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That's not a prank, it's just idiotic. We all did stupid things when young, but most of us have by now realized that what they did wasn't actually funny.

• rrr_oh_man 1y ago
  It's not about funny. I have observed it in dogs and young children. It's about taking action in the world and receiving (any) feedback that your actions have an impact. That's the origin of pranks, negging, playing. It's quite an important development step, imho.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • yusina 1y ago
    Definitely. But it also means acknowledging later on that it was actually harmful to others.
    • protocolture 1y ago
      I was also really good at prank phone calls if you have a handful of therapy words to throw at me over that.
• protocolture 1y ago
  Its a lesson in human behaviour. And like all young people we were interested in what makes society tick. We were daring rogue anthropologists. You get the 3 payphones. If you have them all present the message, someone gets curious and lifts a handset, resolving the issue. But if you disable only 2, everyone just lines up behind the working payphone. Its a repeatable experiment, one we performed everywhere we saw telstra payphones. Apologies if you happen to be a disgruntled telstra payphone user.
  • iamflimflam1 1y ago
    As you grow up and experience more of life you come to realise that you thought of as harmless “pranks” probably had a real impact on people’s lives. Who knows that the people in that queue were trying to do or who they were trying to contact. It’s only by experiencing these moment and stresses ourselves that gives us the perspective to put ourselves in others shoes and gain empathy.
    • protocolture 1y ago
      They were only psychologically limited. Thats the point. All someone has to do is pick up the handset and the condition clears. Instead they line up, flocking with other humans. A human being curious enough to lift a second handset immediately resolves the issue. The experiment just demonstrates how rare that condition is. And judging by your responses I feel like you would not have been curious enough to either lift a handset or identify the method to create the condition in the first place.
      • AStonesThrow 1y ago
        One night I was fresh off the plane in Barcelona and my friend had taken me to a restaurant for supper. Knowing plenty of Spanish and Romance languages, I could mostly figure out how to read menus and signs. I went to find the Men's Room which was downstairs. I must've pushed the door instead of pulling it, then I decided it was locked, and so I loitered there waiting for the other guy to exit the bathroom, and I waited a long time, being still rather disoriented in a foreign country for the first time. And one guy emerged, and I tested the door again, but decided it had locked behind him. A second guy came out and I was like "hey wait, this is not a one-man room!" And that is when I rediscovered how bathroom doors work. Nothing in this scenario was actually unfamiliar or unusual, but I suppose being in Catalonia instead of the U.S., I expected it to be so!
      • shakna 1y ago
        Curosity takes energy. If life is going to shit, and that phonecall is your lifeline, you usually have no mental bandwidth left for someone screwing around.