My theories on April Fools' jokes, and pranks and hacks in general

Originally, I was planning on having this post be full of rickrolls (links to the music video of Rick Astley's 1987 hit single "Never Gonna Give You Up" that are pretending to be links to other things), but I'm too lazy.

Because, to me, "rickrolling" is an example of "acceptable pranking". Um, mostly. Right now, it's so overdone that it starts to lose something, but, in general, it fits my rules for what's okay in a prank.

Here are some of my rules:

• The prank may not cause any damage to anything.
  
• The prank must be easily undone and it must be easy to get things back to normal.
  
• The prank must be designed to avoid negative feelings, with the possible exception of a limited amount of initial confusion.
  

That last one is really important. If a prank causes embarrassment, humiliation, shock, fear, worry, disappointment . . . it's a bad prank.

Pranks should be designed to engender amusement, wonder, surprise . . .

I think that a lot of what "Improv Everywhere" does counts as "good pranks". Having a random musical in a mall food court? That's a GOOD prank.

When Lis and I design pranks, that's what we go for -- trying to make people's lives just a bit more PLEASANTLY surreal.