Are farts funny? History has long tussled with this question, and it won’t be answered today. However, if farts are or can be funny, then they are certainly funny in the story of “Paul Flart,” a 31-year-old security guard at a Florida hospital who has quietly documented his many, many farts on Instagram for the past six months. The variety of farts is gobsmacking—quick, drawn-out, sometimes throaty and sometimes viscous—and Flart himself seems to be both delighted and troubled by the flatulence he unleashes. You can watch them all in the compendium above, which has soared through Reddit’s r/videos page and into viral infamy.
Vice got in touch with the guy, whose real name is Doug. He started the job after moving from New Jersey to help his mom out, and found he had a lot of free time while sitting around at the front desk. “The lobby has really great acoustics, and naturally, we all fart,” he told Vice, omitting the fact that while we all fart we do not all fart like he does. “One day I ripped a rather nice one and got really good sound from it, so the next time it happened I recorded it and sent it to my group chat.” He credits the group chat with innovating his name, and the rest is history.
Of course, shortly following the compilation’s Reddit success, Flart got shitcanned, but, in a rare instance of personal-brand livestreaming working out for the better, he filmed the whole thing.
Man, that boss seems like a prick! Flart deserves to be free, and now he is. He is, inevitably, lining up merchandise and a Patreon, and he has big, stupid plans for Flart. “We’re going to keep making content,” he tells Vice. “We can do Paul Flart on vacation, you know, throw in like a Hawaiian shirt and a hat of some sort and then just fart around Florida. We’re just going to keep going.” That is, legitimately, a better premise for comedy than most actual Kevin James movies. We wish Flart the best.