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Positive Prank Calls!!

2010-09-17 · challenge / punishment · Hank · 3:33 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: Everyday life) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: community lore, civic or action cta

Hank takes up positive pranking by prank-calling strangers in his town with true, encouraging statistics about the world, arguing that people get discouraged only because they hear the bad news and never the good.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting (Friday, September 17th); Hank fixes his look by changing the white balance, ending up 'extra orange'

00:00:20 — Hank follows John and Amy Krouse Rosenthal into positive pranking: the prank call turned positive with true encouraging facts; Montana's all-party recording law

  • ★★★ Hank says he has decided to follow John's and Amy Krouse Rosenthal's lead and do some positive pranking. — 00:00:20
  • ★★★ Hank turns the most common prank, the prank call, positive: he calls people with encouraging and true facts about the world. — 00:00:35
  • ★ Hank says Montana is one of twelve states where a phone call cannot be recorded unless all parties agree, so viewers only hear his side. — 00:00:42 · Montana

00:00:53 — The positive prank calls: teen smoking, pregnancy and drug use; cancer rates; global poverty; divorce; bald eagles and the Endangered Species Act; violent crime

  • ★★ Hank tells a stranger that teen smoking, teen pregnancy and teen drug use have all declined significantly since the late 1990s. — 00:00:59
  • ★★ Hank says cancer rates are falling significantly year over year, not only because lung cancer is falling but also thanks to screening for precancerous lesions and the HPV vaccine. — 00:01:17 · cancer
  • ★★ Hank says global poverty rates have dropped 30 percent since 1990 and are on track to drop another 10 percent before 2015. — 00:01:48 · extreme poverty
  • ★★ Hank says divorce rates are much lower than people assume: 80 percent of people married in the 1980s are still married. — 00:02:02
  • ★★ Hank says there were only 400 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the 1970s, but since the Endangered Species Act there are over 10,000. — 00:02:13
  • ★★ Hank says violent crime rates have dropped every year since 1970, and by 5 percent between 2008 and 2009 alone. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ Hank says he positively prank-called 10 people, which he thinks is a good day's work, though occasionally people seemed somewhat annoyed. (hedged) — 00:02:34

00:02:41 — Ten calls done; script in the doobly-doo so viewers can make their own calls; thanks to Twitter followers who suggested the statistics

  • ★★ Hank puts the script of his positive prank calls in the description so viewers can make their own, noting that they are perfectly legal. — 00:02:45 · doobly-doo
  • ★★ Hank thanks his Twitter followers: he asked them for encouraging statistics about the world, and they suggested most of the facts he used. — 00:02:56 · Twitter

00:03:05 — Hank hopes the people he called feel better about the world: we get discouraged because we only get told the bad news; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank hopes the people he called will feel better about the planet and society; he thinks it is easy to get discouraged only because we get told the bad news and never the good. (hedged) — 00:03:05 · progress, sensationalism

In the description and comments

  • ★ Hank's posted script adds that human lifespan has increased by over 35 years in the last 100 years, from an average of only 45 years. — video description
  • ★★ Hank's posted script says average lifespan is now almost 80 and rising every year; at that rate a child born in 2008 would live to 98 on average. — video description
  • ★★ Hank's script says smallpox once killed millions of people a year and has now been completely eradicated. — video description
  • ★★ Hank's script says the Red Cross collects 15 million unpaid blood donations a year, because people just like helping other people. — video description
  • ★★ Hank's script says that over the same period as the bald eagle's recovery, whooping cranes came back from 50 birds in the whole world to over 500. — video description
  • ★ Hank's script gives the violent-crime figures as a 5% drop between 2007 and 2008 and a fall every year since 1993, not since 1970 as said on the call. — video description
  • ★ After a red-paint joke, Hank's script says laughing burns 20% more calories than resting, so people should laugh as often as possible. (playful) — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Hank, 'a person who only exists in videos', adds colour to his skin by changing the camera's white balance. — 00:00:15

    “Now I'm extra orange. And now I could go out clubbing on the Jersey Shore!”

  • Hank demonstrates the most common form of prank, the classic prank call. — 00:00:31

    “Well, you better go catch it.”

  • Hank decides hanging up right after the fact is more prank-like, and cuts off a woman mid-sentence after the poverty statistic. — 00:01:53

    “She was talking and I just hung up on her. Haha! Pranked!”

  • After telling a stranger that most people married in the 1980s are still married, Hank laughs at his own thrill. — 00:02:10

    “It's fun, it's exhilarating!”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Positive Pranking · prank call · progress

Also: Works: Jersey Shore

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: bald eagle · cancer · divorce · extreme poverty · illegal drugs · sensationalism · teenage pregnancy · tobacco smoking · violent crime

Places: Montana

Products: HPV vaccine

Policies: Endangered Species Act

Memes: Is your refrigerator running?

Only in the description or credits: American Red Cross · Amy Krouse Rosenthal · blood donation · life expectancy · smallpox · Twitter · whooping crane

Also centred on Positive Pranking: Positive Pranking: The TP Edition

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