The Power of Pranks -- A Suicidal Nurse and a Fantasy Land

Two DJs called an Australian hospital and pretended to be a prince and a queen in order to get information on the Duchess of Cambridge. The end result was a prank learned about throughout the world and the nurse who fell for it killing herself.

I like playing pranks (last night was one prank after another in Old Town much the uncomfortable amusement of Butter Licker).  Anyone who knows me knows I am fascinated by the power of pranks to transform reality.  I have shut down towns, have had police swarm a house, and other amusing things.  Pranks are like alchemy.

When word of the nurse's suicide got out, a few people asked me if that made any sense to me, and if I would perhaps consider such things before playing another prank.  After all, it seems like such a trival thing to commit suicide over.  A prank call?  Well, no, I won't consider that before playing another prank, and yes it makes perfect sense, but only if you understand that aforementioned transformative quality of pranks.

The nurse who killed herself lived in a fantasy world.  She granted a prince and a queen greater social respect and power than they really have.  They are really nothing more than figureheads, but this nurse, like many other people, think they are more than that.  When she was shown how fragile that belief system is, she took her life.  To me and many others it seems trivial, and I believe she may have bought into that fantasy more than a lot of people, but a lot of people do buy into that false world (and many others) on some level and are therefore easy prey to people who understand the tenuous nature of reality.  If you have invested heavily into that reality, suicide is understandable when that reality is shown to be all smoke and mirrors.  Understandable, but still tragic and senseless -- no disrespect meant to the dead.

Whether your fantasy land is inhabited by queens and princes, dragons, faith that replaces rational thinking not in times of crisis but in standard matters, or any number of other things that are believed without hesitation, then you can easily find yourself victim to people like me.  Your investment in that reality dictates your actions once the wool is ripped from your eyes.  Had this nurses grasp of reality not have included queens and princes she would have been possibly humilated, but she would have understood the sympathy based around the fact that we have all been victims of pranks at one time or another.  Instead, she obviously had a very hard time understanding such a thing because her world had been turned inside out.

So, yes, it is understandable, but also very senseless, like many suicides.  Will it stop me from playing pranks?  No.  My life is an experiment in the reality of reality.  I enjoy playing with it, manipulating it and turning it upside down.  I don't do it to be mean (usually).  I do it with a sense of wonder and to see how people will react because people fascinate me.  I actually believe I could cause suicide through the use of reality manipulation in the form of pranks or otherwise.  I don't do that, though.  That isn't me.  It wasn't the goal of these DJs, either.  Most rational people wouldn't kill themselves over this sort of thing ... but, in all fairness, I have never found a belief in queens and princes and their social status to be all that rational in the first place.