Moira Marsh may have one of the most whimsical jobs out there. One of her occupational hazards is watching teenagers pull pranks on YouTube.
"I made a particular study of tin foil jokes, because they're quite popular at the moment," explained the folklorist, who is subject librarian for anthropology, sociology, folklore, and comparative literature at the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries. "The Internet is full of videos of that sort of joke going on."
Marsh studied videos of roommates and co-workers meticulously covering all of the surfaces and objects in each other's spaces with tin foil as part of her research for her book Practically Joking, the first full-length study of the practical joke-
It's common, Marsh acknowledges, for the target (a term she prefers to "victim") of a the practical joke to take offense. So what makes a practical joke innocent or cruel?
As a folklorist we have it as an article of faith that the creativity of ordinary men and women in everyday life is as important as the creativity that's raised up in our culture in the arts.Â
"It's all in the reception," Marsh asserts. "If you're the target it's typical to have ambivalent feelings about your situation. And the way that many people resolve that is not through laughter but through playing more jokes. Keeping things inside the humorous mode where everything is ambiguous."
An ongoing practical-joking relationship plays a critical social role, Marsh argues.
"It can build solidarity in a very powerful way," she claims. "Because if you have a relationship with someone within which you can play these quite elaborate jokes on each other and no one is taking offense, that situation shows to the world that we have a fabulous relationship, because it can take all this assault and just come out stronger."
Certain scenarios lend themselves well to the proliferation of pranks, the folklorist explains
Settings like summer camps, barracks of any kind, being on board a ship or a submarine.  These are situations that I call 'enforced intimacy'. You're sharing living space and sleeping spacecruciallywith people that you don't actually know very well.  And that is an uncomfortable or incongruous situation for most of us. People will play the jokes not because it arises out of the relationship butin a wayto make that relationship happen when it does not exist.
It might be said that, with the publication of this critical analysis of the prank, Marsh has pulled off the best practical joke ever.  Marsh explains how the study of wind-ups and booby traps merits one's scholarly effort
Well, I'm a folklorist. And folklorists are interested in creativity in everyday life.  Although practical jokes have a poor reputation, as being too simple, too crude, not worth anyone's time, if you look at them closely you actually find a lot of elaboration and creativity going on. And it's the kind of creativity that anybody can get into.  So as a folklorist we have it as an article of faith that the creativity of ordinary men and women in everyday life is as important as the  creativity that's raised up in our culture in the arts and so forth. That is why, for us, it is worth the time.