There is a hilariously strange item for sale called "The Human Centipede"

Sometimes a sentence just stops me dead in my tracks.

All of you Farkers are hating on a tradition you know nothing about, you all must have been pencil-necked pizza-faced geeks in the Chess Club, fraternity brothers get access to more top-shelf pussy than you could shake a stick at, and the relationships you make in the Brotherhood will last you a lifetime.

What were these oddly-named fraternal clubs?

That's the question I have.

Attention morans:

TFA is about fraternal lodges from the late 19th/earth 20th centuries. They have approximately fark-all to do with the Greek system. Please STFU and RTFA.

Thank you.

When the Oddfellows Lodge in my town shut down, they auctioned off a lot of stuff like this. There was a giant clown head and you were supposed to stick you head or maybe your hand in the clowns mouth. The prankster then stepped on a pedal and the clowns mouth closed around your head. It had a pretty vicious bite, as I recall.

They had an upstairs lodge and the door had a white globe that they turned on during meetings. Prior to the auction, I had wondered what I.O.O.F meant.

Louisiana_Sitar_Club: Aaaaahhhh, the classics. I've never seen this one not work.

Even in a thread only tangentially related, too.

Whiskey Dickens: Branding a dude with a hot iron?
Dropping a hornet's nest on someone's head?

These aren't pranks, they're battery. And not the funny kind of battery.

6v? Are those the funny ones? Those big lantern ones. Those are pretty funny...

AcneVulgaris: Sid_6.7: Attention morans:

TFA is about fraternal lodges from the late 19th/earth 20th centuries. They have approximately fark-all to do with the Greek system. Please STFU and RTFA.

Thank you.

You're all about buttfarking each other, right?

I specifically went to a school without frats or a football team.

Came for Red Green...leaving motherf*ckin' satisfied.

The Shrine got rid of the electrified "hot sands" years ago, well before I joined. I think we missed out. There's something to be said for initiation and minor hazing.

Other than the obligatory setting maul whack ("travelling" Farkers know the one I mean), the only Masonic organisation I've joined that still had anything even remotely reminiscent of those cool fake tortures is the Sword of Bunker Hill.

Louisiana_Sitar_Club: I've never been to a meeting at any sort of lodge. Is the "Coaster Goat" typical of the sort of thing that goes on at those? That sounds funny as hell. I might have to get in on something like that.

No. There used to be a lot of side degrees that had initiation stuff like this, but those days are long, long gone. A very few side degrees have some minor hazing stunts that do not compare at all to the things shown in the article.