Wall Street Journal: The New Pranksters

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I don't want to see the day when I freak out somebody with a prank or mindfuck, and they laugh it off as "one of those taco bell publicity stunts".

Too late.  They've already killed street theater.  Fortunately, that wasn't very important, anyway.

[East Coast Hustle]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

[Cramulus]

good call. If I could get a $$ job $$ planning and throwing pranks, I'd shart myself with mirth every hour on the hour.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Joey Skaggs, a longtime media prankster and author of the Art of the Prank blog, is critical of some of the latest stunts. Mr. Skaggs, whose best-known pranks include duping a New York television station in 1976 with a story about a bordello for dogs, says the stunts lack a subversive, anti-establishment edge. Because of that, people are less likely to stop and think about what they're seeing -- or even care. "The bar's been really lowered," he says. "There's a lot of junk out there calling itself pranks."

I hate to say it, because I think his work is genius, but I *really* don't like that guy.

Beyond that, to Rat and Cram.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

the commercialization of pranks and situationist theater is the beginning.

Now that it's a way to sell something, it loses some of its power. For those of you who read Transmetropolitan, you'll recall how when they make Spider Jerusalem (a futuristic Hunter S Thompson)  into a product (they make a cartoon, a sitcom, and a soap opera based on his life), a lot of people stop taking him seriously.

I don't want to see the day when I freak out somebody with a prank or mindfuck, and they laugh it off as "one of those taco bell publicity stunts".

But we're the ones on the fringe, actually doing it. So we have the power to come up with new kinds of pranks and freakouts which are a surprising to people in a world of factory-produced surprises.

It just ups the bar, really. In every generation, stuff stops freaking people out, and you have to come up with new things to freak people out with. Start by freaking out yourself, right?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Yes yes yes.

Also, it would be funny as hell to borrow a riff from Don Hertzfeldt and agree to commercial projects, then produce work that's so far over the edge they could never use it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Yes yes yes.

Also, it would be funny as hell to borrow a riff from Don Hertzfeldt and agree to commercial projects, then produce work that's so far over the edge they could never use it.

Pretty sure these guys aren't getting paid in advance.  Also fairly certain they aren't getting more than min wage (if that).

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Yes yes yes.

Also, it would be funny as hell to borrow a riff from Don Hertzfeldt and agree to commercial projects, then produce work that's so far over the edge they could never use it.

Pretty sure these guys aren't getting paid in advance.  Also fairly certain they aren't getting more than min wage (if that).

Ohhhh but it's not about getting paid, it's about wasting a bunch of their time and then handing them something that is only lulz. And doing it TOTALLY DEADPAN.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Can you imagine agreeing to do a cutting-edge ad for Nike, asking for three months, and then handing them something utterly beautiful and perfectly orchestrated and so fantastically fucked up THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY COULD NEVER USE IT? 


And then PITCH A HISSY FIT when they reject it.

[singer]

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Ah yes... the magic of co-optation again.

Suddenly I'm having flashbacks of flower power symbols machine embroidered on a line of clothing made by little girls in India so they could be sold to counter-culture wannabees in JC Penney mega-mall outlets.

Good times.

[Cramulus]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Yeah, but I'm working for the man now. Can't I at least be doing something I find fun?

I mean, I spend my day making photocopies and proofreading worksheets. And I make shit money for it! If I'm going to be a low level white collar slave, it'd be so much cooler to be pranking people -- professionally. How can you not work for the CoN, anyway?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I have to agree with Cram. I am spending 40+ hours a week stuck in cubicle hell... on the upside, its a fine slack job... on the downside, its 40 freakin hours that I could be spending on something I like, if only they weren't the ones giving me teh monies.

If I could make monies pimping out the "counterculture", why not? Worst Case, I spend 40+ hours a week planning and executing mindfucks/street theatre/etc rather than writing reports on vulnerabilities and remediation.

The counterculture has been co-opted, hell, its been co-opted since  the hippies wanted to give the world a Coke... in perfect harmony.

I mean, if people have ethical issues with working for 'the Man', that's fine... However, if I were to have the opportunity to make money from pranks, rather than Excel spreadsheets, Word Docs and network scans, I'd take it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

you guys are missing my point.

since this method has been co-opted, and since the result of that has been to attach a monetary value to the ability to plan and implement marketing campaigns based on absurdist-ish guerilla street theater, and since we're better at this sort of thing than most other groups out there...

why aren't we exploiting the fuck out of the idiots willing to PAY us to do this and using it to finance more ambitious projects of our own?

If your ambitious project is a massive media mindfuck and my ambitious project is buying a 12-person hot tub with mood lighting and a bose sound system and filling it with hot sluts, so what? we can both still help each other achieve BOTH goals.

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Yeah, but I'm working for the man now. Can't I at least be doing something I find fun?

I mean, I spend my day making photocopies and proofreading worksheets. And I make shit money for it! If I'm going to be a low level white collar slave, it'd be so much cooler to be pranking people -- professionally. How can you not work for the CoN, anyway?

Oh.  I get paid to abuse people, you see.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Always starts out that way.

Then, before you know it, you're too busy planning your next paid gig to worry about the things that matter.

Trust me.  The CoN has more people and more time to lay traps than you have time to dodge them.

Ah yes... the magic of co-optation again.

Suddenly I'm having flashbacks of flower power symbols machine embroidered on a line of clothing made by little girls in India so they could be sold to counter-culture wannabees in JC Penney mega-mall outlets.

Good times.

Ah, yes...or American flags made in China.