The year 2020 was extraordinarily tough for students and teachers. The COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures, which resulted in kids of various ages getting stuck on Zoom for remote lessons all day, challenging their mental health and educational advancement.
So when a teacher in Topeka, Kansas, played a fart sound as a prank during a Zoom class with her third-graders, the result prompted a much-needed round of giggles and belly laughs.
Teacher Emma Tichenor even uploaded the video of the gag to her Facebook page on Dec. 8, 2020, and the video went viral, even popping up on social media, two years later in December 2022. A Reddit post from late December 2022, for example, showed a screenshot captioned, "Teacher farts on Zoom."
Again, to be clear, Tichenor didn't actually fart. In her Facebook post, she said she played a "toot sound" with the express purpose of lightening the mood. And it worked. One child was seen laughing uncontrollably.
Passing gas is its own category of internet rumor. Examples of items from our collection of flatulence-themed tropes include a rumor that a man died in a meth lab explosion after lighting his farts on fire. A surprisingly "true" example is the claim that manatees control their buoyancy using farts.