Bobby Badfingers (born Bob Von Merta in Union Township PA) is an American novelty performer whose claim to fame is that he can snap his fingers at a tremendous rate.
He has appeared on television, radio and variety shows including:
He has also appeared in television commercials for Fujifilm, Roadrunner High-Speed Internet, Yahoo!, Sheetz, Snapple, and the Ohio Lottery.
He was a contestant on an NBC variety show, America's Got Talent, where he was one of the only four acts in his semifinal episode to get three checks from the judges. He was unanimously voted through to the semifinals, but was picked as neither the judge's choice nor the viewer's choice to move to the finals during the live broadcast on July 20, 2006. The judges, however, let him advance onto the wild card show in which he failed to get voted through, thus ending his journey in the competition.
Merta started to become a professional finger snapper because during his childhood, he would constantly snap both of his fingers because he suffered from ADHD. He began snapping at age four while watching Flamenco dancers on television. "I didn't know they were playing castanets, I thought they were snapping their fingers, so I started trying to sound like them."[1]
Merta currently lives in San Francisco California.