and beans, but sustaining that pace for months on end would leave you feeling pretty pooped. So which is it, Cinema Blend? We demand answers.
posted by Mayor West at 6:00 AM on January 7, 2022 [9 favorites]


I am personally mystified that she didn't just, like. Lie? About where the gas was coming from? Like, is there some reason she wouldn't have been able to pipe a little bit of hydrogen sulfide at well below toxic levels into a jar? A tiny bit of methanethiol? This shit is really really cheap to manufacture, the hardest thing would be just diluting it safely and not making yourself miserable in the process, and like, clearly that wasn't a concern...?

sciatrix, you've totally got the expertise for this. You need to advertise your services to aspiring sellers on OnlyFans. You could be the Walter White of selling your own farts.
posted by Mayor West at 6:02 AM on January 7, 2022 [25 favorites]


7 jars a day is a pretty reasonable number, especially if you're eating nothing but eggs and beans, but sustaining that pace for months on end would leave you feeling pretty pooped

I mean I hate to say this (I love to say this), but 7 a day is rookie numbers. No one wants my middle aged man farts, but I feel like I could do a dozen jars before lunch.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:03 AM on January 7, 2022 [20 favorites]


Mayor West: "the Walter White of selling your own farts."

Breaking Wind
Heisenbutt
posted by chavenet at 6:04 AM on January 7, 2022 [15 favorites]


There are people who buy farts in jars??
posted by mermayd at 6:06 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


There are people who buy farts in jars??

I'm with mermayd. Canned or GTFO!
posted by dobbs at 6:08 AM on January 7, 2022 [27 favorites]


it's nice to see that even though she's not selling jars of farts any more, she's still found a way to sell hot air that vaguely smells like shit
posted by Merus at 6:13 AM on January 7, 2022 [10 favorites]


Adam Savage has a video up about the flatus collector they built for Mythbusters. You can already just buy fart spray, Mark Rober used them in his porch pirate revenge. I'd just stick a tube up my ass at night and collect a volume while I sleep and just bottle that. Everything else seems like too much effort.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:14 AM on January 7, 2022


For those wondering how many jars/day is a realistic number: Investigation of normal flatus production in healthy volunteers.
posted by TedW at 6:16 AM on January 7, 2022


When aliens come to kill us all and purify the planet with fire, they will mention this story specifically and we will have to simply bite our lips and nod.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:21 AM on January 7, 2022 [22 favorites]


sciatrix, you've totally got the expertise for this. You need to advertise your services to aspiring sellers on OnlyFans. You could be the Walter White of selling your own farts.

I mean, I said this was sex work for a reason--I imagine you have to do a lot of customer service and experience curation to maintain a fantasy and cultivate your market for this thing, which is almost always the intensive labor aspect of sex work of any kind (including, like, selling used panties). Generating the actual theoretical product itself is rarely the hard part because the thing your customer is actually buying is veralisimilitude for whatever psychological fantasy is getting them off, which you need to intimately understand and work around in order to attract clients. You also have to spend a lot of effort building community relationships with your client base, enough that enough people don't feel you're simply mocking them that they're willing to pay you for your services--or, if they enjoy humiliation, that they feel humiliated in just the right way by their interactions with you.

I don't think the money would be worth it, even if I was just selling product to a stable of marketers handling all the client interface, marketing, and experience curation side of the business, especially as it would be hard for me to broadcast my services when any hint of my existence would immediately ruin the fantasy and therefore the market for the product. Anyway, literally any perfumer could do that part of it as well or better than I could. It's not hard to buy a bad smell in a jar; it's hard to structure a social experience such that you find a way for someone to find giving you money for a bad smell in a jar very arousing.

