According to police, a guy in Los Angeles was arrested last Friday for allegedly making 18,000 crank calls over the span of six months to the 911 emergency line. Yup, you read that number right. This dude is accused of making 18,000 prank calls. Even I, a lifelong supporter of childish comedy, have to say that's really, really dumb.
Don't get me wrong, I respect the prank call.
It deserves a place of honor in the childish comedy hall of fame, alongside aside such other old classics as "the popcorn trick," the "pull my finger" joke, or even the old ring-and-run add on, the magnificent "bag of flaming dog poop."
But 18,000 of these calls?
To the emergency line?
In the year 2011?
Let's break this down:
You don't crank call 911 Everybody knows you crank call the obnoxious elderly man whose trash is filled with liquor bottles and screams at you to get off his lawn. Or maybe your overly strict science teacher in middle school, or of course, the adorable crank with the voice like a sandblaster who owns the local dive bar. You don't crank call 911, because the victim in that case isn't the idiot you're trying to make fun of, it's the guy who gets killed because you were tying up the 911 emergency line.
18,000 Crank Calls isn't a joke, it's a mental illness You know what's funny? One crank call. You know what funnier? Two crank calls. You know what's a little less funny? The third crank call. You what's terribly, terribly unfunny? The fourth, fifth and sixth crank call. Oddly enough from seven to about fifteen they start getting pretty funny again, but only if they aren't perfomed by puppets. Either way, 18,000 is WAY too many.
Isn't it the year 2011? Crank calls, as fun as they were when I was growing up, were great because of the simple fact that they were harmless, annoying fun, and you couldn't get caught unless you were really, really bad at it. Now, thanks to built in caller ID, and cell phones that track the global position of the user, even a careful phone prankster isn't going to get his mark to believe that the person calling about the status of his refrigerator is really attempting to reach him from a RESTRICTED NUMBER.
With all due respect, buddy- haven't you even considered branching out into fake Facebook pages?
Man Arrested in More Than 18,000 Prank 911 Calls
All the dumb that's fit to blog! Follow us on Twitter.
