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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

Is this overstated?

i.e. I wonder about the gap between clever little prank and sending a dry email to everyone re: a new printing policy.

Much of this hinges on the gradient from the "uproarious laughter" they received from some, to the frustration from others...which I find hard to believe as self-reported, in what context would this be uproariously funny?

I see the value as a simplistic fable re: empathy, and in having it before, not after.

I almost feel like I missed something huge in the email that signals it's a joke, or adds another layer of humor, but after multiple readings, it looks identical to a janitor emailing everyone on campus to tell them keys will be required for bathrooms from now on. Although, that is significantly more implausible than the IT worker emailing everyone on campus to tell them there are charges for printing.

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As someone who makes dry sarcastic jokes pretty often, I’ve learned you have to really put some ridiculous stuff in there to signal it’s a joke. This also scales with audience size and delivery method.

With so many people, you’d actually have to make the price ridiculous or something like that. Because some people, once they read that the printing is five cents, are going to be upset enough to not read the rest of the email.

I wouldn’t actually do this prank, but if I like had to, it would be more like the “charge” was to sing a song and the email would actually say April Fools in it. Maybe less funny, but a lot more easily seen as a joke. Makes handling the calls to the admins much easier, too.

I agree. It seems like hardly anyone got to experience the fun part of the prank - the number of people who actually saw INSERT 5 CENTS on their VFD panel was probably close to zero given "By 8:30am it was chaos". So for 99.9% of people the entirety of the prank was a dry email stating campus was going to start charging for printing, which was true.

For 99.9% of people, the funny of the prank would only hit later. Ie, upon finding out it was a prank, and hearing about the "insert 5 cents" part that they probably didn't see with their own eyes. Plus the retraction, and 2nd retraction. And reactions of other staff who fell for it (and caused chaos) before 8:30.

And then extra value upon retelling all of the above to others.

Someone relating that sequences of events to me as funny, especially if they said it was only funny after the pileup, would significantly adjust my prior as to dark triad characteristics in their psychology.

"prank" = IT guy sent campus wide email saying some printers will now charge $0.05/page

"that they probably didn't see with their own eyes" = they did not check physically very every printer on campus to verify none of the printers had the characteristic, the only way to falsify what the IT guy said, that some printers had a characteristic.

"Plus the retraction, and 2nd retraction." = 3x the time wasted for everyone on campus

"And reactions of other staff who fell for it" = people who believed the dry email from IT

"(and caused chaos)" = chaos isn't funny

"And then extra value upon retelling all of the above to others." = It sounds like we're assuming the relayer would get value from relating this, but the extra value is to the listener, it'd only harm the relayer.

As a listener, now I know that I have to verify 100% of everything the relayer tells me. They think a good prank is when you leverage your professional role to lie and cause chaos, which is justified because those poor sheep were complaining about something they didn't even verify with their own eyes. i.e. thousands of people should have gone through an absurdly onerous verification rather than trust communications you make in your professional role.

Me checking my inbox at 9:30am...

    7:28 New Campus Policy printing now costs 5-cents per page

    8:34 Re: New Campus Policy - April Fools! Printing is free.

    9:14 Re: Re: New Campus Policy - Printing is still free, for now.

delete, delete, mark spam

Absolutely.* Does that shed any light, here? They're not claiming it is a triviality, instead, quite specifically, they are claiming the funny part is chaos and the number of people who reacted differently.

* modulo marking the IT department as spam

The fact that you don't find the ensuing chaos amusing has me wondering - do you find Bedlam DL3 entertaining?

Note that finding something amusing isn't necessarily related to whether or not you feel the perpetrator conducted himself appropriately.

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