Honestly I would rather teach chemistry class and show people how to make their own bad smells in a jar, or sensory biology and talk about what smell is and how humans use it. There I only have to control the emotional experience insofar as it facilitates learning, and that requires a lot less emotional control and attention out of me.
posted by sciatrix at 6:25 AM on January 7, 2022 [41 favorites]


I mean, the problem does not seem to be that she "farted in jars too much." It was her ill-conceived diet. If anything, farting more at that point would have been good for her - she was just bad at farting.
posted by anhedonic at 6:27 AM on January 7, 2022 [14 favorites]


Who do you think you are?
Makin’ me want to barf
Selling your jars of farts
Not to mention the crypto part
posted by mubba at 6:29 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


"I used to sell digital farts in virtual jars for cryptocurrency."
"OK, grandma. Let's get you to bed."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:49 AM on January 7, 2022 [35 favorites]


I'm gonna bet that, like a lot of weird news stories, this is a humorous twist on a lot of societal failure. I mean I don't know what, but
posted by Countess Elena at 6:52 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


2000 jars / 50 jars per week = 40 weeks
So which is it, Cinema Blend? We demand answers.

I think they are probably comingling OnlyFans income with the fart jars sideline.
posted by Lanark at 6:58 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]




I remember playing with anagrams, looking at the newly made-up word "fartoir", and immediately going "oh, that's a room for farting in, obviously." Maybe she needed a more comfortable or ergonomic fartoir?

And separately, I hope her fartoir was well-contained and deodorized.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:12 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


This article feel so close to GPT-2 output I'm not sure it's based on more than two sentences input into AI.
posted by bendybendy at 7:14 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


TedW: As far as I know Le Petomane never farted himself into the hospital; she sounds like an amateur.


Le Petomane could suck in air through his anus, much like his modern counterpart Mr Methane. The jar filler is attempting to generate all of that gas internally, which is what you’d expect paying customers for fart jars to want.

Although, the negative Yelp reviews would be worthwhile to read.
posted by dr_dank at 7:20 AM on January 7, 2022


Y'all, it's a scam. She farts into jars, or has friends fart into jars, or just uses a fart spray maybe mixed with something else. If it were me, I'd put my used toilet paper sealed in a jar for five minutes and then quickly remove it and reseal the jar. You don't have to think too hard to pull off this scam.

No one who buys farts in a jar is going to complain that the fart smells "wrong". To them it's more about the idea than anything. And it's not like you can return them or post comparisons photos to the internet to warn others.

And this story is likely a scam too. She had no medical issue, but wants to signal that the supply of her farts in a jar us going to go down (spoiler: they're not) as a way to justify increasing the price. It doesn't surprise me at all that she's going to go into NFTs next, which is where lying scam artists end up these days. It also doesn't surprise me she was on a "reality" tv show like 90 Day Fiance.

Weird end stage capitalism is still end stage capitalism.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:20 AM on January 7, 2022 [19 favorites]


Well, that about wraps it up for satire.
posted by flabdablet at 7:26 AM on January 7, 2022 [10 favorites]


When they make the movie of this tragedy, as they must, the theme song will be Kurt Vile's modern classic.
posted by Pot at 7:26 AM on January 7, 2022


God I really hope her fart brand name is 'jar jar stinks'
posted by erattacorrige at 7:31 AM on January 7, 2022 [29 favorites]


Smelt; dealt.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:31 AM on January 7, 2022 [6 favorites]


> She had no medical issue, but wants to signal that the supply of her farts in a jar us going to go down (spoiler: they're not) as a way to justify increasing the price.

Sounds like a good situation for fart arbitrage. Fartitrage, if you will.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:32 AM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]


Y'all, it's a scam. She farts into jars, or has friends fart into jars, or just uses a fart spray maybe mixed with something else.
In one fell swoop, you have besmirched the honor of reality television contestants, online kink fulfillers, and crypto bros, good sir.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:39 AM on January 7, 2022 [9 favorites]


Y'all, it's a scam.

NOW you tell me?!
posted by Too-Ticky at 7:41 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


Is it possible that these Fart Jars could transmit covid?
posted by Lanark at 8:02 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeahhhhhhhh, unless she's livestreaming herself farting into the jars... but no, there are fart noise machines that cost less than twenty dollars, so even then the fart sounds could be faked. And is there any evidence that she actually sold any jars, really? Selling NFTs is irresistible to grifters right now--just ask Melania Trump.
posted by LindsayIrene at 8:21 AM on January 7, 2022


I am personally mystified that she didn't just, like. Lie? About where the gas was coming from?

