Well, the prank is being refined for many years now, by the fine folks partying at:
In the late 90s, I interviewed for a job as a Technical Product Manager with a Toronto startup. The CTO/Co-founder, was an obfuscated C contest winner: https://www.ioccc.org/1985/lycklama/index.html
Great guy to work with. I think he runs a craft brewery now.
In fact that line in question does come from an IOCCC winner: https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/master/1985/shapiro...