The Health Benefits of Smelling Farts

July 13, 2014 7:48 AM

From TIME Magazine
posted by SillyShepherd (65 comments total)

I smell a Pulitzer for Time!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:55 AM on July 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

I will live forever.
posted by schmod at 7:56 AM on July 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

"He was farting like a racehorse."

That is, hands-down, my favorite simile of all time, and I have been waiting for a chance to share it. This FPP is likely the best opportunity for that.
posted by Danf at 7:59 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

You're welcome.
posted by yoink at 8:00 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

New study finds that Time Magazine and The Onion are virtually indistinguishable!
posted by kozad at 8:00 AM on July 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

He who smelt it enjoyed an increased resistance to cancer.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:06 AM on July 13, 2014 [24 favorites]

New study finds that Time Magazine and The Onion are virtually indistinguishable!

Are we officially post-satire yet?
posted by tommasz at 8:07 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

It can be my own fart, right?

Right?

...please?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:07 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yes. That is called self-medicating.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:10 AM on July 13, 2014 [11 favorites]

Also, I will sing "Heroes" by Bowie every time I fart from this day forth.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:11 AM on July 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Shameless plug: not sure if this is OK on the Blue but for a reasonable fee you too can hire me to personally supply top quality cancer protection. I charge by the hour. For references regarding emission frequency and intensity you may contact my wife. Entertaining audio options included at no extra cost! Call me today to book an appointment!
posted by Hairy Lobster at 8:15 AM on July 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

I asked google "Why do I enjoy the smell of my own farts?" site:ask.metafilter.com.

The results page was OK but it did not exactly answer my question.
posted by bukvich at 8:15 AM on July 13, 2014

A whiff here and there is not exactly how I fart.
posted by srboisvert at 8:17 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Here's the depressing part: We now live in a journalistic era where Buzzfeed calls out TIME for writing sensational content. Pretty soon The Economist will have a quiz you can take to find out what kind of farter you are.
posted by analogue at 8:18 AM on July 13, 2014 [27 favorites]

Note to self - eat more dairy.

For the benefit of society.
posted by spinifex23 at 8:20 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I will live forever.

Yes! As will they, for reasons just now revealed.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 8:21 AM on July 13, 2014

Beans, beans the musical fruit,
the more you eat the more you toot,
if you toot more you get less tumors,
your cancer is cured, so says the rumor . . . .

Sophisticated poetry of the day.
posted by birdhaus at 8:24 AM on July 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Dear routergirl, get in touch with your kids...

I used to tell my sons that if they farted in public they had to sniff it all up before anyone smelled it. When my youngest was 14 he overheard me telling someone else about this, and he said, "Oh my god, I believed that until, like, a year ago!"

I just asked my son if there were any other ones he remembered (I do this a lot - make stuff up and tell it to my kids as gospel truth) and he said, "There are, but I've blocked them out due to the mental trauma of being called stupid by my friends."

posted by MonkeyToes at 8:25 AM on July 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

Upon reflection, clearly bogus science. One human year should be, like, 1/7 dog years.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 8:25 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I will live forever.

Fart!
I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna learn how to fly

Fart!
I feel it coming together
People will see me and cry
posted by Sys Rq at 8:28 AM on July 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

I believe they're changing the name of elevators to "mobile cancer treatment stations."
posted by yoink at 8:31 AM on July 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Object d'schmoop posted this on Facebook a couple days ago with the observation "this makes me a god."

I was very, very wise and chose to make ABSOLUTELY NO COMMENT ON THE MATTER.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:42 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dutch oven alternative medicine.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:50 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Farts that don't smell are homeopathic.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:03 AM on July 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

No.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:07 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

You should hire me instead as I am of Eastern European descent.

Just sayin'.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:08 AM on July 13, 2014

Here I sit all broken hearted
Tried to shit but only farted.
Yesterday I shat my pants a-
trying for a cure for cancer.
posted by flabdablet at 9:47 AM on July 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

"He was farting like a racehorse."

I always liked Martin Amis's "Keith Whitehead lay on sandpaper blankets farting like a wizard." (from Dead Babies)
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:50 AM on July 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is merely an excuse for me to start giving my SO dutch ovens.

no, sweetie, i am actually saving your life
posted by supermassive at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Here's the depressing part: We now live in a journalistic era where Buzzfeed calls out TIME for writing sensational content.

Something about this story just didn't smell right to them?
posted by yoink at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Every man likes the smell of his own farts." -- Icelandic proverb

And now we know why.
posted by GrammarMoses at 10:18 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

This reminds me of another fart-related discovery I learned of recently... Perhaps it's why Buddha lived to a ripe old age.

So-Called Breathing Meditation: A notice on the mistranslation of Ānāpānasati
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandal ... editation/

Mazard's argument is that a key term, apāna, has been badly mistranslated and gone virtually unnoticed. rather than meaning 'out breath' it in fact means 'fart'. If this is the case it could have far reaching consequences for meditation technique.

posted by fivebells at 10:19 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

So at this point even smelling farts is better than reading Time Magazine?
posted by srboisvert at 10:32 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Watching Brazilian fart porn with your loved ones has never been more rewarding.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:57 AM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Time's next "man of the year" cover will feature a scratch & sniff card.
posted by chavenet at 11:02 AM on July 13, 2014

I am furious this article made it to a FPP on the blue. The title is outright wrong and extrapolates something from the work of the Exeter scientists THEY DID NOT SAY.