That's the most amazing part of this whole story to me, if she's telling the truth, that she was actually trying to personally produce this much flatulance. I mean, you're selling farts in a jar, it's obviously a bullshit scam; an ethical line of 'oh, it needs to really be my farts in there' seems kind of arbitrary. (And as sciatrix further points out, it's more the sex work-type exchanges around the actual artifact that people are likely paying for.)

Sounds like she concocted a story to move her grift to NFTs. I guess it's possible that a grown adult has never experienced gas pains, and that those drove her to the ER, but, well....she's either devastatingly naive or simply evolving her scam.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:25 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


Would you like to swing on a star,
Suck celebrity farts from a jar...
posted by Catblack at 8:27 AM on January 7, 2022 [10 favorites]


I mean, I do fully believe she terrified herself into a medical trip because the pain from the gastrointestinal pressure made her scared she was actively dying. It's not hard to do that to a human digestive system, and if you've never eaten a weird idiosyncratic diet that deeply pisses off your GI tract I can see not having the context to recognize it for what it is.

And reality TV stars are not known for their carefully thought out planning and painstaking attention to potential consequences even when they're not specifically signing up for 90-Day Fiancee. Late stage capitalism creating incentives to try truly bizarre shit out and see if it can generate profit doesn't stop humans from being kind of impulsive, and it looks like she sort of.... ramped the business up a bit. This is why we have public health laws about selling human tissues over internet commerce; it's certainly not because no one would ever try to actually sell real human farts online.
posted by sciatrix at 8:39 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


The number of things that I, a 50-year-old man, have learned today from this story is amazing. The existence of this person and the 90 Day Fiancé reality-show universe that has been around for over 8 years with multiple spin-offs. The existence of people who fart in jars, and then sell those jars, and the people who actually buy said farts-in-jars. The fact that someone would purport to purposely eat a gassy diet to fulfill such a business empire. The fact that someone can make more money selling farts in jars in a year than I can after almost 20 years of working as a government scientist. That someone would start selling NFTs of farts in jars, vastly increasing their environmental footprint over merely farting copiously. It is depressing to even contemplate how much money she might make from selling NFTs.

Half a century of innocence about all of the above, destroyed by one offbeat news item.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:57 AM on January 7, 2022 [34 favorites]


Another day, another time I ask myself what the hell I was thinking by going to law school.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:05 AM on January 7, 2022 [9 favorites]


Early contender for the 2022 Headline of the year contest (The 2021 Final - SLTwitter)
posted by nubs at 9:05 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


Matto my name
And wen I need
Money to live
Or for some weed

I eat the beans
I am a star
I have side hustle
I fart in jar
posted by Occula at 9:06 AM on January 7, 2022 [17 favorites]


Metafilter: It's not hard to buy a bad smell in a jar; it's hard to structure a social experience such that you find a way for someone to find giving you money for a bad smell in a jar very arousing.
posted by migurski at 9:11 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


Early contender for the 2022 Headline of the year contest (The 2021 Final - SLTwitter)

After reading the contenders for 2021, I'm increasingly wondering if after accidentally ending up on the darkest timeline, I've now wandered into the WTF? timeline. Stiff competition, indeed.

I'll leave you with the 2020 winner.

"Hospital angrily denies snake discovered in operating theatre, insisting there was only a monkey"
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:53 AM on January 7, 2022 [6 favorites]


"she passed gas one too many times and got the wind knocked out of her [and] she feared she had symptoms of..."
Yeah, like that's ever actually happened to anybody.

For those of you wondering about earning money by passing gas, and the vague references upthread, I give you one of Cecil Adam's most enduring columns of The Straight Dope, about Le Petomane (the Fartiste), a vaudeville entertainer.
posted by Rash at 9:58 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


Roland le Fartere was given a whole 30 acres by King Henry II for his farting services.
posted by migurski at 10:06 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Late stage capitalism creating incentives to try truly bizarre shit out and see if it can generate profit doesn't stop humans from being kind of impulsive, and it looks like she sort of.... ramped the business up a bit

Break wind while the sun shines, I guess.
posted by nubs at 10:09 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


if you've never eaten a weird idiosyncratic diet that deeply pisses off your GI tract I can see not having the context to recognize it for what it is

