When your back is turned... Here comes a prank! pt.1

I [heart] Pranks. If you too have a fondness for pranks I urge you to spend a little time with this series of posts in which I painstakingly compile my favorites, often with videos and links.


Improv Everywhere

My favorite is a group called Improv Everywhere engaged in the business of pranking but with a twist, I guess. The joke isn't really "on" anyone at all. In fact Improv Everywhere is really in business of creating surreal magical moments for the uninformed like the Best Gig Ever (recently covered by This American Life's TV show on showtime, which you can watch here) in which they find this obscure band playing the next Sunday, and then proceed to obtain CDs, make T-Shirts and spread the word. By the time the Band plays Improv Everywhere has the place packed with its "agents" singing every word to every song, wearing homemade t-shirts emblazoned with the band name, and treating the band like rockstars. There are other great ones as well and you can read about them on their website, or even better listen to the founder describe them on a radio show which is way funny- go here and/or here.


College Pranks

I can't leave out the ubiquitous college pranks, of which there are thousands. I'll restrict myself to just a few though.

This may be the ne plus ultra of College Pranks and it must've taken a shitload of time. While this guy was away on a trip they nailed all of stuff to the ceiling so he had an upside down room. The first minute or so of this video is disorienting and unimpressive but you'll start to get it after that and be blown away.



Here's a musical College Prank. It reminds me a joke my best friend used to tell (he was an amatuer standup comedian who was always trying out new material on his friends and never performing for the public) about he wished that life was like a musical and when you'd find a nickel someone else would chime in "he found a nickel" and you'd just break into a dance and sing about it. So here's someone actually doing that.



Hipinion.com

This is one of the greatest pranks of all, if you have the time to review it. It occurred on the (hideously-named) pitchforkmedia-associated board hipinion.com right when those myspace passwords leaked. This group of often funny, often heartless individuals did a variety of things to various myspace accounts ranging from the dull to the hilarious to the shocking and cruel. Those hyperlinks obviously take you to examples from the thread, but the image below is another one. Someone found this girl's password, logged into her account and posted this comment on her friend's comment board. If you've got the time start from the beginning of the thread, because there's a lot of great shit there.



What really takes the cake though was a boarder named OkTerrific who logged in on some girl's account and started chatting with all of her friends with the myspace messenger and convincing them that she was pregnant, needed to get an AIDS test, etc. Again, this is not something I'm saying is good but once you'll read it you'll understand. Aside from the simple cringing hilarity the guy uncovers all kinds of high school secrets and hidden relationships and then there's double-crossing and triple-crossing. If you want to cheat and just read a summary of this stuff (at least read it for the one-liners, like when he/she asks her friend to borrow $100 dollars and tells him to call her and talk in code) then scroll down to a post with the words "Act 1" about midway down on this page.