So, in your world, playing to expectations using a harmless prank on a nationally accepted holiday is somehow more childish than laughing at someone you know who gets hurt. I guess that’s good information to know…
I would question the intelligence of anyone who didn’t realize that a perpetual motion machine was a joke. So don’t tell me it isn’t harmless.
I think the point a lot of tech savvy types miss that think it would be a keen joke to do a computer spoof is how many people live on the razors edge of feeling they know nothing (really) about their computering machines and that they are kind of like monkeys with car keys. When you start playing with that anxiety you release a shitstorm of angst and anger directed at yourself.
Think about how people feel about hackers that make viruses just to show they can do it, or one up each other. That’s the kind of anger you can release when you start messing with peoples anxieties and the funny part is the tech types will never understand this.
At my job, we’d write you up for that at the very least, Chronos. If you already had anything on your record, you might get fired. But I don’t know how different academia is.
It’s dickish. And that’s me saying it. I should think that, at a bare minimum, your ethical standards should be “I am a better guy than Skald.”
This right here - this exact thing. I had a bitch of a morning yesterday dealing with having my email accounts compromised - I’m moderately computer-savvy and not afraid of technology, but I still feel like I’m running to keep up with how fast things change in the computer world and always a little bit lost and not sure if I’m doing the right things at the right time with the right programs, etc. I would not find that joke funny at all. After it was revealed as a joke, I would never forget that you were the guy who thought that was a joke worth making.
Spoofing the email address is a bad idea like everyone says. Other than that, it’s totally a matter of department culture. The equivalent prank for my field would probably go over pretty well in my department.