I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

Apologies if this feels like something out of The Telegraph, but a tipping point may have been reached...

I read today that a Reality TV star, from a program called "Ninety Day Fiance", which lies somewhere outside my demographic reach, has been making £38,000 a week selling her farts in jars. Her Twitter page features the tag-line "Imagine the Smell", but you wont have to if you shell out $1000 dollars a pop for Stephanie Matto's patented anal gas collectibles. 

Stephanie, a conventionally attractive woman with large breasts, had consumed three protein shakes and a large bowl of black bean soup in order to maximise her anal output. Unfortunately, it was too much for her system and, according to reports, the pricey pumper "thought she was having a stroke" and was rushed to hospital. During a pandemic. 

The pong- trepreneur explained: "I was advised to change my diet and to take a gas suppressant medication, which has effectively ended my business."

Or it would have done, but for the wonders of the modern world: Stephanie's farts have gone digital! As the silent-but-deadly pioneer says: "Now you can purchase a digital fart jar NFT and own a piece of viral worldwide history! Some jars come with redeemable physical jars (presumably full of farts) and other fun collectibles." 

Now.

There's a lot to unscrew and breathe in here. It's taken me a while to get my head around the whole NFT thing but, for those not in the know, it stands for "Non Fungible Token", and is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain which is, in itself, a form of digital ledger. NFTs use a digital ledger to provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership of your fart, but do not restrict the sharing or copying of the underlying digital files. Obviously. Otherwise what would be the point? 

I'll level with you - I have trouble enough with the concept of an NFT, but when it's representative of a fart in a jar...I'm struggling. When the fart was a physical entity I was confused enough. What do you do with a thousand dollar jar of lady fart? Do you open it and huff it up, like the ghost of the best meal you never tasted? Or do you leave it in the jar, hoping it will accrue value like a fine wine? A vintage Matto parp with top-notes of black-cherry and sulfur, only becoming more complex and sophisticated with time. Who has enough money to spend a grand on a bespoke arse-cough? She's selling fifty of these a week, meaning there are fifty men in the world, and of course it's men, stumping up 1000 clams for her to grunt over a screw-top. 

Are there collectors? Are there bum-squeak libraries, connoisseurs poring over pyramids of stacked quacks, each neatly labelled and lovingly annotated. A ledger of provenance for each gut-drop and air-biscuit, a be-gloved curator with a ring of key's on his belt, demanding silence in the fart gallery. And now its not even a physical fart, it's a representation of a fart: it's phartography. 

That's a level of sophistication I can't comprehend: pride in the undisputed ownership of a representation of a reality TV star's flatulence. I can show you the receipt. That's societal decadence right there, isn't it? That's not even sexual perversion. It's not as decent and honest as good old fashioned sexual perversion. 

Why is she stopping there? Where are the tins of piss? The vials of vomit? Why not sell your poo too, Stephanie? Clearly there's a market for it. Or am I being crass. Is the bottled fart the saucy wink of the the human excrescence market? Have I over-stepped the mark again?

There are the familiar dry coughs, the rustled newspapers, the scraping of chair legs and a guttural "Oh now really", and I'm asked to to leave the premises. And I can take my shoe-box full of shite with me. After all, who the fuck am I? I've never even been on "Ninety Day Fiance".