the bragster blog

After an extensive search for the Ultimate Prankster, Bragster.com & Just For Laughs have finally found a winner!

Congratulations to Yamakasii & Mr. Blackjack for their ‘Escaped Convict’ entry which garnered lots of attention (especially from the London Police).

Yamakasii & MrBlackjack will fly to Montreal this month to hit the streets of the world’s most prestigious comedy festival.

Thanks to everyone who entered and don’t forget just because the contest is over, doesn’t mean that you have to stop shooting and uploading your practical jokes!

How do you eat a stinging nettle? Very carefully.

Our Olympians will be throwing caution to the wind this weekend as we head to the pastoral acclimes of Dorset for their annual Nettle Eating Competition. The history of Nettle Eating goes back to poor people who had nothing to eat so that ate this horrendous plant. Not sure if this is true actually but it would make sense to me. This event will prove to be one of tenacity. Our athletes will really have to numb their tongues and buckle in for what could prove to be one of the more dangerous events in the competition.

Who will win? The person who can eat the most nettles. Plan & simple

The first event in the Bragster Olympiad was a slap in the face, literally.



Grabbing the microphone for the first time (that we know of) and tore the room up. Neill started the show by barnstorming some popular jokes and by adding his own ballsy flair. Billzy failed to intimidate the crowd with his water gun and veiled threats of killing people ‘Stratford style’. Many thanks to the crowd in Newcastle for not smashing his modelesque face.

There were some great surprise performances from Alski and J Dilla who both touched on animals throughout their performance (figuratively speaking of course). The real highlight though came from Crank Juice Films who had bragged that he would take a slap from Big Neill for every vote that he received. Lucky for Crank Juice however Neill’s mom was in attendance and only allowed her big baby to crack Crank Juice once.One slap seemed to be enough however as his big right mitt came crashing down on Crank’s ear and levelled him to the ground. While his routine and prop act may have failed to get laughs his knock out was bloody hilarious!

Your Practical Joke could Win you a Trip for 2 to Montreal!!!

I fondly remember my first practical joke. Deftly sneaking down in the middle of the night to switch the sugar in the bowl next to the coffee maker with some coarse salt we kept on a shelf just narrowly within reach. For a child of eight years it was quite the coup to be able to pull off such a clandestine maneuver on my mother.
The image of her face recoiling in disgust as she sipped her salty brew followed by a spit take that saved her from ingesting and spewing coffee chunks all over the floor. Of course as punishment for this I had to clean the floor, make her new coffee and then spend the weekend & my touchy uncle’s (who later turned out to just be a neighbourhood pervert who babysat for free.) The point being that practical jokes are funny. And I can still laugh to this day at the coffee incident whilst suppressing tears at the consequences my mom levied on me for being cheeky.

In keeping with this vein we here at bragster would like to reward you bragsterites by pulling off your own practical joke. We have teamed up with the prestigious Just For Laughs Festival to offer a package of mammoth proportions. The best prank will be flown (with a friend) to Montreal for 3 nights of VIP hilarity.

Simply record your prank. Upload it, and then get as many friends as possible to watch and comment on it.

The contest ends on Fri June 27th so get cracking.

Anyone who would like to get back at my touchy uncle will win my ultimate admiration.

Last week, Bragster brought the party to Liverpool! We took over Walkabout in Concert Square and cranked it up. Liverpool Uni students - we salute you! You guys and girls were up for dares, free drinks, beer chugging monkeys and absolute madness on the stage...and that was just the first hour. To top it off we had the Marvyn, Danny, Anna and Susan from Channel 4's hit show, Shipwrecked. They weren't just sitting there looking pretty either - they were getting down and dirty with the crowd. Snogathons, pint downing and bragster hilarity ensued! A certain someone from the bragster team has a lot to answer for :-), Victory Is Sweet

Bragster Love to Liverpool Uni!!!! We'll back next term for sure. In the meantime enjoy these videos...

Bragster Does Liverpool Uni

Liverpool Students' Lap Dance with Shipwrecked Crew

Liverpool chugs beers! Bragster Walkabout Party

The Shipwrecked Boys in a snogathon with the students

If you want Bragster to bring the party to your Uni - get in touch...we're always game.

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One of the most requested features from all of you has been the ability to delete the comments on your profile page, so without further ado... You can! There's a little delete link in the comment box, so just click that, and the comment will disappear.

If you'd like to suggest anything else or give us some feedback, leave a comment or send us a message!

Check out Killertu's latest dare upload; it's awesome!

Sup bragsters!

You may (or may not) have noticed that the views on your brags and profile page have shot up in the last couple of days. At some point, deep in the recesses of our data center something happened, something scary... The googly-eyed monster that counts how many times people view your brags and profile pages stopped doing his damn job. Luckily Peter and Chris managed to whip the lazy bastard back into shape, so the page views should be back up to speed.

That was sort of boring, so I'm going to show you some sweet video evidence now:

We’ve released a few changes today that affect the notifications section of the ‘My Feed’ page:

• ‘Brag Invitations’ should now be hidden if you are already participating in the brag.
• ‘Brag Invitations’ for events that you can no longer join (ie. time has run out) should be hidden.
• ‘Dares to complete’ should now only list those dares that you have actually accepted.
• You can now leave feedback on dares which people haven’t accepted.

We’ve still got a few things to work out in that department, but we’re on the case. Let us know if you run into any bugs or if you’ve got any more feedback. We heart feedback!

Have Fun! Brittney

You might remember that we mentioned being a Red Herring 100 finalist a couple of weeks ago, well now we can confirm that we won! We’re in awesome company with some incredible companies that were also chosen, and we can’t wait to keep making bragster better and better!

