I’m fascinated by all things olfactory—the high and the low. Especially the low. Especially fart stories. They are compelling: they reveal fundamental truths about human nature, shed light on cultural trends, and are just funny as hell.
My go-to source for fart news is the New York Post, which covers the gross and the gritty with unparalleled panache. For example, they were all over the guy who started selling audio recordings of his farts as NFTs. That story combined human nature (the self-regard for one’s own audibles) with entrepreneurial audacity, and in doing so provided a fitting commentary on the NFT craze.
(The story outraged my buddy S, a well-regarded Ivy League scientist who has been recording his own farts for years. He gleefully plays them back to friends and strangers for the sheer entertainment value and was rather miffed that this poseur nobody had found a way to monetize the art form.)
[Please for the love of God don’t tell the story about the Nobel Laureate and the fart machine.—Ed.] [Okay, okay, maybe another time.]
Last month the Post featured a female reality TV star who was farting into jars and selling them. Having written about my encounter with the leader of the Fart Smeller Movement, the fact that the ‘90 Day Fiancé’ lady found a lucrative market for her effluvia didn’t strike me as too outlandish. It’s natural to want a keepsake from somebody famous. I still have the guitar pick Lenny Kaye flung into the audience at a long-ago Patti Smith concert.
Today the Post has a followup story on fart-in-a-jar queen Stephanie Matto. It seems she was so committed to her work—maintaining a hyper-flatugenic diet carefully tuned for odor notes—that she developed abdominal pains. She interpreted these as a heart attack but a visit to the ER led to an alternative diagnosis and a career-ending prescription for gas reduction medication. So after making an alleged $200,000 selling the jars, she has now exited the business.
2022 New Year’s Prediction #1: Stephanie Matto will have a celebrity fragrance deal in a matter of months.