The Prat’s Natural Habitat: Where Embarrassment Thrives
Wildlife documentaries teach us that species thrive in specific ecosystems. Polar bears need ice. Cacti need deserts. Prats need social gatherings with insufficient exits.
To fully grasp what it means to be a prat, one must study not just the creature itself, but the environments where it flourishes. The prat is not evenly distributed across society. It congregates. It multiplies. It thrives in certain conditions like mold in a basement.
What follows is a field guide to the prat’s preferred habitats: the locations where embarrassment breeds, confidence miscalculates, and someone always says, “Actually.”
The Office Environment: Prat Breeding Grounds
The modern workplace is a terrarium specifically designed to cultivate prathood.
The Meeting Room
This is ground zero. The Serengeti of prat activity.
The meeting room provides everything a prat needs: a captive audience, a whiteboard for unnecessary diagrams, and the cultural expectation that everyone must participate, even those with nothing to contribute.
A 2024 study by the Institute for Corporate Suffering found that 67 percent of meeting time is consumed by one person explaining things everyone already knows. That person is always the prat.
Common prat behaviors in meetings include:
Speaking first to “set the tone.” The tone is unnecessary. Asking questions that are actually statements disguised as questions. “Don’t you think we should…” is not a question. It is an ambush. Using phrases like “just to piggyback on that” before introducing a completely unrelated topic. Suggesting we “take this offline” for discussions that are already offline.
A marketing director in London described her office prat: “He arrives 10 minutes early to every meeting. Not to prepare. To corner people and explain his ideas before the meeting starts, during the meeting, and in a follow-up email after the meeting. The ideas are always about improving the meeting structure.”
The Kitchen Area
The office kitchen is neutral territory for most. For the prat, it is a performance space.
Here, the prat delivers unsolicited commentary on lunch choices. “You’re microwaving fish?” he observes, despite everyone having eyes. “Interesting choice.”
The kitchen prat also provides running nutritional advice. “You know, coffee actually dehydrates you,” he says to a person drinking coffee who did not ask, does not care, and is actively trying to hydrate via coffee.
Understanding the definition of prat means recognizing that these moments are not accidents. The kitchen prat believes he is being helpful. He is establishing himself as the office sage. Everyone else is establishing him as the reason they eat lunch in their cars.
The Open Plan Office
Open plan offices were designed to foster collaboration. They instead fostered prats who believe everyone wants to hear their phone conversations.
The open plan prat speaks at full volume. Always. His phone calls are performances. “No, YOU tell the client we’re the best in the business!” he shouts, to an office that did not ask and a client who is probably reconsidering.
He also provides ambient commentary. “Wow, big storm out there,” he announces to 40 people who have windows. “Traffic was terrible this morning,” he shares with colleagues who also sat in traffic and managed not to narrate it.
Social Gathering Habitats
The prat does not merely attend social events. He transforms them.
The Dinner Party
The dinner party is the prat’s Colosseum. An intimate setting where escape requires elaborate excuses and physical effort.
The dinner party prat arrives with wine and opinions. He comments on the food preparation. “Interesting choice, not using fresh herbs,” he observes, to a host who absolutely used fresh herbs and is reconsidering the friendship.
He hijacks conversations. Someone mentions a book. The prat has not read it but knows everything about it because he “read the reviews.” He then recommends a better book. The recommendation is always either very obvious or extremely obscure. “If you liked that, you should read Proust,” he says, to someone who mentioned enjoying a detective novel.
A survey of 300 dinner party hosts found that 82 percent could identify “the one person who made the evening feel three hours longer than it was.” When asked how they prevent future incidents, 91 percent said “strategic seating” and 9 percent said “moving house.”
The Pub
The pub is theoretically casual. The pub prat makes it formal.
He corrects bartenders about beer origins. He explains football to football fans. He monopolizes the pub quiz, answering confidently and incorrectly, then challenging the quiz master when proven wrong.
“We had a regular,” a pub owner in Manchester recalled. “He’d answer every question immediately. Wrong answers. Loud wrong answers. The quiz master started including a special round called ‘Things Colin Definitely Got Wrong Last Week.’ Colin still participated. Still got them wrong.”
Weddings: The Prat Super Bowl
Weddings combine alcohol, formal structure, and forced socializing. This is like creating a prat nuclear reactor.
The wedding prat gives unrequested toasts. Asks inappropriate questions. “When are you two having children?” he inquires at the reception, to a couple married for 47 minutes.
He also provides unsolicited marriage advice. “Communication is key,” he announces to newlyweds, despite his own marriage having ended badly. “Also, separate bank accounts,” he adds, while his ex-wife glares from table six.
Analyzing the meaning of prat in British humor reveals that wedding prats are so common they’ve become a genre. British comedy mines this seam relentlessly because the material is infinite and renewable.
Public Spaces and Transportation
The prat does not limit himself to private gatherings. He is a public servant.
The Train Carriage
The train prat believes public transport is a podcast studio.
He makes personal calls at full volume. “I’m on the train,” he announces to his caller, who presumably has caller ID. He then conducts business negotiations, medical consultations, and relationship counseling while 50 strangers stare determinedly at their phones.
