Tag Archives: prank

Senior Prank

Age: 21

Informant:

“The year before us did a senior prank and it was great because it wasn’t actually a prank. So I guess somebody in that class had a 3D printer so they 3D printed a ton of these tiny 3D printed articulated slugs and they would just leave them everywhere. You’d constantly be finding these articulated slugs and snails and they were all over campus and it was so great. I was like, this is the best kind of prank because you didn’t have to harm anyone. It was just like, “Oh my god, a slug!”

Context:

A tradition for graduating seniors in America is to pull a senior prank on their school. In the days leading up to the last day of school, the graduating senior class will come together and act out their plan to prank the school. This particular high school pulled a harmless prank with 3d slugs.

Analysis:

Senior pranks can vary in execution. Sometimes the prank is to jump in the fountain, post post-it notes all over the principal’s office, or decorate a hallway with balloons and streamers. It’s one of the last hurrah’s for the graduates before leaving the school. Senior pranks act as a rite of passage for high school seniors. They’re done during the liminal space, or a waiting period, leading up to graduation. The students are close to becoming an alumni but not quite there yet. It’s a bridge between adolescence and early adulthood.

Bloody Mary

Age: 22

Text:
As a younger sibling, my sister would always do things to try and scare me. But the one thing that I knew that she didn’t, as a mere four-year-old, was Bloody Mary. What you do is you go into one bathroom, and you spin someone around in the dark eight times, saying, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.” Then you turn the lights on for a quick second so you can see the reflection of Bloody Mary in the mirror. I did it to my sister, and she screamed. She ran out of the bathroom while the lights were flickering on and off, and then you keep flicking them on and off. Then they believe that the Bloody Mary is actually trying to scare them.”

Context:
A boy from Kansas City, Missouri discussing how to scare people with the Bloody Mary legend that he learned at school.

Analysis:
He used a folkloric myth/legend/ghost story that he learned through his classmates to scare and prank his sister into thinking there was a demon ghost woman with a bloody face in their bathroom. You start by doing a ritual (turning the lights off, closing eyes, and spinning three times), making the person disoriented and confused when the light starts flickering. Children often see a woman because they are so scared and imagine it even though she’s not actually there.

Goosey Night (AKA Mischief Night)

Text:

M: “So on Goosey Night, we’d all sneak out and we’d bring ivory soap. It was always ivory soap. And you’d go around and you’d be putting soap all over people’s car windows so they can’t drive. And we’d throw eggs at people’s houses and stuff. People called it mischief, we called it goosey night”

Context:

M grew up in New Jersey. Every Halloween Eve, the kids in his town partook in “Goosey Night.” A night full of pranks, mischief, and mayhem.

Analysis:

The phrase “Goosey Night” is a form of esoteric form of folk speech. Most people call Halloween Eve Mischief Night, but my father and the kids he knew called it Goosey Night. By have a different, unique name for the night, the kids were able to communicate with each other in ways outsiders wouldn’t understand. The pranks and mischief of Goosey Night are rituals – repeated, patterned actions. It was a tradition for kids to break the rules once a year, on Goosey Night. In a way, the kids existed in a space of liminality because they weren’t ignorant babies or knowledgeable adults. If an adult partook in Goosey Night, they would most likely be arrested, but kids could because they existed in the in-between space.

University of Toronto Prank Club – Legendary Group/Legendary Event

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Ajax, Ontario, Canada
Language: English

Text

Informant: You may have heard this from (OTHER PERSON), but in some colleges and universities, there are groups that will do, like, prank things. At MIT its called, like, “Hacking,” but they are sort of just random prank things. U of T engineering has something, like, this… allegedly, it is called the “Brute Force Committee,” BFC. One of the main things, or I guess evidence you see of them on campus is there logo on a sticker in some very absurd places so, you know, in one of the engineering buildings there is like a big open area in the middle of the building and, you know, on the far side from the walkway, up multiple stories, you’ll see one of their stickers. And so clearly, somebody did something dangerous or did something funky to get a sticker. So there are some of those things. But, um, the bigger things are, of course, the actual pranks that they do. And a lot of them are, you know, pretty low-key little pop-up things. At one point one of the buildings in one of the hangout areas they had one of those mini basketball arcade game things, just like fun stuff. I’ll say one more thing and then I’ll tell the story for them. But during Frosh week again, one of the evenings we are out and about, and this is how we are introduced to them. I wish I remembered more of the details but there’s like this whole ceremony where we get walked around and get told some stories about their background and like U of T history and they gave us all candles and we all had to blow them all out. And the thing I remember most distinctly about this was we all had our masks on and we couldn’t blow the candles out.

