Along similar lines, I think it would be funny, if a group like this got a bunch of Neilsen families to all watch some obscure comedy on UPN or whatever that night, and have a show rank 104 the previous week, in the top 10 that week, and then back down to 104 and have the Teevee people try and figure out why that show did so well on that night and never before or since. HA!
Was it (an actual) Don?
Wonder how the restaurant would feel about being patronized by attendees of a Fun Fest sponsored by this group.
What was the point of the exercise? What was gained? What was accomplished? I would think all those “agents” could have better spent their time picking up litter in a neighborhood park.
From the Improv Everyday FAQs:
Why do we do this?
Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun. We’re big believers in “organized fun”. In the process we bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives. We’re out to prove that a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.
Please. Do you honestly believe the employees of that store spent none of their time distracted by the improv idiots jackassery? And that they paid the same attention to the real customers as they do on a normal business day? The wages paid to the floor staff, and this includes the Best Buy managers, were effectively diverted in part to provide amusement for the 80 “agents” who showed up that day. And if the management’s response was the most disruptive to the normal business of the store, these improv “agents” could have reasonably predicted such would happen. That is, after all, their main reason for being there - to see what reactions they can casue in the employees of the store.
And what about the cops diverted from their usual duties to attend to this idiocy?
Self-serving tripe. These guys are out to what kind of disruption and reaction they can get. On the 'Net, it’s called “trolling.”
UncleBeer. . . do you own stock in BestBuy, or a franchise perhaps?
It started with an interesting idea but went pretty much nowhere. I didn’t even finish the article cause I just got bored.
There was nothing inheritantly “brilliant” about it. I’ve seen better setups on Alan Funts ‘candid camera’ from the 50’s.
“I have an idea, let’s all dress up like BestBuy employees then go to the store!”
“Okay, then what happens?”
“Then we film it to see what happens!”
“Okay, what do you expect to happen?”
“I don’t know. But it will be brilliant!”
“Mmm, okay, whatever.”
Nope. I just know I’d be annoyed as hell, perhaps to point of leaving, if I was in the store to, ya know, actually make a purchase and there were 80 idiots in there playing some prank to amuse only themselves.
I completely understand the extract quoted by Lockseer, and don’t understand those people who don’t get it. Would they equally disapprove of the transit cop I saw in Vancouver who approached a middle-age pair of tourists, and gave the woman a rose from his shirt pocket “for holding hands on the Skytrain”? Granted, this one was bigger, but the cop was using Transit facilities to amuse himself, a couple of tourists, and a car full of other passengers while not chasing down fare-jumpers. Should he (and the rest of us) spend our lives walking around with a serious look on our faces?
Picking up litter, for example, can be fun, and organized fun at that. Doing so can bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers stories they can tell for the rest of their lives. AND, it would serve a better purpose than the mindless perpetrating of some idiocy masquerading as a “prank.”
I see no real harm in this prank, but no real amusement either. I, like some others, don’t really get this, and why it would be funny. The employee yelling out “The Thomas Crown Affair! The Thomas Crown Affair!”? Now that was funny.
So you’re basically saying you’d leave because… there were people there? THEY WERE NOT HARASSING ANYONE. They were not initiating any contact with anyone, they were not blocking registers or product, they weren’t making noise, they weren’t farting on children, they weren’t lassoing people, they weren’t taking pictures of their genitals with the display cameras. I’d hate to think of how you’d react to some sort of actual harassment.
You don’t understand because you feel no empathy for the victims of the Best Buy prank.
The transit cop giving a rose victimized no one.
The Best Buy manager and the security people were victimized. I’m sure they found nothing funny about it. You know that but you don’t care. It’s fun to laugh at other people’s problems, right? Bullies do it all the time and ‘can’t you take a joke’ is the usual rationalization.
UncleBeer, RealityChuck pnwnd you back in post 25. Why are you still talking?
Whoops, didn’t realize this was MPSIMS, not the Pit.
So, I’ll just say I appreciated RealityChuck’s spot-on quip.
I agree with Queuing, it’s kind of a “meh, so what?” while reading it.
Although, I have to tell you, NYC may not have been the best place to choose to stage this goofery. Building staff and people are still extremely paranoid, and I can’t say that I would have had the patience or sufficient curiousity to want to hang around in the store to find out. I probably would have walked out too.
Picking up litter? Bringing excitement? Stories to tell for the rest of your lives?
WOOHOO!!!
Please.
Management chose to react in an alarmist matter by calling the police. They couldn’t bring themselves to laugh it off and chuckle, like the actual working staff did (congratulating the blue-shirts, wanting their pictures taken with them, etc). They didn’t even approach them and say “I’m sorry, this sounds silly…but the fact that you’re all wearing blue shirts is unfortunately confusing our customers…if you could wait outside for your friend, we’ll be glad to have them paged.”
I’ll throw in my 2 cents by stating that it looks like it was great fun, and it seems the world needs to lighten up a bit more.
Take a look at their “Look Up More” mission for an example of a bunch of strangers raiding a department store and putting on a wonderful show for complete strangers.
The difference there being that the transit cop isn’t depriving any legitimate customers of use of the facilities. The guys invading Best Buy are; they had a reasonable expectation that their stunt would require time from the employees of the store to attend to them.
If I’ve got eighty people in my store, who’ve organized themselves to the point of wearing clothing deliberately selected to confuse the customers about which persons are actual employees, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the impostors to expect that I’m gonna try to have them removed.