Tech Geek Pranks

Posted by The Technocrat | Filed under Geeky

PrankI once had a co-worker that kept getting severe signal degradation a few days after he would have a cable comapny rep out to see what the deal was. Rep would leave, the signal would be great, then turn to trash by the next day. Turns out that every house around him was tapping into his coax cable, so the signal had been split 3-4 times before it got to his house. Eventually he got sick of calling the cable repairman and disconnected the coax going to his house, attached a stun gun, and fried anyone still connected to his line.

Now, while quite possibly one of the more hilarious tech stories I’ve heard, I can’t recommend this, unless you want to end up buying people new TV’s for your vigilante justice. But there are a few less-lethal ways of pulling a technology-based prank or two.

Long Awkward Pose

With is a video blog (vidblog?) with a good idea: Have people pose for a picture, and videotape them until they give up. I’ve actually done this on accident before, but never thought of doing it on purpose. And why not? Most digital cameras can take video clips as well. I’d just be afraid that I would run out of recording time, but since my camera takes up to 30 seconds, I really hope my victim would get the idea by then.

Chat Bot

Oh man, did I ever use this back in the day. I can’t find the web site any more, but someone made an AOL chat bot where you could give it a target screen name, supply some innocuous detail about that person, and the chat bot would see how long it could keep them talking. It was surprisingly good, and would send you a transcript of the communication when it was done. Oh, and it would humiliate your friends for wasting time on the bot.

Fake Tests

These are actually pretty shady, but it was bound to happen. Basically what happens here is some geek is too afraid to talk to a girl (a real one), so you go to a web site and give it her email address. It’ll send her junk mail for an ‘free online coolness/dating preferences/iq test’. You get her answers in the email. There are a few of these out there, but I mean, come on. Just talk to them already, what is this, junior high?

Pranks of scale

We’ve all seen these. Cubicle filled with packing peanuts, cubicle covered with post-its. It’s been done, but is still hilarious.
Pure craziness

Working in an IT department breeds some weird stuff. The same guy who taser’ed his neighbor’s coax-connected devices also made a smooth 1/8-inch layer of parmesian cheese in the bottom of a drawer of someone’s workspace, then replaced all of their stuff. When this person came back into work, they were looking for the smell for a while, and were not amused.

Changing the wallpaper to something horribly inappropriate may not go over well at work. Switching a power supply to 230 volts is an explosive eye-opener (possibly in the form of solder shrapnel). I wouldn’t recommend trying either out on your co-workers, but I’m sure there are other not-so-destructive, appropriate-for-Friday jokes out there for those familiar with technology.

What’s your favorite Friday hijinks for Geeks? We all have a few stories from work, but like the Awkward Pose site shows, there are a host of devices in the consumer arena that are begging to be used for evil.

Comments (10) | June 16th, 2006

10 Responses to “Tech Geek Pranks”

  1. Jonathan Says:
    June 16, 2006 at 1:21 pm

    Man, did I use the chat bot. I should try to do that again sometime.

    Of course, who can forget the popular wallpaper prank. We’ve all heard of it. Just sitting there laughing it up while the victim keeps double clicking an icon that’s not really there.

  2. The Technocrat Says:
    June 16, 2006 at 6:27 pm

    icons on the wallpaper = HILARIOUS

    better yet, have something embarrasing open when you do a screenshot. even better if you’re the admin and can get the wallpaper on there, and they don’t have the rights to get it off.

  3. Robert Day Says:
    June 17, 2006 at 3:33 am

    Here is the AOL Chat Bot:

    http://www.chattingaimbot.com/

  4. bumsk Says:
    June 17, 2006 at 8:25 am

    I have done many wallpaper pranks but i find it best to put an error dialoge on the background center… good artical, thankyou.

  5. The Technocrat Says:
    June 17, 2006 at 10:28 am

    ah, thx for the link robert. I’m sure many GL readers are making use of it right now… :-)

    bumsk – no prob!

  6. Crystal Says:
    June 19, 2006 at 8:19 am

    I once pranked my rather computer illiterate cube-mate. Our cubes were set up with each person having their own terminal, and a shared NT machine between each pair. Right before I left for a week’s vacation I set the taskbar to autohide and took a simple screenshot of the desktop with its 2 or 3 icons. Then I set that image to be the wallpaper, moved some icons around so they looked normal and didn’t overlap, and set the taskbar back to normal. From what I heard when I got back, it took 3 people an hour os so to figureout exactly what I’d done.

  7. Online Says:
    February 20, 2009 at 1:49 am

    Пинайте своего хостера – сайт с трудом открылся :(

  8. могунет Says:
    March 6, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    Диз у блога не супер. Может поменяешь?давай помогу.

  9. вася Says:
    March 14, 2009 at 11:27 am

    Ежели это не большой секрет;), создатель блога откуда родом?

  10. mishulya Says:
    April 20, 2009 at 8:09 am

    Ga Bisa Cari Duid Online, Semua Di Musuhi