2Day FM's DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian phoned the King Edward VII Hospital from Australia on Wednesday morning pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles asking for an update on the condition of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The call was described as a
prank by the DJs who made it and
foolish by the hospital. The nurse who answered the call, Jacintha Saldanha, was convinced by the impersonation and relayed confidential medical details. Today Ms Saldanha was
found dead, early reports indicate the death is not suspicious and is
suspected to be suicide.
[more inside]
posted by samworm
on Dec 7, 2012 -
242 comments
Dave Hartnett was
surprised with an award this week for his services to tax avoidance. He was celebrating his retirement as head of the UK's tax and customs department, where
he agreed "sweetheart" deals with Goldman Sachs and Vodafone, letting them off outstanding tax bills. Cue some pleasantly awkward confusion as the partygoers realise what is going on.
posted by creeky
on Sep 24, 2012 -
58 comments
In light of
today's news that one of two Shell ships slated to drill exploratory oil wells in the Arctic waters of Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas had slipped its moorings and was headed towards Dutch Harbor, in Alaska's Aleutian Islands... check out a collaboration between the Yes Men and Greenpeace that's been online since June:
arcticready.com (
Twitter) -- an elaborate site
spoofing Royal Dutch Shell Plc, who have uh...
promised not to sue.
posted by zarq
on Jul 16, 2012 -
15 comments
The Observer ran a series of columns by Richard Geefe, a writer whose work was interrupted by his promise to himself and his editors that he would kill himself before the end of November 1999.
First,
second,
third,
fourth,
fifth,
sixth,
seventh,
eighth,
ninth,
tenth,
eleventh, and the posthumous
twelfth.
Reaction in The Independent. [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast
on Sep 16, 2011 -
14 comments
PhDChallenge.org proposed a
challenge: To have the phrase "I smoke crack rocks" included in a peer reviewed academic paper. The winner is Gabriel Parent from Carnegie Mellon, who included it in his
paper [PDF].
posted by reenum
on Dec 16, 2010 -
54 comments
The Smoking Gun turns the table on a group of pranksters allegedly responsible for terrorizing strangers over the phone:
Outing An Online Outlaw describes how the group leader used skype, an unprotected wifi connection and his mothers bedroom to engage in what TSG calls "an orgy of criminal activity."
posted by krautland
on Aug 4, 2009 -
65 comments
A few days ago a
post appeared on the Something Awful forums noting a curious website called
Notes to Mary. The notes are a series of threatening letters from a high schooler named Robert to his crush, Mary. The goons figured out pretty quickly that they had an
ARG on their hands and went to work on solving the puzzle.
Several other forums picked up on the game. Robert began interacting with players, sending them strange messages and several series of numbers that appeared to be some sort of code. A
Flickr pool was started. Players even created an IRC channel to swap clues and information in real time. The Notes to Mary site offered a link to a login. All effort was made to crack the user/pass combo. Finally, several days after the game began, users were finally able to log in. The game was solved. The players would be rewarded for their hard work. Where did the login lead?
Here.
[more inside]
posted by lysistrata
on Jun 25, 2008 -
35 comments
In the late '90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious
10-year-old named Billy.
posted by snsranch
on Apr 29, 2008 -
21 comments
The Overdub Tampering Comittee Manifesto. What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet? ... We set out to make that specific bewildering, annoyance a possibility. [more inside]
posted by whir
on Jan 12, 2008 -
42 comments
On Sunday, April 1, ThinkGeek.com jokingly introduced the 8-bit Tie, and due to customer demand, claims that now it'll be
a real product.
On Friday, April 13, apparently due to customer demand, hard drive manufacturer WiebeTech has now introduced the
MouseJiggler, and claims it's not a joke.
posted by Fofer
on Apr 14, 2007 -
28 comments
Hacking The Superbowl. John Hargrave spends $40,000 for an elaborate Superbowl prank -- duping the feds, cops, and stadium security in order to pass out thousands of lights to fans, who were told they would spell out "Prince" during the halftime show. Instead, they spell out, uh... well,
something. Just what they spell is unclear (though
some are having fun "
guessing") and Hargrave hasn't said yet (his write-up is up to
part 5, hopefully of 6).
Can you tell? And was it worth the effort, or is this just an expensive dud?
posted by notmydesk
on Feb 14, 2007 -
71 comments
The President's call for a
troop surge in Iraq will likely be a headache for military recruiters, who have already had to
relax standards to (barely) meet their quotas. But just how desperate are they for warm bodies? Radar prank called recruiting stations around the country disguised as a veritable
Breakfast Club of misfit would-be soldiers, all dramatically unqualified or unattractive for service in some way.
The resulting transcripts are hysterically funny (the writer poses as a flamboyantly gay man, a mama's boy, a martial arts freak, a junkie, an IBS sufferer and a lobotomy patient). The recruiters turn out not to be quite as sleazy as you might imagine, but the conversations are priceless.
posted by P-Soque
on Jan 30, 2007 -
30 comments
