I’m having trouble deciding how to share this Facebook facepalm worthy post without sounding cruel.

While I deliberate, I’ll give you some context about this video that was shared: basically, some David Blaine style dude swaps the torsos and lower halves of a man and a woman. On a park bench. In the middle of a crowd. While people are watching and gasping and running in horror. Now, I don’t know much about camera magic and post editing effects; but when what I’m watching looks like a moving 3D equivalent of Photoshop’s blur tool – I have to assume I’m not just seeing your run of the mill smoke, mirrors, and middle aged men in too tight trousers and guyliner.

Post by Sonia S Sonia.

(It says “CELLPHONE CAM”. In a serious font. So it must be f’real.)

I’m not sure if “Sonia” and her comment mitigate the fact that my friend said something similar…

… or if it just makes my faith in humanity dip into whatever’s lower than negative numbers.

To be fair, this could be some “Room 401” level brain hackery and I could be totally wrong. Anyone remember that show? It was like Punk’d meets Houdini. The pranks played on unassuming strangers were always in the same vein as the free transgender surgery being performed up above – kinda supernatural feeling. One dude made crabs crawl out of his chest at a sushi bar (to the horror of the other patrons). Another was snatched into the sky – like a bad guy being nabbed by Batman (as the witness driver shizzes his pants in astonishment). Then there was one where they constructed the holographic image of a ghost walking out of a “dead” man’s body at a staged crime scene. The facial reactions were priceless – unlike the people in the above video, who share all the telltale signs of actors. Actors in a parody that made me chuckle almost as much as my buddy and his buddy’s shared naivete did.

Funny, I just wrote something about how people are becoming less and less able to discern when something’s a spoof or not. It’s disappointing, isn’t it? Such a fantastic means of eliciting laughter is slowly getting lost to the zing hungry fart joke generation. I love a good meme as much as the next guy, don’t get me wrong, but can we not retrieve and perform CPR on the world’s collective comprehension of the lost art that is unapologetic, deadpan humored satire?

That’d be a real magic trick.