Burning the Altar

365 Days of Battlefield Earth is a very simple practical joke or way of letting someone know you intensely dislike them that expresses a clear message without (legally, at least) crossing the line into outright hostility. It is simple, but brutal, and nearly universal (There are very few people that don’t hate Battlefield Earth, so few as making this prank virtually perfect). This prank can also be referred to by its shorter and more catchy alias Troll-volta.

There is only one rule, and it is simple: Somehow give the target 365 copies of Battlefield Earth within one calendar year.

Ideally, you want to cause the target to receive one copy of the movie every day for 365 days, but it’s understood this may be impractical. You could, of course, just give the target all 365 copies at once, but you’d be missing the point, which is to make the target suffer completely, slowly, and painfully for an entire year.

Get creative. Burn 365 copies and hide them in or around the target’s home, work, place of leisure, so long as it’s in a place where they will definitely find it within a year. Do they frequent a gas station on a schedule? Get the attendent to slip them a copy. Get the target’s parents, siblings, children to slip them a copy. Place it in their car on the seat, in the visor, in the glove box, or detach the battery terminals and leave a few copies under the hood. Replace the disc for movies that they watch religiously with a BE disc. Make a digital archive of the disc and trick them into downloading and opening it. Do you work at a stadium? Invite them to a game and show an excerpt briefly on the Jumbotron. At a bare minimum, mail them or place them in the mailbox a week or month’s worth at a time. You should get the picture by now.

You do not have to make them watch it, of course. Just make it so they have to deal with the cop(ies) you give them.

WARNING: I am confident at the effectiveness of this prank, so long as you abide the tenants of it mercilessly. However, it’s incredibly powerful (hypothetically) and I can’t promise you that you’ll ever be able to have a working relationship with that person again.