Head Slap Prank

Submission 32,775

Part of a series on Pranking. [View Related Entries]

About

Head Slap Prank is a practical joke in which an unsuspecting person is slapped in the back of the head by someone sitting directly next to him/her in such a covert way that the victim is unable to correctly identify the slapper. The deceptive element of the joke bears a similarity to that used in the wooden spoon prank.

Origin

On June 2nd, 2009, the Internet humor site KeepBusy^[1] highlighted a video of a Serbian student who is repeatedly slapped in the back of the head by the boy sitting next to him, causing him to jump out of his seat, remove his shirt and slap the student sitting behind him (shown below). In the first five years, the video gained more than 117,000 views and 290 comments.

Spread

On June 7th, 2009, YouTuber Alistair Curtis^[2] reuploaded the head slap video, receiving over 218,600 views and 140 comments in the next five years. On December 9th, 2009, YouTuber randomdude54321 uploaded a video in which a man runs into a room, slaps a man in the back of the head and exits leaving a third man to take the blame for the slap (shown below).

On February 18th, 2010, Redditor Cutth submitted an animated GIF version of the Serbian student slap, with captions depicting the three students as Al-Qaeda, Iraq and the United States to the /r/politics^[3] subreddit (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gathered more than 4,400 upvotes and 560 comments.

On May 30th, 2012, YouTuber AN Zypp uploaded a video featuring a sleeping student who is repeatedly slapped in the back of the head by the student sitting next to him (shown below). In two years, the video gathered upwards of 1.2 million views and 1,000 comments.

On February 5th, 2014, Redditor BaconGristle reposted another animated GIF version of the Serbian slap video to the /r/WastedGifs^[4] subreddit, where it garnered over 2,000 upvotes and 35 comments in two months.