Once the life-sustaining properties of flatulence were widely known, there were many social consequences. People who openly farted around others were no longer treated with disdain but with grudging respect. But contrastingly, farting lost a lot of its humorous associations, as people came to view a fart being made for comedic effect as a fart that could now not be used to save a life, as if the dispenser had just poured a litre of blood down the drain for a joke. Such things were deemed unacceptable. When the Red Cross adopted the phrase “Pull my finger” as the slogan for its campaign to increase donations of flatulence for disaster victims, a classic joke was essentially lost forever. – Dean Burnett
thepatterpod.com 