The Fake Talent Show Prank

Title: The Fake Talent Show Prank

General Information about Item:

  • Customary, Practical Joke
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Dylan Whang
  • Date Collected: This data was collected on October 29th, 2018 during a one-on-one interview in the library of Dartmouth College with Dylan Whang.

Informant Data:

  • Dylan Whang ‘21 is a male student studying Economics at Dartmouth College. He is originally from New York, New York. Dylan participated in a canoeing trip before the start of his Freshman year at Dartmouth as part of the First Year Trips DOC program. He has an older brother (Derek Whang ‘17), who attended Dartmouth and encouraged him to participate in the Trips program. However, he was not informed in advance of what the experience would be like.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context
    • Dylan encountered this joke first when he was a tripee during August of 2017. Dylan described that this practical joke was one of many played on him and his fellow tripees during their time on trips; however, he feels that this joke was the funniest because it was the best executed and was taken most seriously by his fellow tripees.
    • This joke is typically played by upperclassmen or students leading trips on their first year tripees. As the objects of the prank, the new freshmen are supposed to be initiated and bonded together as a new class by going through the embarrassment of this prank together.
  • Cultural Context
    • This joke occurs on first year trips, which close to 95% of every incoming class at Dartmouth College participates in. Trips are used as a way to welcome each new class to Dartmouth and to break down whatever misconceptions they might have. Accordingly, jokes on trips are used often as they offer a great way to subvert expectations and to make everyone have a good time. Typically, the practical joke is played once the members of the trip and the leaders have left Dartmouth’s campus and are together somewhere in the surrounding wilderness of New Hampshire/Vermont. In this way, practical jokes like this one are very common to the Trips setting as they serve to bring everyone closer together through group humiliation/embarrassment.

Item:

Trip leaders informed their tripees that there would be a talent show on the final night of trips and that there would be a special, unknown reward for whichever trip section performed the best. Trip leaders of Dylan Whang ‘21’s section encouraged their section to come up with something that they could perform together to help win the prize. After his trip leaders had their section perform a song and dance routine several times leading up to when the talent show was supposedly going to take place, he was informed by his trip leaders that it was all a prank. In reality, the talent show was just a practical joke played on all of them to get them to come up with a crazy, embarrassing routine.

Transcript:

  • Jackson: Hey Dylan, I’m just curious if you could just tell me a little bit about your background?
  • Dylan: So, I’m Dylan Whang. I’m a ‘21 from New York City. My brother actually is a 17 and went to this school.
  • Jackson: What are you studying?
  • Dylan: Computer science and quantitative social sciences.
  • Jackson: Cool. So, when you went on trips, did you have like any background or understanding of what it would be like?
  • Dylan: So because my brother told me like it’s a really fun time but didn’t really tell me anything other than that. I think he did like he did kayaking, and I did canoeing so we kind of went to the same spot which is kind of cool.
  • Jackson: Do you remember if there were like any pranks or jokes that were played on you during trips or anything that stuck out in particular?
  • Dylan: Yeah. So like one that actually sticks that sticks out to me is when we were canoeing like towards the end, [our trip leaders] were saying that like when we got back to the Mount Moosilauke or wherever we were going but we would have to perform a talent show. So, our group came up with a song. We did a remix of pop songs to make them have to do with Dartmouth and with Trips. The whole time on our trip we were trying to find songs to do and were practicing them across our boats.
  • Jackson: Why do you think it ended up being so funny?
  • Dylan: It was funny because a couple of our tripees got really into it and were really excited to perform in the talent show. We were actually sadder at the end that there wasn’t a talent show than being upset about practicing and having to come up with a song.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Audio file

Informant’s Comments:

  • “I really enjoyed this prank. I was almost sadder that there was not a real talent show at the end because I had so much fun rehearsing songs with the friends I made on my trip.”

 

Collectors’ Comments:

  • Dylan Whang fondly recalled this prank. When I asked him if he recalled any jokes from trips, this was the first thing that came to mind. Thinking about the nature of the prank as a whole, it serves perfectly as a way to develop friendships and to bond as a group.

 

Collector’s Name: Jackson Baur

Tags/Keywords:

  • Joke. Pranks. Practical Jokes. Trips. Dartmouth.

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