Yes, wind pains can be quite jarring.
posted by flabdablet at 10:28 AM on January 7, 2022


And i thought that the woman selling her bath water was clever.
Anyway, anybody know what the brown stuff in her jars is? Surely not the obvious?
posted by 15L06 at 10:30 AM on January 7, 2022


WHY IS THIS A THING
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:31 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


Formerly Famous Fiancé Fetches Fees For Flatulence From Fans
posted by dephlogisticated at 10:32 AM on January 7, 2022 [13 favorites]


I would simply not fart in the jar, what are they gonna do, go to the better business bureau and complain that the jars don't smell farty enough.
posted by dis_integration at 10:53 AM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


Anyway, anybody know what the brown stuff in her jars is? Surely not the obvious?

Heaven help me but I found the answer: It's flower petals. She claims that the scent attaches to them.

My vote is that she's doing this chemically and either A) someone caught on and was planning to claim fraud or B) business was flagging, so she claimed to have gone to the hospital to legitimize it and grab some publicity (it worked!) and amp up the value of her NFT.
posted by mochapickle at 10:55 AM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


I'm as likely to share a good fart story as the next person, but I ask you to draw a connecting line between this article and the Jan. 6 insurrection and I'm not at all kidding around. I say this as someone who submitted the word "fartimacy" to the Urban Dictionary, not to be self-promoting.. but I need to make my position on farts clear, and yet something about this whole thing is kind of distressing. Don't buy into the celebrity fart fad, go be farty with those you love. Peace out.
posted by elkevelvet at 10:56 AM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Let's see, 75 comments, I'm certainly too late for . . .

Ctrl-F OnlyFarts 0/0

No?
Huh.
posted by The Bellman at 10:57 AM on January 7, 2022 [7 favorites]


Metafilter: WHY IS THIS A THING
posted by sammyo at 11:05 AM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]


And in the end...
The farts you sell...
Are equal to the farts...
You smell
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:17 AM on January 7, 2022 [15 favorites]


WHY IS THIS A THING

It captures the aesthetic of late stage capitalism like nothing else?
posted by nubs at 11:19 AM on January 7, 2022


Formerly Famous Fiancé Fetches Fees For Flatulence From Fans

Pains Prompt Poo-Perfumed Petal Preparation Pause, Preclude Profits
posted by flabdablet at 11:25 AM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


All joking aside, this is a gateway type of activity with real consequences.

I know plenty of folks who start like this and within a small amount of time are broke, homeless, farting in balloons to sell for a fiver in a dark alley.

But who to do the PSA?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:39 AM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


Compare Marcel Duchamp, Air de Paris.
posted by gimonca at 12:17 PM on January 7, 2022


If ever a thread needed Faint of Butt, this is it.
posted by essexjan at 12:37 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]


I will not fart within a jar
That's getting just a wee bizarre
Instead I'll fart inside my car
While listening to NPR

I'll fart while playing the guitar
Or eating fancy caviar
Or standing at the salad bar
I can fart if near or far

But I won't fart into that jar
I will not fart there, Steph-you-are
posted by polecat at 1:11 PM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]


Sylvia Plath was prescient, no?

"I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. "
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:43 PM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]


farting in balloons to sell for a fiver in a dark alley

Where is Chris Morris when you need him?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:43 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Shot: Beanplating

Chaser: Beanjarring
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:52 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


I mean, I do fully believe she terrified herself into a medical trip because the pain from the gastrointestinal pressure made her scared she was actively dying.

*coughs slightly* I, er, once went to an urgent care type of office with fairly strong stomach pains, thinking "oh god this is appendicitis or something". They checked me over - abdominal poking, pelvic exam, X-ray and such - and then as gently as they could they broke it to me that "well, you don't have appendicitis, but...er, let's just give you this Gas-X here and then we'll leave the room for a few minutes...." This kind of thing can be quite painful.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:57 PM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]




I, er, once went to an urgent care type of office with fairly strong stomach pains

Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only one with that story.

