I am aware that not all of the claims made by this document are truthful.

by d0k h0l0day (a.k.a. Nolan Void)

The editors have asked that I comment on the "epidemic" of pranking that has broken out in the last few years. I can really only speak to some of it.

Some folks say that we prank just to burn off testosterone. Others say that pranks are useful for building our own morale but little else. Still others have argued that pranks are merely symbolic gestures. This last view is the closest to being correct. Pranks are symbolic gestures, but they are not merely symbolic gestures. They are symbolic weapons ideally suited to vanquish foes that rule in turn by the use of symbols.

Contrary to popular opinion, armies and police rule by symbols, not by force. My favorite example of this is found in Tolstoy's _War and Peace_. An army officer is standing on a barrel exhorting the troops not to desert. Of course, the top of the barrel breaks, and the officer plunges in. At that moment the illusion of his authority is shattered. It becomes obvious that here was a man who by the symbolic act of standing on a platform, had established his authority. Of course, he was hoping to project as well the authority vested in him by the government. But when the barrel gave way the troops saw that all his authority was purely symbolic -- that in reality he was incapable of projecting any force at all.

The authority that the police enjoy is way out of proportion to the physical force they are capable of projecting. In terms of physical force, all they are good for is beating up on the occasional "stranded citizen." The citizens cower and hide from these morality police, when in fact even 1% of the population, in open revolt, would overwhelm them. Yet by virtue of their symbols -- their badges and uniforms and shiney black boots -- that these forces continue to rule. It is the job of the prankster to show that forces such as these are in point of fact powerless.

A good prank has two elements. First, it punctures the air of invincibility that the target has cultivated. Is there an unbreachable fortress? That is the fortress that the prankster wants to breach. Indeed, mere entry is not the goal. Given a choice between a locked door and an unlocked door the prankster will always take the locked door. That door, of course, is the symbol of the target's invincibility. That is the symbol that must be defeated. Second, a good prank will not injure the target, but merely humiliate the target. Physical damage counts for little in a war of symbols. Worse, it can generate sympathy for the target. It is important to remember that in this game, a symbolic victory is a total victory.

The pranks I have been involved with have been aimed at varying targets. In my youth, I was involved in considerable media pranking. Ultimately, these pranks were designed to undermine the authority of the media -- to get people to see that the folks they were depending on for information were not perfect talking heads, but rather silly fools in the employ of corrupt corporate interests. In the early days my friends and I launched dozens of media viruses. We then dabbled in the override of network broadcasting. All such efforts, when effective, succeed not by physically damaging the networks, but by embarrassing them -- by undercutting their symbolic authority.

Other pranks have been aimed at embarrassing leading international financial institutions. It is crucial for these institutions to project an image of security, indeed invulnerability, and they spend millions of dollars a year in advertising to project such an image. Naturally, such institutions are tempting targets to pranksters.

Finally, a number of our pranks have been aimed at science and engineering institutions, and I have to say that these are the pranks that I find most gratifying. The most famous of these pranks is perhaps the great Space Shuttle caper in which the shuttle cameras were remotely activated and the astronauts' zero-gravity orgy was broadcast world-wide. That prank was successful on a number of levels. First, it showed that the technology NASA uses is not beyond the ken of the common person, and in fact that a group of amateurs, given a motive, can wrest control of the technology from NASA. Second, the prank showed that even these heros of are not the puritans they are symbolically projected to be, but mere copulating animals like the rest of us. It completely deflated the symbolic usefulness of the space program to the government, and I would say that it is quite likely for this reason that the government has subsequently cut off funding for NASA. That's fine by me. There are plenty of other targets.

For these reasons and many others, pranking has exploded in the last year. Some of it has even been directed at me, which I think is a good thing. You see, the true prankster understands that too many successes will lead to hubris, and a prankster with hubris is basically useless. Like all mortals, I too am prone to hubris, and I count on my brethren pranksters to occasionally cut me down to size, and thus to keep me on the true reckless path of the prankster.