Yesterday's New York Times had an article about Facebook.com discussing the usual stuff about too-much-information, stalking, privacy, etc. But the prank described in the lede of the article was new to me and really funny:
AS far as Kyle Stoneman is concerned, the campus police were the ones who started the Facebook wars. "We were just being, well, college students, and they used it against us," says Mr. Stoneman, a senior at George Washington University in Washington. He is convinced that the campus security force got wind of a party he and some buddies were planning last year by monitoring Facebook.com, the phenomenally popular college networking site. The officers waited till the shindig was in full swing, Mr. Stoneman grouses, then shut it down on discovering under-age drinking.
Mr. Stoneman and his friends decided to fight back. Their weapon of choice? Facebook, of course.
Once again they used the site, which is visited by more than 80 percent of the student body, to chat up a beer blast. But this time, when the campus police showed up, they found 40 students and a table of cake and cookies, all decorated with the word "beer." "We even set up a cake-pong table," a twist on the beer-pong drinking game, he says. "The look on the faces of the cops was priceless." As the coup de grâce, he posted photographs of the party on Facebook, including a portrait of one nonplussed officer.
UPDATE:
Kyle Stoneman emailed me a pointer to his blog post about the NYT coverage of the prank party here! (He was actually an attendee but not an organizer.) Kyle tells me it was a "helluva party" but that the "cake stand," pictured here, was rough.