I was once visiting my estranged wife and our very young son. Dinner that night was pizza, and I ate most of a medium Domino's thin-crust pepperoni pizza. An hour or so later, I was *positive* that the chest pains and tightness in my left arm that I was feeling were signs of an incipient heart attack, so estranged wife drove me to the ER. I got checked in, immediately put on an ECG (nothing unusual) and had blood drawn (nothing unusual, no troponin traces). They hand me a paper cup full of pink liquid. I drink it and then think to ask what's in it. Turned out to be a mixture of OTC antacids, OTC anti-gas medicine, and a little Tylenol. And, sure enough, 20 minutes later, I felt fine.
posted by hanov3r at 2:20 PM on January 7, 2022 [5 favorites]




(Wind-)Breaking News
posted by Pronoiac at 4:07 PM on January 7, 2022


Whew. I skimmed just the title and thought Noam Chomsky had died.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:24 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


zengargoyle: I'd just stick a tube up my ass at night and collect a volume while I sleep and just bottle that. Everything else seems like too much effort.

If that’s your low effort solution, I admire your work ethic!!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:55 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


I am stone cold sober and feel like I'm having massive flashbacks. Are we real? What is real? Why am I alive?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:04 PM on January 7, 2022 [2 favorites]


Would that James Joyce had lived to see these days, he probably would have bankrupted himself over this young lady. What an age to live in!
posted by fight or flight at 5:16 PM on January 7, 2022 [3 favorites]


*Opens jar* Poo!
*enter dad joke* Nope, just the wind from around it.

*curtsey* *bow* *parp* That'll be $200, please.
posted by h00py at 7:04 PM on January 7, 2022


Honestly I would rather teach chemistry class and show people how to make their own bad smells in a jar, or sensory biology and talk about what smell is and how humans use it

Yeah, but your solution requires education, diplomas, and a not insignificant amount of time. This lady just needs air, ass, and a jar.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:38 PM on January 7, 2022 [4 favorites]


I am personally mystified that she didn't just, like. Lie? About where the gas was coming from?

Maybe this is a sign that I have finally been overwhelmed by the strangeness of the past couple of years, but my first thought was along the lines of "Awww! Isn't it nice that she tried, rather than just finding some way to fake it?"

...and then I realized that I am actually finding something admirable about selling farts in jars.

I'll bet that 2022 is the year that finally puts The Onion out of business.
posted by rpfields at 8:45 PM on January 7, 2022 [8 favorites]


$200,000?!

She made that much just from her farts?! People were willing to pay a pretty young woman $100 for a jar of her farts?! At least it was the real thing and she didn't out-source, I guess.




What a world, what a world.
posted by droplet at 8:55 PM on January 7, 2022


Heaven help me but I found the answer: It's flower petals. She claims that the scent attaches to them.

Heaven help me too, but I find that quite credible, because petals that scent clings to would help flowers trying to attract pollinators with fragrance make the most of their metabolic efforts. I should have thought of that a long time ago; it’s not like I didn’t notice all those fine hairs on a lot of them and wonder what they were doing there.

Human beings do have anal glands, which unlike those of many other species happen to be internal and are generally said to be vestigial and without function, but I think this young woman's success is evidence to the contrary.

It’s too bad feckless fecal fear mongering isn’t still around to see this post. He’d probably switch his name to fortunate fecal fondness mongering on the spot.
posted by jamjam at 9:31 PM on January 7, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hank Hill's dirty little secret
posted by allium cepa at 5:36 AM on January 8, 2022


 If anything, farting more at that point would have been good for her - she was just bad at farting.

Will nothing stop the fartsplainers
posted by Omnomnom at 5:44 AM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


I was once visiting my estranged wife and our very young son. Dinner that night was pizza, and I ate most of a medium Domino's thin-crust pepperoni pizza. An hour or so later, I was *positive* that the chest pains and tightness in my left arm that I was feeling were signs of an incipient heart attack, so estranged wife drove me to the ER. I got checked in, immediately put on an ECG (nothing unusual) and had blood drawn (nothing unusual, no troponin traces). They hand me a paper cup full of pink liquid. I drink it and then think to ask what's in it. Turned out to be a mixture of OTC antacids, OTC anti-gas medicine, and a little Tylenol. And, sure enough, 20 minutes later, I felt fine.

