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by PragmaticPulp
1601 days ago
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> I think I'll forego retelling any of my tradeshow pranks. A good prank is when the two parties can laugh about it together when it’s done. If someone is just interfering with another person’s job and then smugly walking away, it’s not really a prank. They’re just being a jerk for the purpose of smug personal satisfaction at the expense of someone else. That’s the difference. This may have been relatively easily fixed with a power cycle, but having done a lot of long days in tradeshow booths I can empathize with the poor guy in the booth who had to deal with someone deliberately interfering with his job and stressing him out. Obviously it turned out okay, but having attendees deliberately break your live trade show demos for laughs sucks. |
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Hm, that's now how I have the definition of a prank in my dictionary. To me it is a practical joke which usually has two required components, a prankster and the person the prank is being played on. Audience optional. To assume that they both have the same sense of humor seems to be a recipe for disappointment.
This is everyday life at tradeshows. Seriously. I've had people trying to destroy 100's of thousands of $ for kicks to see if the gear was as solid as we claimed it was. (it was).
As tradeshow pranks come this really does not register.
> at the expense of someone else
That's a prerequisite for a prank, it is quite literally played on someone else by definition, without that it isn't really a prank.
Whether you can see the humor of it or not depends on your personal make-up. People ring the doorbell here occasionally. I have a pretty badly injured right leg. So I go down a couple of flights of stairs to open the door.
Every now and then this includes neighborhood kids who will be in hiding at the end of the driveway. Usually their giggling gives the game away. Needless to say, their sense of humor is different than mine on this subject. That does not mean that I don't think it isn't a successful prank from their perspective, in fact the fact that they know this probably adds to the spice.
But then I think 'they're just kids' and leave it at that.
All the 'holier than thou' and concern trolling in this thread is completely over the top, in real life people pull pranks, some laugh, some don't. But it's not enough to go judge people to the degree that is done here.