April Fools’ Day has arrived seven months early, with a group of students from Carleton and the University of Ottawa (U of O) pulling pranks on and off campus.
Jad Slim, a first-year engineering student at U of O and Kahiye Hashi, a first-year political science student at Carleton, said they decided to start a YouTube channel for their prank videos last summer
“We do social experiments,” Hashi said. “We just do things that are really awkward and quirky, and see what people do. It varies from person to person.”
Slim and Hashi said they first started with stealing carts, but have since moved on to more elaborate pranks.
“It was very unsuccessful, but as we kept on going, we got more equipment and more confidence,” Hashi said. “We started doing different ideas, branching out further, and we’re just getting better everyday.”
One prank uploaded to their channel involves a fake photo-shoot.
“We ask people to take pictures with us, but instead of taking the picture, we record, and see their reactions,” Slim said.
“There was one person I was recording for at least three minutes and she didn’t even know,” Hashi said.
Slim said their other pranks involve stealing.
“We’ve done cars, bikes, and laptops,” he said.
“Just to clarify, we’re not stealing people’s stuff, ‘cause that would be illegal,” Slim said. “We go up to people, we ask them to watch our stuff because we say we have to go somewhere, like the washroom, or go buy something.”
After, the pranksters film their targets’ reactions.
Hashi and Slim said they often get their friends to fill the acting roles.
“[The pranks] take a lot of time . . . and a lot of money,” Slim said. “So far, I’ve spent like $4,000. Camera’s expensive, and I had to buy a new computer for editing ‘cause you need a lot of RAM and memory.”
“The reason we do this, first of all, is for fun,” he said.
Slim and Hashi said campus safety has never been called on them, and that they have even pranked one of their staff.
“He was wearing normal clothes and sleeping on a bench. We had no idea,” Hashi said.
Slim said after they gave him their laptop and “stole” it from him, the staff member chased them down.
“He wanted to confiscate the laptop, but we told him it was just a prank, so he laughed about it and just gave it back to us,” Slim said.
Allan Burns, director of university safety, said no incidents similar to these pranks have been reported to them.
“I do not believe that pranks such as you’ve described would be helpful,” he said via email.