He also provides travel commentary. “This train is late,” he observes to no one and everyone. “Typical.” He then explains how trains work to people who take trains daily and somehow survive without his expertise.
The Queue
The British queue is sacred. The queue prat treats it as a networking opportunity.
He strikes up conversations with people who are demonstrably reading books or wearing headphones. “Long wait, eh?” he says, to people who can see the length of the queue with their own eyes.
He also questions queue organization. “Is this the right queue?” he asks repeatedly, despite standing in it by choice. “Seems disorganized,” he mutters, about a queue that is perfectly organized and would be more so without his commentary.
The Gym
The gym prat provides unsolicited form corrections. “You should really engage your core more,” he says to someone who did not ask and is already engaging their core, possibly to avoid engaging with him.
He also occupies equipment while not using it. Sits on benches between sets that last 10 minutes. Explains his workout philosophy to people who are actively trying to work out and leave.
Digital Habitats: The Online Prat Ecosystem
The internet has provided prats with unlimited territory.
The email prat deploys “Reply All” like a weapon of mass disruption. He adds people to email chains who did not consent to inclusion. He writes emails that should be texts and texts that should be emails.
He also over-explains. A simple question receives a 500-word response with bullet points, subheadings, and a conclusion that circles back to the introduction. The question was “What time is the meeting?” The answer is buried in paragraph four.
Social Media
Social media is to the prat what water is to fish: essential habitat.
The social media prat corrects strangers. Explains jokes. Posts long threads about topics he learned about that morning. Uses phrases like “Well, actually” in tweet form.
A 2025 study found that social media prats receive 340 percent more “ratio” responses than average users and interpret this as “engagement” rather than “everyone disagrees and wishes you would stop.”
Video Calls
The video call prat has discovered a new frontier: his own face, on screen, constantly.
He watches himself while talking. Adjusts his camera angle mid-meeting. Provides technical support to people who did not request it. “Can everyone hear me?” he asks, despite everyone hearing him, before explaining how audio works.
He also uses backgrounds inappropriately. Virtual backgrounds of libraries to suggest intellectualism. Tropical beaches to suggest casualness. Actual messy rooms to suggest authenticity. All suggest prathood.
Seasonal and Event-Specific Habitats
Certain environments activate dormant prathood.
Christmas Parties
The office Christmas party combines alcohol, forced festivity, and the suspension of normal social rules. The prat thrives here like bacteria in warmth.
He drinks too much too quickly. Shares opinions that should remain internal. Attempts karaoke despite all evidence suggesting otherwise. Makes romantic advances that are neither romantic nor welcome.
University Reunions
The reunion prat has been preparing for 20 years. He has business cards. He has talking points. He has completely invented memories of being popular.
“Remember that time we…” he begins, describing events no one remembers because they did not happen. The group nods politely. He interprets this as confirmation.
School Events
The parent prat performs at school functions. He questions teachers about curriculum choices. He explains his child’s obvious genius to other parents whose children are equally smart and less discussed.
He also volunteers for everything, then performs the volunteer duties badly but confidently. “I’ll organize the bake sale,” he announces. The bake sale becomes a referendum on his organizational philosophy. Parents bring cupcakes and regret.
Conditions That Intensify Prat Activity
Certain environmental factors amplify prathood:
Alcohol
Alcohol does not create prats. It liberates them. The mild prat becomes confident. The confident prat becomes unstoppable. The unstoppable prat becomes an anecdote told at future gatherings.
Captive Audiences
Planes, trains, elevators—anywhere escape requires significant effort—intensify prat behavior. The prat senses trapped listeners and blooms like algae.
Topic Expertise (Real or Imagined)
Mention the prat’s specialist subject and watch transformation occur. The mild-mannered colleague becomes an unstoppable force of correction and elaboration.
New Technology
Unfamiliar devices trigger defensive prathood. “This doesn’t work,” he announces, about technology that works fine for everyone else. He then explains how it should work, based on how different technology worked in 1997.
Prat-Free Zones: Where They Cannot Thrive
Some environments naturally repel prats:
Libraries
The enforced silence prevents the prat’s primary mechanism: talking. Some attempt sign language or aggressive whispering. Neither succeeds.
Silent Retreats
The prat cannot survive prolonged silence. He either evacuates early or violates the silence to explain how silence works.
Anywhere He Is Actually Expert
True expertise creates humility. The prat is most prat-like when discussing topics he partially understands. Real knowledge renders him almost normal.
Conservation Notes
The prat’s habitat is expanding. Open plan offices, social media, and video calls have created new territories for colonization.
But certain habitats are shrinking. COVID reduced in-person gatherings. Remote work eliminated kitchen encounters. The prat adapted, migrating to digital spaces and intensifying activity in remaining physical locations.
The prat is resilient. Where there are people, there will be prats. Where there are gatherings, there will be someone explaining things no one asked about.
This is not tragedy. This is ecology. Every ecosystem needs its components, even the awkward ones.
Disclaimer
This article is a work of satirical journalism and entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. No habitats were harmed in this study, though several have been diplomatically rezoned as “prat-adjacent.”
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
