Category: The World of the Prank

The artist as social provocateur and activist incorporates humor, satire, irony, political commentary and/or direct action to provoke critical thinking. Pranks challenge convention and the status quo and expose prejudices and biases.

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RIP Yayoi Kusama 1929 to 2026

Remembering Kusama: In 1968, artist, Yayoi Kusama joined Joey Skaggs’ Hippie Bus Tour to Queens. In a satirical ironic reversal, the group toured neighborhoods and snapped photos of suburbanites mowing their lawns and washing their cars. When the group stopped at Hillside’s Nirvana head shop in Queens, the “Group Image” band played while Kusama painted polka dots on the naked dancers.

Read The Guardian’s Obituary here:
Yayoi Kusama, Japanese artist who became a global superstar, dies aged 97, by Tim Jonze and Sian Cain, August 26, 2026.

Related posts:

  1. Justice is blind — but this attorney sees the future
  2. September Film Festival Screenings of “Joey Skaggs: Metamorphosis, Cockroach Miracle Cure”
  3. Joe Enright on Joey Skaggs–60 Years of Satire, Psychic Attorneys and Mobile Confessionals
  4. Catch the First Four Joey Skaggs Oral Histories at the (Virtual) New Jersey Film Festival Friday
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Viva la France??

Why you don’t take your guillotine to a gun fight…

Man arrested after guillotine is found in pickup truck near Capitol, by Kyle Stewart and Raquel Coronell Uribe, NBC News, August 25, 2026.

In 2024, Joey Skaggs’ New York City Annual April Fools’ Day Parade featured “Democracy at the Guillotine” on a mobile billboard truck, therefore avoiding a showdown with the law.

Related posts:

  1. From the Vault: Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning, 1968
  2. Free Biden Presidential Pardons Are Here!
  3. Announcing New York City’s 37th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade (2022)
  4. Russian Punk Legend Pussy Riot Gives Trump a Special Performance
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A Spectacle to Miss On Your Next Trip to Italy

A self-described Italian archeologist “makes” history, literally.
h/t Uwe

‘A sucker born every minute’: The man who duped tourists with a fake Greek amphitheater, by Julia Buckley, CNN, August 24, 2026.

Of the eight TripAdvisor reviews of the amphitheater near Arcugnano, in Italy’s northern Veneto region, all give fulsome, five-star praise.

Read the whole article here.

Related posts:

  1. No Surprise, But U.S. Foreign Policy’s Gone Rogue
  2. Political Prank Topples the Austrian Government. Joey Skaggs Swears He Didn’t Do It! [English and German]
  3. Confessions of a Rock and Roll Poser
  4. The Political Prank That Ensnared the Wall Street Journal
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It’s a Poll Measuring Contest!

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying poll?

Website behind widely shared fake election polls run by 21-year-old, by Sophie Sullivan, Anna Betts and Sam Levine, The Guardian, August 20, 2026.

Exclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’

A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.

The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.

Read the whole article here.

Related posts:

  1. Hangin’ in the Louvre
  2. The Second Coming is on ICE
  3. Trump Dump
  4. BP or Not BP: Be Wary of Petroleum Based Companies Bearing Gifts
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Hiding in Plain Sight

You too can help a billionaire in need.

Reminds us of Joey Skaggs’ Geraldo Hoax about artists living in water towers.

A comedian’s joke pied-à-terre tax workaround could actually go legit after struggling New Yorkers and homeowners flooded inbox, by Mary K. Jacob, New York Post, August 20, 2026.

A stand-up comedian’s satirical stab at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new luxury home tax has snowballed into something she never expected to actually build.

Madison Walser, who splits time between New York and Los Angeles, launched a website called Aura Investments back in May as pure internet bait. The pitch was simple and absurd: struggling artists move into vacant apartments owned by wealthy second-home owners, and in exchange those owners dodge the city’s pied-à-terre tax.

Read the whole article here.

Related posts:

  1. Sarah Cooper’s “How To Second Term”
  2. Announcing NYC’s 35th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade — The Only Parade Not Being Cancelled!
  3. The 2017 April Fools’ Day Parade “Trumpathon” hits Japanese TV News [Japanese]
  4. In a Troubled Country, a Novelty Candidate Gains a Following

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