ABSTRACT
A “prank” refers to people (pranksters) playing a practical joke on someone else. With the rise of social media, prank culture has become a popular, mass-cultural phenomenon. This chapter focuses on the masculinities performed and documented in, as well as produced by and through, prank videos that offer a kaleidoscopic perspective on mostly young, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, oftentimes muscular and sometimes overtly sexualised, middle-class to wealthy masculinities.
Famous pranksters terrorise their environment, including an unaware public, friends, partners and children, but also other pranksters as a form of collaboration to grow in popularity together. I argue that this form of terror, spread through social media, embodies and perpetuates toxic masculinity through various (racist, misogynistic and anti-queer behaviour) vectors and poisons the social environment. The metaphor of toxicity can therefore be used as a structuring principle to analyse how these forms of contemporary, dangerous and harmful masculinities work. The prank videos are analysed from a visual studies perspective which allows a focus not only on representations of men and the masculinities they perform and embody but also on images as actors within society that uphold, encourage, reinforce and influence forms of toxic masculinity – not only online. Just as not all forms of masculinity or male-to-male bonding are toxic (or perpetuate toxic masculinity) nor so are all pranks (or videos thereof). However, expressions of toxic masculinity appear to be of predominant, structural significance to prank culture.
