Prank War

And you thought your coworkers were jerks. Since 2007, writer-comedians Amir Blumenfeld and Streeter Seidell of fratty yuk-yuk site CollegeHumor.com have engaged in an escalating prank war, duping each other with gags like nonexistent blind dates and hostile stand-up audiences. They posted seven videos over two years, drawing 10 million viewers to their ante-upping antics. In the last installment, conducted in March after an 18-month hiatus, Seidell tricked Blumenfeld into believing he'd won $500,000 for sinking a half-court basketball shot while blindfolded. (He totally missed—psyche!) Wired spoke with the duo about the philosophy and morality of hoaxing: Is there such a thing as going too far?

Wired: How did all this get started?

SS: We work in a very young, permissive office. There are always little pranks going on. At first, what we were doing was nothing out of the ordinary. Then it just got out of control.

AB: For instance, on April Fools' Day our boss sent us an email saying our MTV show had been renewed.

SS: He was lying about that.

AB: We got him back. While he was on a flight from Portland to New York, we created a fake Twitter account for him and posted insanely embarrassing information. We had almost 1,500 people following him by the time he landed.

Wired: Which prank are you proudest of?

SS: Which one was worse for you, Amir? The one where I tricked you into making an embarrassing audition tape and then showed it to the whole office? Or when I got you to fly out to Los Angeles because you thought you were going to be on [the MTV series] Human Giant? Those two showed Amir's true colors, his desire to be famous. They cut deeper emotionally, building him up and then knocking him down real quick.

AB: The painful part is explaining to your friends that the thing you've been bragging about for the past two weeks was a joke.

Wired: Do you ever worry that you've gone too far?

SS: I worry that Amir has gone too far. When he faked a marriage proposal from me to my girlfriend on the Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium, I think that was too far.

AB: And I think it was just far enough. As long as it doesn't permanently affect someone's life. You don't want to get someone in a way that still haunts them 12 years later.

Wired: What does it feel like when you realize you've been burned?

SS: Sometimes it's a relief.

AB: Like the hard part is over. I don't have to live in fear anymore.

Wired: How can we be sure that these pranks are even real? How do we know you aren't pranking us?

SS: I can't prove it to you, other than to say we're not very good actors. Watch our TV show and you'll see.

AB: Actually, the ones that Streeter plays on me are fake. The ones I do, those are real.

A video record of Blumenfeld and Seidell's prank war is available at CollegeHumor.com.

Via Wired