News: Mobile Apps Come Full Circle — AR Fart Machines Have Arrived

It's long past time to face the facts: farts are funny.

The first fart joke dates back nearly 4,000 years to the ancient Sumerian people. References to flatulence were also found in ancient Greece within the works of Aristophanes. (More like Aristo-fannies, am I right?) A standard in practical jokes, the whoopie cushion debuted way back during the time of the Roman Empire.

Fast forward many years and you'll find the modern update to the whoopie cushion among the first generation of smartphone mobile apps. Apple's App Store launched in July 2008; iFart debuted in Dec. 2008 and topped the app on the charts by Christmas Day.

So it's fitting that mere months after ARKit launched with iOS 11 that we are dealt the first augmented reality fart app.

Available now for free in the App Store, fARtjacker gives users the esteemed privilege of visualizing clouds of imaginary methane forcefully expelled from the posteriors of their peers. In other words, you can make fake farts come out of your friend's butts!

The act of simulating flatulence in fARtjacker is as simple as the one cheek sneak. Point your iPhone's camera at your subject, touch his or her butt on your screen and swipe in the direction that you want the wind to blow. To preserve your work of (f)art for the Smithsonian, hit the record button first, then proceed with the swiping.

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The app gives you standard gas for free. With a $0.99 in-app purchase, you can unlock The Rainbow, The Atomic Cloud, Laser Danger, Bee Attack, and The Hose. I mean, for less than that, you can buy a can of beans with which you could generate your own ass clouds. But who among us has the natural capability to blast bees from their butts? That feat takes a little AR assistance.

Of course, if you shelled out a grand for an iPhone X, you deserve a higher level of sophistication. That's where FacefARt comes to play.

Developer Hung Truong has squeezed out his own wind-breaking app leveraging the TrueDepth camera of the iPhone X. Here, your luxurious pocket computer will emit the dulcet tones of rectal relief whenever your open your mouth. The engineers at Snapchat must be kicking themselves for not thinking of this first.

The app isn't available to the public as a download, but the source code for FacefARt is available on Github. Truong is skeptical of his chances of getting Apple to approve the app for the App Store. (Whatever gave him that idea?)

If these AR apps aren't up your alley, then you can always rewatch Idiocracy and weep with the realization that its entire plot is coming to fruition before our very eyes.

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