The Shizzy Interview

Shizzy, in his first formal interview ever, talks openly and candidly about his successes and failures in the prank email industry. Read some excerpts of the educational and sometimes emotional interview conducted by David Obuchowski from the popular zine Late Sunday Afternoon Depression.

Q: Okay, so while you guys are all on the internet and stuff, we’re still struggling with Xerox copies that you can get at any convenience store. It’s safe to say that you are far more technologically savvy than us. So, please excuse any ignorant questions. When I contacted you for an interview, you got back to me and signed the e-mail “Shizzy.” I see that Shizzy is listed as a senior writer at Bobfromaccounting.com. But is Shizzy a real person, or is it the vessel from which you launch your e-mail attacks?

Shizzy: Are you trying to make me cry? You sound like my parents. Shizzy is not my birth name, but it's the name given to me by my drifter uncle whom I love and admire.

Q: Talk to me about the process of producing a truly successful e-mail prank. First of all, you're not just e-mailing random people and making fun of them. You develop an entire persona. And, when you initially e-mail people, you present them with a totally believable context. How long does this take, and how do you decide on your persona, your victim, and the initial setup? Also, do you have to research to play the part of such different characters?

Shizzy: The prank email process all starts with me staring out the window of my parents basement --while I'm supposed to be looking for a job-- and then brainstorming for someone with a hobby, occupation, or interest that might lend itself well to a "shizzification." Once I’ve picked out a victim, I’ll take on an identity that the victim will see as someone it would be in their best interest to talk to. I might be a potential customer or a fellow enthusiast --it all depends on who I seek to have a dialogue with. From time to time I will have to research my role so that I can appear to have legitimate reasons for contacting the prank victim. I’ll send out ten to twenty emails to potential victims in hopes of getting a bite. If I want to prank email an entertainment lawyer, I’ll email twenty of them and wait for some responses. I might get two or three bites and then follow up on them for as long as they can take it. The most productive/humorous correspondences are what makes it to Bob From Accounting.

Q: Once the e-mails start rolling, you very slowly and gradually start mixing in ridiculous things (one of our favorites was when you requested that the band High C wear shirts signifying your nephew's hobbies, and then also requested that Toby the autistic kid play drums for one song). How do you decide when the right time is to start injecting these elements?

Shizzy: It really depends on how the correspondence is going as to when I start to lay on the absurd requests. I have to play it by ear. It depends on how eager they are to talk to me. For some it takes awhile to build up trust. For others, no matter how thick I lay it on, they are so into talking to me that they will respond no matter how crazy my ideas are. I have to find a balance. Usually the more of a position of power I find myself in, the more absurd my demands will become. At the end of every column the ideas I present to the victim are completely insane and demented. How crazy the beginning, middle and ending are depends solely on the position I have put myself in relation to the victim and how far they are willing to go to appease me.

This tie is really strangling me. Do you mind if I get comfy?

Q: Go ahead, of course. More on the ridiculous elements thing: Do you already have it planned that you have, say, 10 completely ridiculous things that you're going to bring up? Or, do you come up with them on the spot, and just keep pushing it further and further?

Shizzy: I rarely have ideas for crazy things to say to the prank victim before the correspondence starts. Most of the time I play it by ear and try to balance out what I can and can’t say to them so they'll keep emailing me back. I have to get a feel for what the person will and won’t find alienating. It's really a step by step, email by email, process. I might have one ridiculous thing to say that I hope to include in a future correspondence, but usually it turns out that the thing I wanted to include won’t fit in context to how the dialogue has unfolded.

By the way, do you mind if I fire up? I'm a little nervous and drugs help me unwind.

Q: Of course. Be my guest. Is a successful e-mail prank one that ends with the victim writing you back, or one that simply disappears? Both? Explain a bit. And what have been some of your favorite pranks?

Shizzy: My favorite email pranks are ones where the person is left scratching their heads in wonder about the world they live in -- where a person who seems reasonable at first could go completely nuts. In many of the correspondences the person I’m having the dialogue with is in a position where they hope to keep in contact with me. When they agree to do things that they know are contrary to their best judgment is the best part. Often times when a person won’t respond to my final email, I take that to assume that they figured out they're now completely lost in Shizzy's world. My personal favorites were the ones I had with the band from Atlanta and the Pagan psychoanalyst. They really didn’t have much in common except that with both of them I felt I could keep it going for as long as I wanted and that I was in complete control. The band from Atlanta agreed to do all sorts of things a heavy metal band shouldn’t. This included performing at my 9 year olds son’s birthday party. The psychoanalyst agreed to write a term-paper for me for money. In both instances the victims agreed to do things that they wouldn’t normally consider.

