Roland Le Farteur: The first "procto-tiktoker" in history

Sometimes I sit in front of the screen… and I find myself irremediably boomer. I stand there, my coffee cup in mid-air, wondering how unlikely characters can make tons of money by playing a robot eating virtual popcorn or dancing for three seconds by just wiggling their toes.

We feel modern, children of a crazy era that monetized nothingness. We think that the TikTok & Co. algorithms. have created monsters never seen before.

But suddenly, from the hidden recesses of history, a name arrives “whispered”: Roland Le Farteur.

A talent from another time (literally)

We are in twelfth-century England, at the court of King Henry II. In a world dominated by armored knights, political intrigue, and ruthless rulers, Roland didn't wield a sword and couldn't read Latin. Yet he was an undisputed star. And wealthy: with his earnings from his trade, he was able to purchase an entire manor with thirty acres of land in Hemingstone, Suffolk.

Her task to earn such fortune? To present herself at court every Christmas to perform, before the King and the British nobility, a very specific artistic performance: “Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum”.

Translated for non-Latinists: a jump, a whistle and a fart.

A single, masterful, regal flatulence a year. And the beauty of it is that Roland was not an isolated case; he was the king of the farting medieval, professionals of later acoustic entertainment, paid a lot of money to add a touch of panache to royal banquets.

From the court of Henry II to the social media feed

If you think about it, Roland was the real, undisputed proto-tiktoker. Rather, let's use the correct term: a procto-tiktoker.

The dynamics are exactly the same as we see today:

• The Content: An absurd, repetitive gesture, devoid of any apparent intellectual value.
• The Target: A bored audience, constantly seeking distraction and light entertainment (yesterday the nobles gorged on wild boar, today we on the sofa scrolling through the screen).
• Monetization: Immense incomes based on the ability to capture the attention of the “sovereign” of the moment (then the King, today the Algorithm).

The real difference? Roland must have had pinpoint control of his muscles and colon. There was craftsmanship in that single Christmas fart. Today, unfortunately, going viral often takes much less effort than even making a fart.

The beauty of the absurd

Far from trying to be a moralist, I find all this wonderful. It shows us that human beings, over the centuries, haven't changed a bit. We seek beauty, high art, poetry that heals the soul... but then we laugh at a distracting butt noise made at the right time.

The creative chaos of human history is a perfect circle. Yesterday, you earned fiefdoms by farting for the King; today, you buy penthouses in Dubai by making verses in front of a webcam.

So, dear algorithm, I don't fear you. The next time I see a senseless video getting millions of views, I won't get angry anymore. I'll think of Roland, his jump, his whistle, and his bumbulum. And I'll smile, thinking that deep down, Middle Ages it never ended.