The April Fools joke that might have got me fired

I think the real value in this writeup up of a clever little prank is the way the author/prankster could map out the social reactions and how the spirit in which the prank was received cascades through a whole entire organization in ways that hinge on little cues, little things about who knows who and whether you're physically present before a particular impression crystallizes in people's minds.

It's just such a great example of how people could react either with uproarious laughter or by feeling that some boundary has been violated and can think that either reaction was the most self-evidently obvious one in the world and the reasons for it were entirely contingent. It's something where you can only really witness the irrationality of it if you're in the author's position.

I once heard it speculated that philosophy might have emerged in Greece because the circumstances of being merchants engaging in interstate trade, you could see the way that certain things regarded as received knowledge were really customs, peculiar to certain cultures and locations. When you're the prankster and you can see different people reacting in different ways that seem to be tied to patterns of the circumstances of how they experienced it, you can kind of witness the contingency of those reactions playing out in real time.

The trickster is indeed an ancient archetype that can bring both wisdom and chaos. Historically, however, my understanding is that prior to Plato, essentially all knowledge, including philosophy, was understood to be received from divine sources. It was through the Socratic dialogues that the idea of knowledge as being something gained through human reason gained a foothold.

One could easily argue then that Plato was essentially a prankster and what we know as western civilization is a consequence of his trickery.