You know, I've never really done an interview before. Am I doing okay? Do you like my new pants?

Q: Yes, great, very fashionable. I wonder what expectations you had when you conceived the e-mail prank idea. What struck me is that there are times that the victims end up getting either freakier than you are, or they're smarter than we expect (examples follow -- freakier: the guy who wants to buy the doll, the artist who was going to illustrate your portrait. smarter: the star wars guy). Did you anticipate that there would be a lot of instances of this, or did these occasions rather surprise you?

Shizzy: The correspondences where it appears that I got more than I bargained for were pleasant surprises. I want the correspondence to be productive and humorous. When a person actually challenges my ideas as to what is completely out of the realm of normalcy, I am happy to be a part of it. The best part as I see it is that they aren’t kidding. While I am stretching my imagination, they are stretching the boundaries of things they would normally consider doing. Me saying I want them to do something out of the ordinary is a far different thing from what they are actually agreeing to do. My favorite to date might have to be the correspondence I had with a Star Wars fanatic. I was outdone and outsmarted by the guy and I couldn’t have been happier with the end result. That little bitch had Googled the aliases I was using and figured out what I was doing. That was a first.

Sorry, I said a swear word earlier. You are welcome to edit that.

Q: Talk about limits. Are there particular themes you won't exploit because they're too offensive or risky? Are there some themes you will cover, but not to their "full extent"? For instance, in the prank where you are supposedly in the KKK, your racist remarks are actually tamer than what can be seen in television documentaries on the KKK. In another instance, you were playing the role of a woman who was interested in being a model for a porn site. Again, though the content was certainly mature material, it definitely did not feature anything close to what the theme would allow (the same goes for the one where you are representing Peter North).

Shizzy: I have my own set of ideas about what is over the line. Hurting someone’s feelings is not what I set out to do -- it's just a nice surprise when it happens. Many of the biggest disasters in the world of comedy have given rise to the idea that whatever is controversial is automatically funny. This simply isn’t true. If Lenny Bruce came out today and did his bit on “how to relax your colored friends at parties” on Jay Leno, it probably wouldn’t go over well. Not because it wouldn’t be funny, but because it wouldn’t be the right vehicle for that kind of humor. Only in a certain context and in certain scenarios can edgy material be funny. In Shizzy’s Mailbag, the boundaries of any taboo subject can be pushed as long as it is in a funny context. In this prank email vehicle I feel I have pushed the envelope as far as could be pushed without offending the most ardent of fans and prank victims.

Are you sure this interview is going okay? I feel like a shmuck. I actually love being controversial and mean.

Q: It's going great. You're doing fine. So after the prank, do you tell your victims that the correspondence will be published? If so, what are their reactions? Have any victims found the site (without you telling them)? If so, what do they say?

Shizzy: For me the ideal ending to a column is where the victim has decided not to respond to my latest email. I hope to leave them scratching their heads in wonderment about the world they live in. I want them to think to themselves that the person they were talking to was just a crazy fuck, not a person who was looking to prank them. A couple of times I have emailed the victims and explained to them that they’d been part of a prank, but that is most often not the case. Once we were even threatened with a lawsuit by some Jesus tool. Anyway, I always thought that when the Jerky Boys did those prank phone calls, when the victim never put it together that they were being pranked is when it was always the funniest. The more innocent the beginning of the correspondence appears and the more sinister it is in the end is how I gauge its success. I prefer that the victims don’t come away feeling like victims of a prank. I do the column in hopes that they’ll feel like they were in contact with an element of society they didn’t know was out there -- which for the most part is true.

By the way, did you notice I used the word wonderment? Pretty good, huh? You didn't expect that, did you? Actually, I think I said fuck too. Feel free to edit that part out. Not wonderment -- you know what I mean.

Q: Very nice vocabulary. Okay, so who's next? Oh, and do you take requests?

Shizzy: I hope to take Shizzy’s Mailbag to a new level. I want to focus on people more deserving of a brutal shizzification. Right now I’ve got militias, skinheads and politicians in my crosshairs. I see prank email as a new medium for comedy writers and jobless people. It is hard to figure where it will go next. I am always open to requests. I feel lucky to be in the position to push this new medium forward and any input the fans have for me I am glad to receive -- as long as they are hot females writing me and sending me pics. I really have no idea what sort of craziness will be coming out of the column a year from now. All I can guarantee to the fans is that as long as they keep reading Shizzy's Mailbag and Bob From Accounting, I won't have to get a real job. Also, ladies don't forget the nudey pics. ROCK ON!

Take me to Shizzy's actual column!

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