Last night, out for dinner with a group of friends in celebration of one of our number’s birthday, I mentioned that I had noticed that in an awful lot of articles lamenting the lately departed entertainer and king of trivia and video clips, Jeremy Beadle, he was referred to as a “Prankster”.

In fact, a casual search on the interwebs shows that he’s been referred to as such online on no fewer than 464,000 occasions, and that his name occurs in nearly a fifth of all search results for “prankster”. This is surely the only proof required.

This got me thinking about where “prankster” registers in the general field of japes and subterfuge, which in turn got us talking about whether there was, in fact, a continuum of such things, into which all of the various shades of japery, trickery and subterfuge might appear.

And you know, there is. And here’s how the categories break out, with a full explanation of each, and examples, after the jump.

1. Practical Jokers are people who place fake plastic dog turds on the pavement, or cover the toilet seat in clingfilm, or think remote fart noisemakers are hilarious.
   They are occasionally malicious, but their main motivations are
   a) making people (and themselves) laugh and
   b) the sheer joy of fooling someone. As you might expect, they are usually under 12, amused by poo or otherwise fairly immature.
2. Pranksters operate on a more elaborate scale, with less obvious gags and more planning. They specialise in confusion and befuddling their victims, though they are ultimately motivated by being clever. Pranks often involve dressing up and the use of props, though the more sophisticated pranks can be created and maintained through words and situations alone. April Fools day is often a good example of pranking in the wild. Pranks need to be believable, and generally not malicious, though the actual period of the prank can be upsetting or stressful for the mark. In fact, pranks usually require a specific mark, while practical jokes and gags can be much more broadly targetted.

   Because of the need to be clever - and, more importantly, to be perceived to be clever - as a prankster moves away from mere practical jokes, the reveal becomes an increasingly important element of any prank: without a reveal, showing the whole thing to be an elaborate and fiendishly brilliant ruse, the mark may be entirely fooled, and that would mean no-one would be able to say how clever the prankster was.

   Examples of pranksters include Dom Joly, who does stupid things in public at one end of the category of prankster, and yet sometimes creates set-ups which involve pulling a mark in and then exposing them to something ridiculous or increasingly strange. Also notable, of course, is Jeremy Beadle, who elevated prankstering to an artform in Game For a Laugh and Beadle’s About.

3. Hoaxster/Satirists have a lot in common with pranksters, although their motivations tend to be somewhat different. Their interests are often in moking people look foolish. or exposing some hypocisy or character flaw in their personalities. This frequently happens with celebrities as the main targets. Famous people are legitimate targets because they often take themselves too seriously, and can afford to be “taken down a peg or two”.

   Additionally in this category, the thrill of the reveal lessens the further along the spectrum we move. Some in this section are content to play elaborate tricks on unsuspecting members of the glitterati, frequently revealing them to be human, vulnerable and/or spoilt before the reveal reassures the mark that everything’s OK after all, such as can be witnessed in MTV’s Punk’d (example: Justin Timberlake).

   Others in this category like Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G or Brass Eye’s infamous Cake segment, among others, rely on asking celebrities to participate in situations which are revealed to be odd, uncomfortable or not quite right, but crucially these encounters occur in front of the camera, which means that no matter how ridiculous or strange the situation is, their professionalism or concern at looking out of step nevertheless forces them to carry on, effectively hoisting them by their own petards: vanity, fame and the media. As there is no reveal, an interesting power imbalance is created - the presenter/programme makers and audience are in on the ruse throughout, and the hapless celebrity is left looking like a fool in public for so enthusiastically participating in something which is patently idiotic.

4. Confidence Tricksters rely on creating a character which can be used to deceive others for personal gain. The benefits to the trickster in this category are usually not material: instead, the creator of the lie aims to gain trust and by doing so, expose others for what they really are, or trap them into unguarded confession. Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character did this in a different way from Ali G - in the earlier character, the only people looking stupid were famous or important people who somehow “deserve” it, while Borat’s aim was much lower (especially in his eponymous film) and concentrated on exposing the general public to be ignorant or otherwise worthy of derision. Investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre has made a career out of pretending to be someone else - going undercover for periods of varying lengths in order to extract crucial information or confessions from his marks, though unlike Borat, he often cannot resist a reveal at the end. It’s the ego.Also in this category, though pushing the upper boundary, is Frank Abagnale Jr, whose cons and deceptive exploits, and the life he was able to lead through them, featured in the film Catch Me If You Can. Although he was engaging in deception for personal gain rather than social exposé, his methods still relied on creating believable characters and gaining from the deception.
5. Con Artists/Fraudsters sound a lot like the previous category, except there’s something more malicious going on. Their aim is not to reveal, expose or gain status or noteriety, or even to enjoy the thrill of the deception, but simply put, to profit from others gullibility.In order to create a believable environment for the theft to occur, they can use elaborate situations, props and plots - and in the case of the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, often need to spend money in order to attract more money. High production values aren’t a prerequisite, though - sometimes a bulk approach can be much more effective, as evidenced by the 419 scammers, who operate on the (unfortunately correct) assumption that if you cast the net wide enough, you’re bound to snare at least one rube willing to sign away thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of pounds/dollars which can be profitable enough to make the whole enterprise worthwhile, bad spelling and internet bills and all.

   The commonality for proper con artists and fraudsters, however, is a willingness to invest time in creating and priming a relationship which allows for the exploitation to seem less exploitative. It’s a sort of hardcore confidence trickery.

So, here’s that spectrum again, with the above examples mapped onto it.

There must be more, though…