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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Ethical Vacancy

What happens when AI’s lack of conscience converges with people with no conscience?

“The ‘AI Homeless Man Prank’ reveals a crisis in AI education,” by External Contributor, Digital Information World, December 14, 2025.

The new TikTok trend “AI Homeless Man Prank” has sparked a wave of outrage and police responses in the United States and beyond.

The prank involves using AI image generators to create realistic photos depicting fake homeless people appearing to be at someone’s door or inside their home. Learning to distinguish between truth and falsehood is not the only challenge society faces in the AI era. We must also reflect on the human consequences of what we create.

As professors of educational technology at Laval University and education and innovation at Concordia University, we study how to strengthen human agency — the ability to consciously understand, question and transform environments shaped by artificial intelligence and synthetic media — to counter disinformation. Read the whole article here.

Related posts:

  1. How the Proliferation of Fake News Makes April Fools’ Day Every Day
  2. Meth Lab Prank
  3. In Review: April Fools’ Day 2019 Branding, Marketing, and Media Stunts
  4. Journalist Who Posed as Middle Eastern Tycoon Gets Prison Term
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Social Media Compliance Certificates Available Now!

Traveling into or out of the United States (and want to be able to travel without the fear of deportation)? Show the authorities that your online activity from the past five years has been pre-screened and approved.

Print your customizable Social Media Compliance Certificate, by artist Joey Skaggs, and keep it with your passport and other important travel documents.

https://joeyskaggs.com/works/social-media-compliance-certificate/.

Related posts:

  1. Joey Skaggs interviewed by Mark Borkowski about creative dissent on BBC Radio 4
  2. Trump’s Long-awaited Nobel Peace Prize!
  3. Get Your Top Secret Cover Sheet for Classified Information
  4. The Guerrilla Girls Are Asking:
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Guerrilla of My Dreams

It’s about time…

“Learn ‘How to Be a Guerrilla Girl’ at The Getty,” by Beverly Press, November 26, 2025.

Coinciding with the Guerrilla Girls’ 40th anniversary, “How to Be a Guerrilla Girl,” on view at the Getty through April 12, 2026, offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look into the inner workings of the iconic feminist art collective.

Drawing from the Getty Research Institute’s remarkable Guerrilla Girls archive, the exhibition highlights the strategies – anonymity, data gathering, protest actions, culture jamming and grassroots distribution – that have defined the group’s groundbreaking practice since the mid-1980s.

The Guerrilla Girls have created a newly-commissioned work for the exhibition that explores the Getty’s own collection of European painting and sculpture. Using comic strip style speech bubbles, they reimagine the voices of women represented in these artworks through a twenty-first century lens. The commission exposes deeply rooted biases in the representation of women in Guerilla Girls characteristic witty style. Read the whole article here.

Related posts:

  1. Announcing the 40th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade!
  2. Announcing NYC’s 39th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade
  3. Catch the First Four Joey Skaggs Oral Histories at the (Virtual) New Jersey Film Festival Friday
  4. ART OF THE PRANK to screen Sept 11 in NYC
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Dance Power

Dancers protest Trump’s cultural appropriation.

“Protest Dance Outside Kennedy Center Targets Trump’s Attack on Culture,” by Emma Cieslik, Hyperallergic, November 24, 2025.

Dozens of workers have been terminated since the president took over the institution in February.

WASHINGTON, DC — On Saturday, November 22, protestors expanded and crunched their bodies, arms rising and falling with flicked wrists, as they marched in front of the Kennedy Center with stoic expressions. Passersby would be excused for mistaking it for an official performance, but the show outside the nation’s art center was actually a “dance protest” organized in response to President Trump’s rising authoritarianism.

While DC was buzzing with action across the city at the Remove the Regime march and fold-in event at the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center offered a powerful backdrop for resistance. Days before, the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works launched an investigation into cronyism and corruption at the Kennedy Center under the leadership of Richard Grenell, whom Trump appointed as the institution’s interim president in February. Read the whole article here.

Related posts:

  1. The Art of Protest, a New Film by Indecline
  2. The Writing’s on the Wall
  3. Canards For Humanity
  4. Subway Sexual Assault Prevention Gets Physical
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From the Vault: Joey Skaggs’ Thanksgiving Dinner 1981

Thanksgiving Dinner 44 years ago.

Joey Skaggs, with the help of friends, students from the School of Visual Arts, and Abyssinian Baptist Choir, created a stark portrayal of a Thanksgiving feast at the United Nations Plaza on Thanksgiving Day.

Related posts:

  1. Ho Ho Ho! Santa’s Missile Tow
  2. Catch It While You Can…”Joey Skaggs: Fish Condos” at the New Jersey Film Festival
  3. Catch the First Four Joey Skaggs Oral Histories at the (Virtual) New Jersey Film Festival Friday
  4. Portofess: The Church Must Go Where the Sinners Are!

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