Me: They did not plan ahead (laughter)

Informant: No. It didn’t work. But it was, like, you know, a very community building, interesting thing. But anyway, they do a bunch of random pranks, but the legendary one that I believe has happened twice in the last like 10 years is with our rivalry with Queen’s University which is with engineering… university in Canada, specifically the engineering people. One of their Frosh traditions is that they have this mud pit and then like a metal pole and they cover it in grease and the freshmen try to climb it…It has like a base obviously so it’s self standing, it’s very messy. But, the story is that we have stolen it a couple of times and basically ransomed it for, what I think the story is, is like some different like tasks, more than, you know, it’s all for fun in the end. But stealing this… pole thing… that is meant to be, like, a freshman event from this rival university. And I believe there are things they’ve stolen from us in the past, just, like, the engineering society people… like we have these little cannons, beer cannons too? It’s, like, a thing, I don’t entirely remember why. And I believe those have been stolen from us before so there’s a little bit of back and forth that I think has gone on with these things.

Context

The informant is from Seattle, Washington and studies engineering at the University of Toronto (called “U of T” by people in Canada). They heard this in 2021 in the week before classes (called “Frosh week”) where freshman are meant to get to know each other and also learn about the school and it’s traditions. This group is limited to just the engineers of U of T, other students at the university don’t have connections to it. The informant said they believe that BFC stole the pole twice but they are less sure about the cannon stealing by Queen’s College. They added that might have these beliefs because they think U of T is better than Queen’s College and therefore more likely to have actually achieved these pranks. The informant does say that the ritual associated with telling the story acted as community building for them.

Analysis

This legendary group and story work to bond new engineering students to both each other and their school. By hearing this story during Frosh week in a very ritualized way, they connect to the rest of the new students as well as students before them in the engineering program. They also feel a deeper connection to their school, first by hearing stories about the history and second by engaging in a rivalry with another school.

The story helps to define the role of the person hearing it. As an engineering student at U of T, the informant is meant to see this prank as a success and a win against another group, their rival university engineering program. By creating this rivalry, it helps to solidify where a new student exists. They are part of the U of T group, not the Queen’s College group. Belief in the story also helps to define the role. As the informant showed, they believe in a the part of the story that showed the superiority of U of T over their rival college. This was at least partially because of their connection to their own university where they feel like they can believe the legends from their group but not the ones from another.

Engaging in humorous but still technically illegal prank like stealing a pole that belongs to another university is a way for young adults to stay playful and childlike while in a rigorous and academic environment. Adding fun to their college experience allows them to relax after studying. Toeing the line of legality allows them to push the boundaries of the law and institutional rules while still being safe given the humorous aspect of the prank.

Other pranks described, such as putting a sticker somewhere that would be impossible to reach normally, act as a way of proving oneself by doing something impressive to others. That sticker is now impossible to reach by anyone and therefore impossible to take down. This makes it a lasting legacy of this person (possibly making them a legend within the committee itself).

BFC and the pranks described are a very modern legend in that there is some evidence for their existence both on Google (articles or descriptions of them) and physical proof of stickers or other active pranks. Despite the evidence for their existence however, it is very likely that these stories are exaggerated through retellings. This is even more likely given that they are about rivalries between colleges meaning that each student has incentive to exaggerate how good their school is.

Indian Wedding Ritual: Sisters Demanding Money

Context: The informant, AV, is an 18 year old student with parents who immigrated from India, specifically Gujarat. She’s been to multiple weddings in India, and observed this at her first cousin’s wedding. She remembers being somewhere around 5th grade-aged, and so she recounted what she remembered, with a general explanation. She doesn’t know if this is an Indian ritual or just a Gujarati one.

Text: AV said “When our cousin got married, he didn’t have any sisters, so me and my sister stood in front of his horse and didn’t let him through until he promised us money and silver chains. We were really young so I don’t remember it as well, but I remember it happening” and explained that essentially, when either your brother or a close cousin who has no sisters is getting married, you’re supposed to stop them from going into the wedding. They usually enter on a horse or in a car and they’re meant to walk into the venue, but before they can, you physically get in front of the horse/car, stop him, and tell him he’s not allowed to pass. He then is supposed to bargain, offering you money or gold or silver to let him pass. When it’s enough, you let him pass — usually now, it’s ritualized in the way that you push back like three times and on the second or third time you let them through.

Analysis: This ritual feels somewhat similar to the pranks traditionally played on couples during weddings, as a way of disrupting that liminality, except it’s specific to the groom and his side of the family. It’s a ritual for the groom to also leave the family; as the groom goes to the bride, the sisters will no longer be the most important women in his life, and they cede that position in a joking ritual that requires the groom to bribe them, proving how much he wants the bride. It’s a wedding ritual that rearranges the structure of the families that will be combining, and visually reorders the groom’s priorities. For the sisters, it’s also a form of letting their brother go, knowing that their relationships will fundamentally change, but disrupting that transition with this joking ritual.