Well played and certainly worth the effort:

I like pranks which do not abuse or insult anyone pic.twitter.com/aiUSUDcC2H

— Tyrantasorus (@tyrantasorus) November 2, 2018

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Rapper 50 Cent says he bought 200 front seats to an upcoming Ja Rule concert just to keep them empty and psych out his longtime arch-enemy. Read the rest

There's nothing more fun than a prank that brings great laughter to its victims, and this is what Chance the Rapper does when he becomes an undercover Lyft driver for a day. He drives unsuspecting passengers around Chicago and chats with them about all sorts of things, including rappers. It takes a while, but these passengers finally realize who they're really talking to, and their reactions are priceless (especially the last woman, who comes after you think the video is over, so watch to the end).

Chance pulls this stunt to bring attention to his charity, The New Chance Fund, which raises funds for art and literature enrichment in the Chicago public schools. Read the rest

At a The Marine Mammal Center in Hawaii, a cute little gecko butt-dialed random people ‘a bazillion’ times before a human figured out what was going on. Read the rest

Banksy's iconic "Girl With Red Balloon" street art went under the hammer at Sotheby's in a custom frame of the artist's own design; moments after it sold for £953,829, a booby-trap kicked in, drawing the canvas into a series of shredder blades built into the frame, rendering it down to a pile of forlorn strips of shredded cloth. Read the rest

This is a prank of epic greatness.

“My roommate left town for a few days, so naturally i decided to put a mini golf course in her room,” says khicagokid -- “complete with a water hazard.” Read the rest

Sacha "Ali G/Borat" Baron Cohen has a new prank show called "Who Is America?" in the offing in which he punks political figures into endorsing bizarre, extreme political positions (think of it as a 21st century "Brass Eye"). Read the rest

On Friday, Stamford, Connecticut gallerist Fernando Luis Alvarez and artist Domenic Esposito kindly installed Esposito's large sculpture of a burnt spoon outside of Purdue Pharma, developers of the OxyContin. Police calmly arrested Alvarez and charged him with "obstruction of free passage" and "interfering with police." The current group show at Alvarez's gallery is about the opioid epidemic. He had previously agreed to take the fall for the art action. According to Esposito, the spoon sculpture, titled "Purdue," was inspired by his brother who struggles with drug addiction. From the Hartford Courant:

In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty in federal court to mislabeling OxyContin and misleading the public about the risk of addiction, and had to pay $600 million. Three company executives were convicted of criminal charges. The firm has been and remains the target of numerous lawsuits, with legal actions against it increasing since the opioid epidemic reached a critical stage...

Robert Josephson, a spokesperson for Purdue, released a statement Friday morning.

“We share the protesters’ concern about the opioid crisis, and respect their right to peacefully express themselves. Purdue is committed to working collaboratively with those affected by this public health crisis on meaningful solutions to help stem the tide of opioid-related overdose deaths.”

photos: Brian O'Neil

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Last night, a group of culture jammers called Indecline improved a "1-800-GOT-JUNK?" billboard on a highway in Emeryville, California, just east of San Francisco. The billboard previously said "We make junk disappear" and they fixed it to read "We make kids disappear - ICE."

In a statement sent to the media, Indecline stated that the modification was a response to "President Trump's handling of the current immigration crisis, particularly, the separation of young children from their families."

Indecline also posted the following documentation of their work:

(SFGate) Read the rest

Bavaria's far-right, Islamophobic government enacted its Kreuzpflicht ("cross obligation") law, which mandates that every government building must display a Christian cross, and finessed this violation of Germany's legally enforced separation of church and state by claiming the crosses were "cultural," not "religious" and by saying that each building "should hang up the cross as they think best." Read the rest

For the first time in over 60 years, Easter and April Fools' Day are on the same day, creating the rare EasterFools' Day holiday.

To celebrate, former NASA-JPL engineer/current science YouTube star Mark Rober (previously) went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to demonstrate some easy pranks for this rare double holiday. For example, he fills hollow chocolate bunnies with broccolini and calls them "Brocco-Bunny" and puts Brussels sprouts on sticks and then dips them in melted chocolate, creating "Brussels Pops."

What he does with mayonnaise is unforgivable. And the kids they give these EasterFools' "treats" to are surely scarred for life.

FYI: the next EasterFools' Day happens in 2029. Read the rest

The Wind Symphony at Liberty University decided to prank their band director by playing the Mii Channel theme song instead of a Bach chorale. Fortunately, the band director has a great sense of humor. He immediately went to the flute section to check out the music they were playing, listens to the end, and then tells the band, "You're number one in my book!" followed by much laughter from the group of students. The music arrangement was written by band member Drew Harris, and it's quite good! Read the rest

Watch as this unsuspecting tourist crossing a glass bridge freaks out when the glass begins to crack. Special effects that make the glass walkway look and sound like it's shattering were added to the bridge, which is 3,871 feet high and 873 feet long. The gag is meant as a "provocative" experience, but it's been so believable that the masterminds behind it gave an apology – but will continue to terrify people who dare to cross.

According to CNET:

The gimmick was so believable the East Taihang administration issued an apology assuring the public the cracks were just an "effect" to make the bridge experience more "provocative."

While the administration is "very sorry that people got frightened," the panels will not be replaced. After all, this sort of prank is to get more curious tourists out on the bridge to see for themselves how scary the sensation of cracking glass underfoot can be, especially when walking alongside a very tall mountain.

Here's another video of a tourist scared out of his wits by this provocative bridge.

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Even by the hilariously sadistic standards of Japanese prank shows, this is outstanding. Read the rest

MG's Mr Self Destruct project takes the USB Killer to new levels, combining a $1.50 system-on-a-chip with a variety of payloads: smoke bombs, "sound grenades," and little explosives, cleverly choreographed with keystroke emulation, allowing the poisoned drive to first cause the connected computer to foreground a browser and load a web-page that plays an appropriate animation (a jack-in-the-box that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" with the drive's explosive detonating for the climax). Read the rest

Central Michigan University student Anna G should earn an honorary doctorate in pranksterism. Welcome to, er, Wii U.

i carried around a wii remote today when i went to a frat party pic.twitter.com/3olFk0Qhn1

— anna g (@annakathh) January 16, 2018

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At the University of Chicago in the early 1920s, psychology grad student William Blatz built a remote-controlled trick chair that would collapse when he pressed a switch. (It was padded to avoid injury.) Then he had subjects sit in the chair while wearing electrodes to measure heart rate and other vital signs. Blatz's goal was to "study the physiology of fear under controlled, repeatable conditions." I think he also probably just wanted to build a remote-controlled trick chair. From Weird Universe:

Blatz offered this description of their reactions:

"The observations of the subjects after the fall, of course, varied, but they were sufficiently in agreement to indicate the arousal of genuine fear in naive subjects. Some examples of these remarks were, 'startled,' 'surprised,' 'frightened,' scared,' etc. In most cases the subjects cried out, and some called the experimenter by name. They all made some effort to escape, thinking an accident had happened. In all cases they acknowledged that they had not anticipated 'anything like it at all.' From these statements, it was concluded that the stimulus was wholly unexpected, and unsuspected."

The electrodes registered the effect of the fright. The hearts of the subjects began hammering, and their breathing rapidly increased. Blatz also observed "striking changes in the electrical conditions of the body in the nature of an increased development of the electromotive force."

"Dr. Blatz’s Trick Chair of Terror" (Weird Universe) Read the rest