The first sentence of the report from the University of Exeter (after the summary) clarifies:

A new compound (AP39), designed and made at the University of Exeter, could hold the key to future therapies, by targeting delivery of very small amounts of the substance to the right (or key) places inside cells.

Ingesting hydrogen sulfide through the olfactory system (smelling farts) HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH.

This is not the best of the web. This is misrepresentation and falsehood.
posted by mistersquid at 11:17 AM on July 13, 2014 [10 favorites]

Someone at Time must have seen that Buzzfeed article, because the current article is edited to have a really snarky headline and tone which the original article didn't have.
posted by ymgve at 11:25 AM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Without having RTFA or any comments, I can tell you there aint no bedbugs in this house. Not sure how the kitty can handle it.
posted by metagnathous at 12:20 PM on July 13, 2014

For what its worth, I realized immediately that this headline was egregious false. In this one instance, however, I think its essential we suppress the truth. Primarily because this gives me a lifetime excuse to fart all I want anywhere I want.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:28 PM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Upon reading this article, my father bellowed, "YOU'RE WELCOME!"
posted by jonp72 at 12:38 PM on July 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

can I ragefart at bad science reporting in general?
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 12:57 PM on July 13, 2014

This is not the best of the web. This is misrepresentation and falsehood.

Yeah, but FARTS!
posted by Sys Rq at 1:04 PM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am furious this article made it to a FPP on the blue. The title is outright wrong and extrapolates something from the work of the Exeter scientists THEY DID NOT SAY.

The science news cycle.
posted by dirigibleman at 1:17 PM on July 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

I am furious this article made it to a FPP on the blue. The title is outright wrong and extrapolates something from the work of the Exeter scientists THEY DID NOT SAY.

Party pooper.
posted by grateful at 1:47 PM on July 13, 2014

Party pooper.

Actually, they tried to poop, but only farted.
posted by jonp72 at 1:53 PM on July 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

My wife is going to be immortal
posted by photoslob at 1:54 PM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Lose a couple of moderators and this is what passes for "best of the web". GOLF CLAP!
posted by Renoroc at 2:59 PM on July 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Actually, I just thought it was sort of an amusingly weird bit of Sunday morning ridiculousness, and when I first saw it it was because it got a couple flags for a runaway italic tag that had messed up the front page and after I'd fixed that I felt a kind of warped filial responsibility for the poor thing and just ran with it. But keep on clappin', Grumpy.
posted by cortex at 3:03 PM on July 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

Here I sit,
Trying to poo,
But lacking the wit
To write a haiku.
posted by Evilspork at 3:13 PM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Actually, the post is fascinating for the two headlines. That's hilarious.
posted by Trochanter at 3:20 PM on July 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

The merchandising opportunities for this are immense. For example, the Time "Person of the Year" mirror, except now the mirror says "Smell This Person's Farts".
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:59 PM on July 13, 2014

Homeopathic farts: literally a jar of air.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:01 PM on July 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

The best part is the editorial art. I see what you did there, Time. I do.
posted by NedKoppel at 5:10 PM on July 13, 2014

I feel there was a missed opportunity here with the tagging:
explosions
buttexplosions
poogas
gas
fart
smells
hewhosmeltitdealtit

etc.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:13 PM on July 13, 2014

I wanted to give it a tag of hewhodenieseitsuppliesit, but, as it was, I almost forgot to add the two tags that I did. As t was, I was surprised to see it make the front page.
posted by SillyShepherd at 6:37 PM on July 13, 2014

Lol you know there's only one page right? You hit post and yous on it. although I like the idea that it has to go through, say, IRL or Jobs first.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:01 PM on July 13, 2014

I so wish that farts could somehow have a color.
posted by breadbox at 8:25 PM on July 13, 2014

I so wish that farts could somehow have a color.


Synesthesia question: If smells have a color, what colors are farts?
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:37 PM on July 13, 2014

Those around him so seldom farted
At an early age, he joined our dearly departed
posted by juiceCake at 9:14 PM on July 13, 2014

My ex-fiance´became my ex for many reasons that became clear once he moved in with me, but probably one of the more telling was that he honestly believed that women didn't fart, they couldn't fart, and that I had something seriously wrong with me because I farted.
posted by kinetic at 4:01 AM on July 14, 2014

Synesthesia question: If smells have a color, what colors are farts?

Serious answer - it may depend on the exact quality of the smells and the exact synesthete.

I met someone with synesthesia once (he had color/personality synesthesia, where as he got to know you he started perceiving a subtle color glow around you) and he said that what people often didn't get is that it's not just like "[foo] is red, [baz] is blue, [schmeh] is purple", but that there is a Panetone-level specificity to the colors; [foo] isn't just "red", it's "the sort of deep orangey-red that you can find in really good heirloom tomatoes, but not in the supermarket ones". He also said that it was different for every person - his [foo] may be red, but someone else's [foo] would be taupe.

And thus, given that the chemical compound of each instance of flatus would change, I imagine that the smell would also change - which means that a synesthete would experience differently each time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:10 AM on July 14, 2014

I have just written a pop-sci treatise on the speculative effects of farts on synesthesia. This is truly my finest moment for the day.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:48 AM on July 14, 2014

Yea my husband read this and now says "there, I just prevented cancer for you. You're welcome."
posted by stormpooper at 7:23 AM on July 14, 2014

Does it count if you just sniff freshly opened potato chip bags?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:36 PM on July 14, 2014

If smells have a color, what colors are farts?

#006699.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:26 PM on July 14, 2014