Shenanigans in Cyberspace

What's the difference between a (mean) prank and shenanigans? The former are often "destructive and malicious" while the latter are "lighthearted, good-natured naughtiness." Sounds good to me, Gareth. To cyberspace!

"If you have access to the Internet and USENET newsgroups, you can join a constant twittering prankster's think tank in the alt.shenanigans newsgroup."

But what if you don't, and you only have the Handbook? Branwyn shares some favorite "funny acts of poetic terrorism," from shopping for others (attributed to John Waters), to sending fax maintenance messages, the telemarketer's game (found here in a post dated from 1993, with added goals and points in a follow-up), random acts of randomness on subways or elevators including getting friends to start an impromptu sing-along (less organized than The Liberators international effort, but you get the idea), and lost pet posters.

If you're looking for alt.shenanigans now, it was apparently overrun by spammers, so someone tried to recreate the group on Reddit about 5 years ago, to no avail. And after a spam/ malicious content warning, Google Groups doesn't show any content, at least as far as I can see. But faqs.org has the alt.shenanignas FAQ from 1996. At some point, content was archived to an FTP site, as linked in this Index to archive of alt.* newsgroups, but even that's gone, now. This archive only has the FAQ. Digging some more, I found this list of practical jokes, archived from alt.shenanigans, the page itself archived on the Wayback Machine.

But looking at some of these now, and even the Telemarkter's Game, there are some practical jokes and gags that seem have more that a little Unhappy Mutant in them. My thinking is this: how would I feel to be on the other end of one of these jokes? No one goes into telemarketing to make other people miserable, so why be a jerk to someone making minimum wage? Or why move an outhouse and have someone literally fall into shit? More lost pigeon posters and glitter traps, less buttering toilet seats and supergluing plates down in a diner.