Man, pranks used to be so good. And not like old Jackass shit, where you’d light a dude’s nutsack on fire and run around giggling about it. Real fucking 5th grade pranks, where you didn’t have to go to a hospital or question your sexuality. Well, thanks to technology, those days are gone. Now pre-teens have to spend their idle time sexting each other or skateboarding over my feet when I’m in line at an ATM. Below are some of the most famous pranks that technology has killed: Prank phone calls - Back in the days of rotary telephones and cords that were still attached to the wall, executing a perfect prank phone call required little more than a voice change and a telephone book. You could be a long lost relative, or a nosey neighbor who needed to know if a refrigerator was running. More advanced techniques involved soundboards that would awkwardly splice conversation together to give the impression that an unsuspecting victim were talking to, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger from Terminator. And while caller ID was the first true blow to this national pastime, there was always IP Relay. That is, until some retarded kids started calling 911 with it, and blew the whole thing up for all of us. Assholes.

Using a universal remote to change someone else’s channel - Oh, to be 11-years-old and sneaking around the neighborhood with a concealed item, peeking into windows. It’s probably better that DVR technology has rendered this once-famous prank basically obsolete, as taser technology has also vastly improved in the past decade, alongside neighborhood patrols sear jching for window-peeping pervertsust like you. Jumping into people’s photos - Before all of this digital technology, you captured your precious moments in one of two ways: slowly, with a roll of film and a pharmacy, or quickly with a blurry, lead-filled Polaroid. Either way, the results couldn’t be undone, which is exactly what pranking shitheads love to hear. Goofy faces in the background, random middle fingers, imitating sexual gestures...nothing was off-limits, especially if the photo subjects didn’t know you were in the shot. Now, unless you possess the stealth of Solid Snake, you can fucking forget about ruining a good moment with anything but your personality. One delete button later and it’s back to square one, leaving you to look like the jackass who just pantomimed sucking his own dick for no reason.

Religion - Probably the most well-executed prank of all time, it’s really a shame to see this one die off. In its heyday, the global prank of piety was responsible for millions of deaths, countless tales of injustice, and innumerable moments of knee-slapping hilarity at the expense of a heathen. A lot of right-wing jokesters don’t like to admit to themselves that this prank is dead, just like how you still get those emails from Nigerian princes. But, really, once Catholicism had to back off the whole notion of an Earth-centric universe, it was all downhill. Now there’s carbon-dating, gene tracing, and Bill Mahr; all technological advances that prove conclusively that religion is a crock of shit. It’s a shame, too. A lot of people really got some good laughs out of that one for a lot of years. I mean, look at all that goofy shit we convinced the Pope he needed to wear. Ha!