Why Are Farts Funny?

Everyone knows farts are funny. We discover that as kids. A brother or sister farts, everyone giggles and says “Ew.” As we get older it becomes even less appropriate and more embarrassing to be the farter. This inappropriateness and embarrassment is part of why we find farts so funny.

The other part is that they are a bit bad. They smell bad. It’s a poor experience to have, smelling another person;s gas. That said, it is not a grave, tragic event like a car accident. It is just bad enough to be funny, like falling on your ass when slipping on a banana peel.

So, we have social embarrassment and ‘pain’ (in one of its milder forms.

There’s another factor: universality. Everyone farts. Everyone, rich, poor, big, strong, weak, from any country i the world, farts. Farts have no language. They unite us, by remind us of our common humanity. A poor and rich man will share a chuckle over a small ‘toot’. This is mainly true when farts are accidental. When a person farts on purpose, it’s simply viewed as crass, not amusing.

And yet, many reject all fart humor as sophmoric. I suppose it is childish, but we all harbor that inner child, even as adults. It’s why we titter if a politician lets a little fart escape as he gives a speech. Of if a beautiful female model lets out a loud “Thhhhhbt” as she struts down the cat walk. Both the model and politician are funnier farters because it maximizes the social inappropriateness factor. In both scenarios there is an incongruity between when it is acceptable to fart, and the situation into which the fart was introduced (important speech in public, or on a catwalk as one looks sexy).

There is something in the frailty of man that we see inherent in the fart. Our imperfection and mortality is on display in a benign way that’s not too scary for us to handle, so we laugh at it. We laugh at the nodding understanding of the truth that we are all just farting, imperfect animals.

Farts aren’t just funny, they are perhaps one of the highest and basest expressions of mankind. We are all one. We all fart.