A Jake is a
practical joke whereby an
unlucky victim (the Jake-ee) is the recipient of a coordinated assault of
randomness through the
mail.
Email may also be used but due to similarities with
spam, this method is somewhat less effective.
Jakes are part of The Discordian Society's Operation Mindfuck. Jakes are equal opportunity however, and are often performed by Christians, Buddhists, SubGenius, and members of other religious faiths.
Generally, Jakes are performed as follows:
- A Jake-ee is selected. The victim may be a bureaucrat, corporation, celebrity or other person.
- A date is chosen for the Jake. This is the day that the victim should start receiving items in the mail.
- All participants of the Jake are notified of the Jake Day.
- Participants begin sending items in the mail so that they should arrive on the intended Jake Day.
Items sent may include multitudes of flyers, stamps, pamphlets, letters, stickers or any high weirdness the participants have lying around. Often letters printed on official letterhead are sent to bureaucrats with an outrageous call-to-action. For example, a Jake in California once deluged a politician with letters from official-sounding groups such as "Mothers Against Catnip" claiming that during marijuana shortages teenagers were resorting to smoking catnip to get high, and that catnip should be outlawed immediately.
Another popular Jake was targeted at the Hormel Foods and dubbed "Spam Jake Day" (23 May, 1994). During this Jake hundreds of letters were to be mailed to the Hormel Foods headquarters, each from bizarre religious organizations claiming to be the original Church of Spam and requesting official endorsement from Hormel Foods.