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Fired for Farting: The Story Behind Florida Man Paul Flart

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A hospital security guard’s gas turned into internet gold, then got him fired — and he says it was worth it.

In August 2018, a 31-year-old New Jersey transplant named Doug turned a graveyard-shift habit into one of the strangest viral runs of the year. Working the lobby desk at Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center in Davenport, Doug discovered the sign-in area had unusually crisp acoustics — the kind of echo that turns a routine bodily function into a full production. Under the handle @PaulFlart, a nod to “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” he built a following of over 75,000 people before his employer ever figured out what he was doing on the clock.

• Doug filmed more than 70 deadpan flatulence videos over five months at Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center before Barstool Sports and LADbible supercuts pushed his views into the tens of millions in mid-August 2018.
• He was fired on August 23, 2018, mid-shift, after the security contractor’s owner’s son emailed management asking, “Who’s this character?”
• Doug’s termination was officially tied to filming on client property and personal phone use in uniform — not the farting itself — and he livestreamed the entire confrontation to Instagram.

Lobby Desk Transformed Into Studio

Doug’s origin story starts small. In March 2018, he sent a friend group chat a recording of one particularly resonant fart echoing through the hospital lobby, and the reaction was immediate — they told him to put it on Instagram. He launched @PaulFlart, crowned himself “The Fart Authority,” and spent the next five months filming himself in uniform, letting one rip during the dead air between visitors signing in.

The bit worked because of the setting. A quiet medical lobby with hard floors and high ceilings isn’t built for comedy, which is exactly why it landed. Doug played it completely straight — no mugging for the camera, no punchline, just a security guard doing his job and then, occasionally, not doing his job.

The Supercut That Broke the Internet

Doug’s Instagram had built a modest cult audience through the spring and summer, but the real explosion came when Barstool Sports and LADbible compiled his best clips into supercuts in mid-August 2018. Those edits raked in tens of millions of views across platforms and pushed his follower count past 75,000 almost overnight. It’s the kind of jump that turns a private joke among friends into a story local news outlets can’t ignore — and that’s exactly what happened next.

The Email That Ended It

Virality has a way of finding the wrong inbox. The son of the security contracting firm’s owner stumbled across the clips and fired off a message to management asking, simply, “Who’s this character?” That question set off a chain that ended Doug’s shift, and his job, within days.

On August 23, 2018, Doug showed up for his 2 to 11 p.m. shift and was confronted by his supervisor almost immediately. He livestreamed the whole thing to Instagram, refusing to sign the write-up or put his phone away while his boss laid into him for embarrassing the client and upper management.

Doug’s boss didn’t cite the farting on the paperwork at all — the write-up came down to filming on a client’s private medical property and personal phone use in uniform.

No Regrets and a Patreon

Doug didn’t fight the firing. He told outlets covering the story that he’d rather chase the momentum than keep the badge, and he moved fast — launching a Patreon and setting his sights on becoming, by his own description, the first person to make a full-time living purely off fart content. It’s a strange career pivot, but Doug wasn’t shy about naming the goal out loud.

The Paul Flart saga fits neatly alongside the internet’s long love affair with only-in-Florida stories, the kind that also fueled the Red Lobster Mother’s Day brawl going viral for all the wrong reasons, or the deadpan absurdity of a remote-controlled alligator prank catching strangers off guard. Doug’s version just happened to come with a termination notice attached.

Doug never got his job back at Heart of Florida Regional, and he never asked for it. Last anyone heard, he was still posting as The Fart Authority and still selling the bit to whoever wanted in on the Patreon — proof that getting fired on camera can be a better business plan than the job itself.