March 30, 2014: Pranks and Hoaxes, produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International, presents an interview with Joey Skaggs called Art of the Hoax – Joey Skaggs.
Listen here
Wired’s Guide to Hoaxes
Wired’s Guide to Hoaxes: How to Give “” and Take “” a Joke
Essay by Scott Brown, The Official Prankonomy by Steven Leckart
Wired.com
August 24, 2009
Here’s what you’ve been told: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” “Take or be taken.” “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.” These aphorisms are so ingrained in American life, they’re practically commandments. And for good reason: We are a credulous people. For proof, open your spam folder and count the chain emails from 1998 that are still coming in, dutifully forwarded by friends and relatives. Or consider that new Facebook pal whose name seemed familiar enough when you hit Confirm. We are, today, the same easy marks who ran screaming from Orson Welles’ made-up Martians and flocked to see the Cardiff Giant. So we’re defensive. A hoax, we are taught, is an invasive, aggressive stratagem””a nefarious short-circuiting of our natural social instincts, a hack of Trust itself, a deterministic, zero-sum shell game with a clear winner (the prankster) and loser (the gull).
Well, here’s what we’re telling you: Bullshit. Continue reading “Wired’s Guide to Hoaxes”
Emily Levine: A Trickster’s Theory of Everything
From TED: Humorist, writer and trickster Emily Levine riffs on science and the human condition:
I’m Gonna Wash That Meme Right Outta My Hair
Here’s a collection of articles about Memetic Engineering spanning the last 10 years:
What is Memetic Engineering? (from Wikipedia)
Memetic engineering is a term used by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene
According to Dawkins, the effect a meme has on society is based on the application of the meme within a society rather than any qualities essential to the meme. For example, Dawkins explains that, “Race” and “Racism” are memes comprised of several other memes, some of which have positive connotations in societies that reject racism.
According to Dawkins, typical memetic engineers include scientists, engineers, industrial designers, ad-men, artists, publicists, political activists, and religious missionaries.
Dawkins states that much of theology and other theoretical aspects of religion can be viewed as the careful, even worshipful, handling of extremely powerful memeplexes with very odd or difficult traits.
Memetic Engineering
by James Gardner
Wired
May, 1996
What if culture – even consciousness itself – were nothing more than an artifact of the interaction of selfish memes, ideas capable of replicating and co-evolving with supreme indifference to their impact on human hosts?
A meme-centered paradigm of human culture and consciousness is, to say the least, disconcerting. In Consciousness Explained
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I don”t know about you, but I”m not initially attracted by the idea of my brain as a sort of dung heap in which the larvae of other people”s ideas renew themselves, before sending out copies of themselves in an informational Diaspora. It does seem to rob my mind of its importance as both author and critic. Who”s in charge, according to this vision – we or our memes? Continue reading “I’m Gonna Wash That Meme Right Outta My Hair”
Pranks Defined
This definition of pranks is from V.Vale’s introduction to his formative book PRANKS, published in 1987 by RE/Search Publications. I’ve always loved this essay. He has graciously allowed us to reprint it here. In 2006, RE/Search Publications released a follow-up book called Pranks! 2 that is equally seminal in its approach to the subject -JS
PRANKS. According to the Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary, a prank is a “trick . . . a mildly mischievous act . . . a practical joke . . . a ludicrous act.” The best pranks invoke the imagination, poetic imagery, the unexpected and a deep level of irony or social criticism””such as Boyd Rice’s presentation of a skinned sheep’s head on a silver platter to Betty Ford, First Lady of the United States. Great pranks create synaesthetic experiences which are unmistakably exciting, original, and reverberating, as well as creative, metaphoric, poetic and artistic. If these criteria be deemed sufficient, then pranks can be considered as constituting an art form and genre in themselves.
However slighted by Academia, pranks are not without cultural and historical precedent. Continue reading “Pranks Defined”