Houston Chronicle: Mysterious ‘Secret Squirrel Facility’ shows up on Google Maps in Texas. “As first reported by the San Antonio Express, a Reddit user recently spotted a building located just outside of New Braunfels, Texas that Google Maps identifies as ‘SECRET SQUIRREL FACILITY.’”
Associated Press: Jury acquits delivery driver of main charge in shooting of YouTube prankster . “A jury on Thursday found a delivery driver not guilty in the shooting of a YouTube prankster who followed him around a mall food court earlier this year. Alan Colie, 31, was acquitted of aggravated malicious wounding in the shooting of Tanner Cook, 21, who runs the ‘Classified Goons’ YouTube channel.”
Dallas Morning News: Anti-LGBTQ YouTubers trolled a progressive Plano church. It was firebombed weeks later. “Weeks before the Community Unitarian Universalist Church of Plano was damaged in a firebomb attack early Sunday, members of the church welcomed four strangers — one of them carrying a camera — with hugs, smiles and the promise of a judgment-free fellowship. They didn’t immediately know they were being trolled and baited by a group of influencers who frequently take videos of themselves pranking progressives and liberals. The video, titled ‘We acted LGBT at LGBT Church,’ has garnered nearly 200,000 views since it was posted to YouTube on July 12.”
Ars Technica: Redditors prank AI-powered news mill with “Glorbo” in World of Warcraft. “On Thursday, a Reddit user named kaefer_kriegerin posted a fake announcement on the World of Warcraft subreddit about the introduction of ‘Glorbo’ to the game. Glorbo isn’t real, but the post successfully exposed a website that scrapes Reddit for news in an automated fashion with little human oversight.”
HuffPost: Maryland Students Prank School By Listing It On Zillow As ‘Nice Half-Working Jail’. “A group of high school seniors in Fort Meade, Maryland, had fun pranking their high school last week ― by attempting to sell it on Zillow. The students at Meade High School listed their school on the real estate website for a measly $42,069, local news outlets reported.”
News24: Unknown individual renames Eskom HQ as ‘MegaGravy Train Park’ on Google Maps . “Eskom’s famous headquarters, Megawatt Park in Sunninghill, Johannesburg, has been renamed Eskom MegaGravy Train Park on Google Maps. The renaming of the headquarters by an unknown individual pokes fun at the embattled power utility.”
Deadline: BBC Takes Down Story About Will Ferrell After Being Fooled By Fake Twitter Account. “The BBC has taken down from its website a story about Will Ferrell after being fooled by a Twitter account that did not belong to the Anchorman actor. Ferrell has been in the UK this month on something of a soccer tour, attending a variety of games and mingling with fans.”
BBC News: Alan MacMasters: How the great online toaster hoax was exposed. “For more than a decade, a prankster spun a web of deception about the inventor of the electric toaster. His lies fooled newspapers, teachers and officials. Then a teenager flagged up something that everyone else had missed.”
Laughing Squid: Artist Builds Giant Concrete Sarcophagus for a Bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos for Future Generations to Find. “Seattle artist Sunday Nobody built a giant concrete 3,000 pound sarcophagus for a single bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos that future generations can dig up and look back on to see what kind of junk food was popular in our time. He also added a shiny plaque on top with the ingredients of the popular snack food.”
STV News: Controversial fracking site ‘renamed’ as ‘Liz Truss Career Memorial’. “A Blackpool fracking site was briefly renamed to take a jab at the Prime Minister earlier this week as it appeared as the ‘Liz Truss Career Memorial’ on Google Maps.”
WIRED: Inside the World’s Biggest Hacker Rickroll. “The elaborate high school graduation prank—dubbed The Big Rick by its architects—was one of the largest rickrolls to ever take place, taking months of planning to pull off.”
CNET: How An NFT Trader Lost $150K Trying to Troll Twitter Bots. “Scams and frauds are ubiquitous in crypto, but sometimes the biggest losses are those people inflict upon themselves. On Wednesday, one NFT trader suffered a spectacular loss of 100 ether, or $150,000, because of a joke gone wrong.” It was a silly thing for them to do, but much respect to this person for 100% owning it.
WIRED: This Hacktivist Site Lets You Prank-Call Russian Officials. “Visit the site, click a button, and it will cycle through a leaked list of Russian government, military, and intelligence phone numbers to connect two random Russian officials—and allow the site’s visitor to silently listen in as those officials waste their time trying to figure out why they’re speaking to each other and who initiated the call.”
Sacramento Bee: Students ‘terrorized’ by ‘panic-inducing’ YouTube pranks at CA university, lawsuit says. “The University of Southern California has sued two YouTubers over a series of ‘panic-inducing’ pranks the pair staged during university lectures and recorded for their YouTube channel, the lawsuit says. A Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge issued a temporary restraining order Friday, April 8, that bans Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai from campus and other university-owned buildings because of their involvement in the YouTube stunts, according to City News Service.” They are not students.
Mashable: The secret Wikipedia prank behind the Pringles mascot’s first name. “The name ‘Julius Pringles’ — which Kellogg’s claims as officially trademarked, though a search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office site for ‘Julius Pringles’ returned no immediate results — looks not to have come from a marketing team, or some long-forgotten Pringles founder. Rather, the name stems from two Wikipedia savvy, hoax-loving college students snacking away on Sour Cream & Onion Pringles in their dorm room back in 2006.”
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