It's not unusual at all. ERs often call this Popcorn Belly because the massive tubs of movie popcorn frequently send people to the ER in severe pain. Just eat large amounts of insoluble fiber in one go and there you are. Pizza probably produces the effect because of cheese's blocking power trapping gas perhaps from frequently co-consumed carbonated beverages. Stuffed crust pizza + sausage topping waging a war in my stomach once kept me awake for about 40 hours until the sausage finally won out.
posted by srboisvert at 6:31 AM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


And, sure enough, 20 minutes later, I felt fine.

Were you farting explosively for that whole 20 minute period? Enquiring minds want to know...
posted by Paul Slade at 7:19 AM on January 8, 2022


When this post appeared I was very busy, and also I thought it must be about some new headline-generating AI thing. Which I would like to read about if I were not busy, so I didn't click the link. Then I saw about the story while I was surfing the comedy shows tonight. OH MY. I am now officially old and out of touch. Nothing I have ever known could have prepared me for this. I do wish I had seen it yesterday, because it would have been a perfect conversation starter today, but such is life.
posted by mumimor at 10:53 AM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


I want to say it was Marquis de Sade - Wikipedia and The 120 days of Sodom but the idea of flower petal eating for sweet smelling farts has a long history as in houses of ill repute having sweet fart girls available in the paying customer come fart in my face way. Might have been somewhere else.

Favorite fart euphemism: insert region barking spider. For the audible toots. Damn barking spiders.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:08 PM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Pizza probably produces the effect because of cheese's blocking power trapping gas perhaps from frequently co-consumed carbonated beverages.

The acidity of the tomato sauce was likely a contributor, said the ER doc.

Were you farting explosively for that whole 20 minute period?

I was not, actually. This was much more a giant ball of stomach acid thing than it was a gas problem.
posted by hanov3r at 3:38 PM on January 8, 2022


A TikToker Made $200,000 Farting In Jars. Here’s How She Did It (Rolling Stone link, possible paywall?).

Words cannot express how bizarre/kinda gross this gets.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:14 PM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


The perils of success in the gag economy
posted by allium cepa at 7:16 PM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


That Rolling Stone link actually answers a lot of my questions. Like how you get the fart actually in the jar (she said she actually jams fabric flower petals in her crack and farts on them), and what to do if the fart isn't a smelly one (she says that putting the petals in her butt crack gives them a butt smell anyway). I also learned that one guy specifically requested cheesy farts, so she ate a block of cheddar for it (she claims that particular scent was one of her most popular). I also appreciate that they mostly play the interview straight. Like this is clearly hilarious, but I also have a lot of serious questions about it.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:39 AM on January 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


My favorite bit about that Rolling Stone article was the very last question-and-answer:
What’s the starting tool kit for an aspiring entrepreneur? Is there anything you need?

A butthole. (Laughs)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:42 AM on January 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


I've been doing a lot of reading lately about how surviving in late stage capitalism has warped our ideas about art and relaxation to the point where people feel pressured to have constant "productive downtime" and monetise their hobbies.

What I'm saying is now I'm worried I've been wasting the potential content-making power of my butthole.
posted by fight or flight at 6:01 AM on January 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


I am definitely opening a restaurant that just serves farts in jars, because I'm all about pushing the avant garde envelope and having bottles shaped like my buttocks that ask the question "What If Fart?"

I'm gonna call it 'Nose'. Them Michelin stars will be rolling in.
posted by Sparx at 2:27 PM on January 9, 2022


It's a shame Hasbro still holds the trademark for Jarts.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:42 PM on January 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


What I'm saying is now I'm worried I've been wasting the potential content-making power of my butthole.

Don't worry, mine has been making enough "content" for all of us.

(someday I am going to apply for a job and the interviewer is going to pull up all of my comments in this thread)
posted by Literaryhero at 4:07 PM on January 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


> someday I am going to apply for a job and the interviewer is going to pull up all of my comments in this thread

ProTip: if they don't high five you, you don't want to work with them
posted by Pronoiac at 7:28 AM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Questions Have Been Raised: The Fart Jars NFT story doesn’t pass the smell test
posted by clawsoon at 5:42 AM on January 11, 2022


« Older Creating type with Lego   |   Johan Huizinga -- Homo Ludens Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments