VIDEO. “Nature is not a trash can”: Flooz-flooz the scoundrel, ambassador of Haute-Saône on TikTok

Under the pseudonym “Flooz-flooz la rascal”, Julien Delaunay, 31-year-old Haut-Saônois, accumulates views and thousands of subscribers on social networks. Videographer, mushroom picker, carp fisher, vice-champion of France of Uno but also defender of the environment; it’s deep in the forest, a few kilometers from “V’soul”, that the rascal gave us an appointment.

“I’m taking myself a bully, I’m not even explaining to you how I’m tricked.”

You have to be from Franche-Comté to understand its patois. Julien Delaunay alias “Flooz-flooz la raspouille” on social networks, does not have his tongue in his pocket, especially when it comes to making fun “city dwellers”. 38,000 subscribers follow his adventures on TikTok as well as 12,000 on Snapchat and a few thousand on instagram and Facebook (as of October 28, 2022).

In the videos he publishes, the big guy indeed plays shots of the countryside and the Haute-Saône department. “City dwellers look down on us a little, they say “the earthy ones, with their rusty cars, in their tractor, they are going to pick mushrooms, the kinds of homo sapiens there!” So I said to myself: I’m going to make my videos in country mode, I’m going to make puns, tell funny situations and in the end it works, people like it” explains the latter. A kind of successor to the videographer Morteau Morille, but Haute-Patate version.

“In Haute-Saône, we have a comfort of life that we don’t find much elsewhere. There are lots of woods, forests everywhere, the people are cool, we have good food, etc… ”, he says with his accent to cut with a knife. An accent that he forces “a little, sometimes” he concedes with a big smile. “There is still this spirit of the countryside which is really anchored. In the villages, the little old people sit on the stone benches, you have cows, old vehicles…”

Originally from Port-sur-Saône, he spent his childhood accompanying his father, a hunter in his spare time, in the woods. “I’ve been going to shrooms since I was a kid”. Leaning on the bumper of his “self”, a Citroën C15 as old as him, Julien remembers Wednesdays at kindergarten. On the program: picking mushrooms. “On the school walls, there were big posters with bad mushrooms. In the morning, we had to stick stickers to differentiate the good mushrooms from the bad ones. And in the afternoon, we went to the woods. I hung on straight away and it stayed”.

Boots on his feet, a red lumberjack shirt and an olive green bucket hat to contain his curly hair, off he went picking Franche-Comté mushrooms, armed with his opinel and his basket “wicker is important”.

Trumpets of death, porcini mushrooms, sheep’s feet, meadow roses, fir morels. Each species has its own tutorial on Flooz-flooz’s TikTok account, which does not lack imagination. “I told my friends that I was going to launch a special country video platform”. Or a concept he would call “I will pick you up”for “go around France in C15 and pick local mushrooms and discover good food”. When asked what his favorite mushroom is, he answers “the psilo, the one that gets you high” with a big smile before correcting: “Naan is the morels” and exclaim “Dedication to Morteau Morille!”.

Behind the big joker, the one who drives in a C15 with a dubious carbon footprint, who strikes city dwellers with “crevices” and who does not hesitate to make fun of himself, hides another man. A man for whom he is “important to respect nature”.

Last spring, it was in a much more serious tone than usual that he addressed his subscribers. “You have all seen the video in India where they walk on islands of plastic in the river”. In a video titled “Nature is not a trash can”, he films the Lantern, a river crossing the Haute-Saône department, strewn with waste. “It’s sad ! There are at least 4 or 500 bottles”.

Flooz-flooz then decides to take action: “I invite the unemployed, fishermen, drinkers, friends, everyone. If you have free time on Saturday to clean it all up”. That said, thing done, the following Saturday, with a dozen volunteers, he went to the scene to pick up nearly 200 kg of plastic rubbish.

And the law of attraction seems to be paying off: “It’s like everything in life, you do good, good comes to you. I try to make nature feel good and maybe she gives it back to me like this: when I go to the mushrooms, I find plenty of them.”

The Haute-Patate ambassador sees his number of subscribers skyrocket. But fame and the “flooz”, very little for him. “It’s not my goal to make millions with the networks.” explains Julien, also a civil servant. He adds, laughing: “Cheese and booze, at least, are not taxable.” If you ask the rogue in the woods where he sees himself in five or ten years, he answers without hesitation “In Port-sur-Saône, with a brand new C15”. A way of telling us that he could not dream of better than his current life, in the Haut-Saônoise countryside.

“Come on, kiss! See you, crevure!”

To find Julien Delaunay alias Flooz-flooz la rascal on social networks: