Fart-noises are cool again: gaseous trap remixes and flatulence trends are blowing up on TikTok

• TikTokers are recording themselves trying not to laugh at two TikTok sounds.
• The sounds, "Mario Desert Type Beat 2" and "A Christmas Fart," both feature fart noises.
• There are also dance challenges associated with each track.

Fart noises are funny. That's a relatively undisputed (and well elaborated-upon) fact of life: from the whoopee cushion to a well-placed, suspected Rudy Giuliani fart during a Michigan election hearing that made headlines in December. Right now, they're having a moment on TikTok, with users recording themselves trying not to laugh at two different sounds that feature perfectly-timed farts alongside other sound bites taken directly from meme culture.

"Mario Desert Type Beat 2," uploaded by user @prodtroy, and "A Christmas Fart," uploaded by @codydamrow, have been making the rounds on TikTok since late December, inspiring parallel dance challenges and a deluge of people recording themselves trying not to laugh.

"Who else swore this sound wasn't funny at all until you started recording," @prodtud wrote in the caption of a video reacting to "A Christmas Fart."

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Both "Mario Desert Type Beat 2," which was uploaded to TikTok on December 4, and "A Christmas Fart," which was uploaded on December 20, involve pre-existing tracks: "Desert Overworld" from the 2006 "New Super Mario Bros." and Wham!'s "Last Christmas," respectively. A cursory scroll through ProdTroy's SoundCloud reveals a number of sounds of the same ilk with farts galore. They're labeled as "type beats" - a label that some producers attach to tracks to signify that they're emulating a specific artist or producer.

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Along with the fart noises, both tracks sample a variety of sounds familiar to the online crowd, including "Bruh Sound Effect #2," a sound effect that has nearly 19 million views on YouTube. "Mario Desert Type Beat 2" also includes "wocky slush," a sound bite from a TikTok uploaded by user @juvenilextc in which one person says "wocky slush" in a nasal voice that people have compared to Squilliam Fancyson from "SpongeBob Squarepants. "A Christmas Fart" includes the sound "Minecraft" characters make when they take damage, and a "fishy fishy" line taken from a McDonald's commercial.

Both sounds are also associated with dances that feature similar movements, like bending forward to thrust your butt out in time with the fart noises, and editing styles that make people look like a character from "Hotel Transylvania" or "[Candace] from 'Phineas and Ferb,'" as some commenters noted.

Comments on some of the videos are sarcastic, with people making quips like "waiting for my laugh give it a minute" or "wow so funny that i forgot to laugh." However, the videos frequently have millions of views and both of the fart-laden sounds are associated with thousands of videos.

Furthermore, the current fart renaissance on TikTok has a storied pedigree, The Conversation reported, tracing back to the Sumerians in 1900 BC and Western canon mainstays like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors." Trevor Cox, an acoustic engineer at the University of Salford, recounted his research on fart sounds to PBS in 2018, saying that he found that certain factors like the whine or duration of a fart noise influence how funny people find it.

Farts have previously found success on TikTok as well. Creators like @swamp.son have amassed millions of collective likes with fart-based humor, flying across rooms while the sounds of flatulence reverberate in the background.

Ultimately, it's little surprise that the two tracks are blowing up on TikTok: while they feature a number of notable callbacks to meme culture, they also draw upon a centuries-old tradition of flatulence in comedy. From overexaggerated choreography to a "try not to laugh" challenge that rewards giving into low-brow humor, TikTokers are reverting to what's arguably the purest joke of all: the fart.