When someone kept stinking up her aeroplane with their — I’m sorry, I need to do this — unrelenting fart surge, New York City-based video producer Devin Hance decided to meet the situation head on. Fart on. After a moment of disappointed acceptance, hanging her head in her hands, and, she tells Kotaku, “gagging” as the farts kept coming briefly after boarding, Hance began a game of ruthless, in-person Battleship, as she demonstrated in a popular TikTok.
Battleship is an old strategy board game involving two players with ships hidden from each other on a grid. Players call out coordinates to take down enemy ships with the goal of shattering the entire fleet. The game has a long board game history, sharing similarities with the French game L’Attaque, released in 1925, and was popularised in a nectarine orange box for the American market by Milton Bradley in 1967. Neither of these iterations involved farts, if you were wondering.
But Hance’s TikTok is testament to the fact that any game can be about farts, really, as long as you have the vision for it.
After she accepted her fate, Hance began using her iPhone to AirDrop an ominous message to all passengers with the capability available. After all, anyone could be the fart culprit. “If you’re farting on the plane, please stop,” she wrote. I like it, it’s to the point. I will try saying it to my gut flora the next time I have a big cheeseburger.
In response, other passengers initiated their game of real-life — I’m sorry, I mean real-fart — Battleship, eliminating their seats like coordinates on a board.
“It doesn’t stink next to me, it’s someone next to you,” one passenger replied matter-of-factly. “Bro it’s aisle 16 most likely,” another said boldly. Then, Hance started playing actual, virtual Battleship on the aeroplane screens with four AirDrop victims. She says she won every game, and that, though she never found the farter, “they stopped five minutes after the AirDrop party. You could hear laughter throughout the plane.” You take what you can get.
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