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Punk'd
2003 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 9 seasons
Created by Jason Goldberg, Ashton Kutcher
What happens when the biggest stars in the world get too high on the Hollywood hog? When their bank accounts start swelling bigger than their heads? Master prankster Ashton Kutcher is there to punk 'em down to earth.
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It was strange to just mention that movie. I remember Ashton Kutcher more from his role on "That 70's Show".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_%2770s_Show
"Its eight seasons, consisting of 200 episodes, made it Fox's second-longest-running live-action sitcom ever behind Married... with Children,"
Also I remember him from when he hosted (and apparently co-created) Punk'd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk%27d
I had completely forgotten about him, but had a generally positive perception of him. That is no longer true.
I looked up 'punk' as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary, and found that there several ways that it has been used as a verb over time.
The definition that most closely matches the usage here is, "Chiefly in African-American use: to humiliate; to beat up, bully, etc., esp. for the purpose of showing dominance; to make (a person) appear weak or foolish."
I think that 'to punk' now means something closer to 'to play a prank on' but the OED hasn't caught up. For example, that was the meaning in the TV series "Punk'd" (an MTV hidden-camera reality show from circa 2003).