We’re all going to need a good sense of humour over the coming weeks and months, as the memes fly around amidst a nationwide dose of cabin fever.

At present, it’s 21 days starting from Thursday at midnight, in case that somehow passed you by, but who knows what comes after that.

Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett certainly have a sense of humour, and they put that to good use by pranking American news shows.

Sadly, not all of those news shows took the prank on the chin, reports VICE:

When they infiltrated three morning news programs by passing themselves off as an improbable strongman duo, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett were not the first people to prank TV News…

Whatever the perpetrators’ intention, the result of these stunts is a demonstration of the fallibility of newsgathering operations. As such, out of embarrassment or pragmatism, the targeted media companies generally avoid legal retaliation against the pranksters. That all changed with Prueher and Pickett.

Gray Television owns and/or operates over 100 local television stations across the country. The conglomerate had previously been fooled by two other bogus characters created by Prueher and Pickett and decided to sue the comedy team after the phony strongmen, dubbed Chop and Steele, conquered their airwaves.

I bet you didn’t see that one coming.

No spoilers here, so you can see for yourself how that legal battle played out:

Sounds like Gray Television was really, really touched on their studios.

I’m keen to see more of these fake strongmen in action, and luckily, YouTube delivers:

Wonderfully awkward.

[source:vice]