We’d love to hear what YOU think we should do to improve our already super sweet site, so make sure to drop us a line whenever you get a chance.

Bragster.com is pleased to announce the appointment of Wade McElwain as the new VP of Entertainment.

We didn’t really want to but he bragged that he could do a better job than the stuffed monkey we had already doing the job and we are a bragging website…so he’s hired.

Wade brings with him a wealth of knowledge which is applicable nowhere else except perhaps a prison yard. Which probably explains his tattoos; penchant for whispering in people’s ears and 8 year gap on his CV.

His educational experience particularly his diploma from ‘McHamburger University’ is of great value to bragster for as Wade says ‘it ain’t a happy meal without putting a prize in it. Then it’s just a crap meal! Isn’t it!! Isn’t it!!’ We here hope for as many prizes from him as possible.

Wade’s previous jobs included: Catching squirrels for rabies testing; CEO at AOL; being Britney Spears’ PR Manager; and once held the title of the Vicar of Cockfosters.

We look forward to Wade’s invaluable input for bragster’s content, although so far his best idea was to cut the cable on the elevator to get back at the guy on the 5th floor who sneezed on his jacket.

Please join us in welcoming Wade to the team but please remember not to look him right in the eyes as it heightens his paranoia and makes him stabby.

Welcome Wade!

Been seeing things today? Logged onto bragster and saw God speaking to you via the little blue pop ups? Thought you had won 20000000000000000 bragbucks? Were convinced by the message welcoming you to the Secret Order as the Chosen One?

Checked, rubbed your eyes and then checked again to see whether you were going mad? Yeh we bet you did! Some of you really fell for it and others thought bragster had been hacked into. Fear not, we well and truly pranked you :-) Bets were popping up, messages were hitting our inbox every few seconds, and even my mum called to check what the Secret Order was about?!

I think cyan_93 really does deserve a bragster t-shirt for trying to spend her new bragbucks because the little blue pop-up told her that she had won "30000 bragbucks and that she had to spend them in 3 hours". Sorry! MikeRowave was really kind and contacted us immediately out of concern - he either thought bragster had been hacked or we'd been taken over by a cult - not sure which one! BennnnBennnnn was really excited about speaking to "God" and then pondered: "Maybe we are being fooled that god is speaking to us..." . Some of the comments on MikeRowave's ...bet cracked us up

So thanks for giving us a good laugh at the bragster garage! April Fool's has been awesome and even Wim and Bertrand haven't escaped the pranks! Check it out! the evidence should be up shortly.

Happy April Fools!

Bragster Love!

Hello Everyone! In the last 17 seconds something has changed, and in our opinion, it’s changed for the better. In the past, there was some confusion about how dares worked when someone declined them, didn’t upload evidence or didn’t accept, so we’ve revamped the process so it’s more clear.

This is how it works: if someone does not accept a dare, declines a dare or fails to upload evidence than the people who chose ‘They Won’t Do It’ will win the bet.

And from the other direction: if you choose ‘They Won’t Do It’ and the daree doesn’t accept the dare, declines the dare or doesn’t upload evidence than you will win the bet.

Everyone got it? If you’ve got a question about this works, leave a comment or let me know, and I’ll be happy to explain further.

Sorry we've been so quiet for the last couple of weeks, but it's cause we've been busy with a capital B. We were selected to present at Plugg.eu in Belgium, so we sent our fearless leaders, Wim and Bertrand, to bring a little of the Bragster-tude to Belgium. Oh, and they brought it. Here's the vid (thanks Robin!):


Despite throwing pie EVERYWHERE, they got to the final three, and we eventually came in second! We don't normally support being second best, but the winner, Viewdle, is ex-KGB technology at it's finest. And, if that wasn't cool enough for you, we've also been selected as a finalist in the Red Herring 100.

What does that mean? Don't know, but it makes us sound really cool and important. Just kidding, I do know what it means. It means that out of all of the tech start-ups in all of the vast lands of Europe, The Middle East and Africa, we're in the top 200. We'll let you know if we've made it to the top 100 once it's announced. And if you want to keep up with us all day, everyday, then follow us on Twitter.

The first Bragster party is now just a distant memory, but trust us when we say no one who attended will forget! Obviously we had to dare everyone to show up in their undies…

,/p>

Thanks to all of you who helped organizing!!

Finally some news from the bragster team after our week in Austin! Sorry for the radio silence while we were there; we tried to keep you updated via our Twitter account as that was more convenient given the bad internet connection out there. I’d like to think we’ve been too busy to write blog posts because we were attending panel after panel, but that was only during daytime. So what’s the excuse for evenings or early jetlag mornings? Well… I’ll let you take a guess on that one ;)

It’s been really great and the sessions were of a very high quality. There was something in it for everyone and while I’ve attended sessions about the art of self-branding, start-up management 2.0, how to keep teams who love their jobs motivated, the rest of the team attended sessions about design, marketing, community management, how to measure success, and many, many other topics. There was also a keynote from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook. The interview didn’t really teach us anything new apart from the fact they just launched in French, but it was still impressive to see how a 24 year old has accomplished such great things.

The weather has been great and it’s tough being back in rainy London… We’ll also miss our steaks and the local Shiner beer at some of the many parties we attended, such as Google, Gawker media, 16bits, the Great British Booze up and many others. Bertrand and myself have also been to a shooting range on Saturday to get the true Texas experience. Scary!

Have a look at Adam’s pictures on Flickr here.