The Prank Phenomenon

Everyone loves a good joke or prank.  Pranks,  malicious tricks, surprise attacks and mischevious frolics have been around forever.  We've all done it.  The Homeric age was full of pranks.   Hermes was called a "prankster of dreams."  Hitler claimed to be quite the prankster in his youth.  Children, students, and siblings have long been performing pranks on their peers, parents, and teachers.  60s prankster Abby Hoffman found that there were three kinds of pranks:  "good" (amusing but harmless), "bad" (mean and vindictive), and "neutral" (surreal and soft on the victim).  A recent article in The Economist takes a hard look at the prank, finding that the college campus is where you can find the best pranks:

The best pranks have always blurred the lines between legality and illegality, good and bad taste, right and wrong conduct. Festivals like Saturnalia appeared to undermine the social order, but paradoxically helped to reaffirm it, by allowing people to act out their frustrations in a harmless way. The nearest thing to this today is April Fool's Day—“the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year,” as Mark Twain gently put it—though the best April 1st jokes tend to be media hoaxes, rather than traditional pranks. A classic of the genre is a 1957 BBC “documentary” on Swiss spaghetti farmers. Many British viewers asked where they could buy pasta trees.

Some of the best April Fool's stunts are those that send up national characteristics. To prove the point that Germans who break even minor rules struggle with their guilt, a few years back a newspaper in Tübingen announced a new experiment by the traffic authorities. Local drivers who had knowingly exceeded the speed limit in recent days were to turn themselves in, pay a fine and take lessons in safe driving. More than 60 sinners obliged.

For the most impressively elaborate pranks, however, go to a university campus. Take thousands of bright young things with too much time on their hands, itching to achieve, amuse and misbehave, and splendid acts of delinquency will follow.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “hacks”, as the MIT crowd calls them, are more serious. So serious, in fact, that in 2003 the institute's best hacks were assembled in a 178-page book, “Nightwork”. The pranks at MIT tend to be feats of engineering. They are positively encouraged, because they teach students to work in teams, solve complex problems and, sometimes, get a message across. Mr Peterson's book includes an 11-point code for pranksters: leave no damage, do not steal, do not drop things off a building without a ground crew, and so on. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, at least, student pranks have become an establishment activity.

Do you know of any good pranks? We'd love to hear about them!  But also, The Economist is inviting readers to nominate their contender for the finest prank in history.  Explain in 750 words by you think your prank is worthy.  The entire article and more information about the contest can be found here.   And, Slashdot also posted a bit about the article.  The post and comments can be found  here. 

 

Comments

[pranksta]

I never, ever, ever thought that my site would get a mention in the Economist. Well, what do you know.