Social smoking is the butt of fart jokes in a new online Ontario health ministry advertising blitz that has gone viral.

The flatulence-filled spot — which CNN’s Erin Burnett said “might be the best public service announcement you’ll ever see” — targets those who consider themselves social smokers, refusing to admit that any smoking is bad.

“Just because I fart at parties now and then, it doesn’t make me a farter,” an actress says.

“I wouldn’t call myself a farter, I’m a social farter.”

The light-hearted video created by Toronto-based advertising agency BBDO has had about 330,000 YouTube views, and is aimed at young adults 18 to 29 years. It uses humour to convey a serious message that smoking, regardless of the amount, can cause permanent damage and even death.

The young woman actress explains and illustrates that farting is all part of her social activities and that sometimes she will use farting as an excuse to meet a guy.

“Do you want to go outside for a fart,” she asks innocently.

The commercial is part of a $2.7 million health ministry antismoking campaign.

It has been featured in the Daily Mail in the U.K., Time magazine, and newspapers as far away as New Zealand and Australia as well as websites like Huffington Post and Daily Beast.

Equally irreverent but thus far less popular on YouTube, is a related ad profiling a social nibbler, who routinely picks from other people’s plates but refuses to consider himself a nibbler.

“Sure I nibble but that doesn’t make me a nibbler,” says a male actor after picking off a stranger’s dinner plate at a restaurant.

That commercial appears on Facebook, YouTube, and in movie theatres.

Health Minister Deb Matthews told the Star there is a “very serious social policy angle” featured in the cheeky ads.

“Almost two-thirds of people who smoke a cigarette in a social setting go on to become smokers. So, what we are trying to do by this is capture some attention and have people face the fact that they are smokers . . . 50 per cent of people who smoke will die from smoking,” she said.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Matthews said the farting ad’s popularity proves it “is accomplishing its purpose.”

Alan Middleton, assistant professor marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University, disagrees.

Middleton said while he had a good chuckle watching the social farting video, he concluded the video misses the mark because it overwhelms the message — smoking is bad for you.

“You are going to have a lot of people buzzing about this . . . without actually taking away the message, which is social smoking . . . is bad for you and bad for your friends. I think what you got is a highly memorable ad that doesn’t create memorability of the problem,” he said.