Half-Life of Halfway Decent College Prank Now Half a Second
From: Yale College Council
Date: March 27, 2007 12:33:36 AM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Your Spring Fling 2007 Performers: Coming Tuesday, May 1st!
Two hours and 11 minutes, actually.
The above image (click to embiggen) landed in every Yale undergrad’s inbox shortly after midnight, announcing this year’s Spring Fling performers as Smashmouth and Ricky Martin. Last year’s headliners were Ludacris and Ben Folds, so that would have been quite a letdown. As college pranks go, this was somewhere way below Drinkin’ Time and way above the reinstatement of Larry Summers. But, all things considered, we give the parties responsible — we’re told it’s three gents folks by the name of Amun Storres Arun Storrs, Zijun Chen and Jayson Tischler* — a B for finely calibrated plausibility and Photoshop skillz.
Alas! New Haven yawned, not a soul convinced, more concerned with reacclimating after spring break and furiously de-tagging incriminating photos on Facebook. And at 2:47 a.m., the not-fazed-whatsoever Yale College Council responded in kind. If video killed the radio star, Internet killed the campus prankstar.
From: “Yale College Council” <ycc@yalestation.org>
Date: March 27, 2007 2:47:55 AM EDT
To: [Redacted]
Subject: Your Spring Fling 2007 Performers: Coming Tuesday, May 1st!
(No, it’s not Smashmouth and Ricky Martin either.
Find out through the YDN in a couple of weeks.)
*UPDATE March 28: Given that we a) misspelled the first person’s name, b) had the wrong gender on the second, and c) are now told by the third (“Error!!!”) that he had nothing to do with the original email, we think it’s pretty fair to say our tipster was misinformed about who was involved. Disregard!
