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

[xiphias]

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.

Comments

[jhitchin.livejournal.com]

In general, I'm not a big fan of lavish pranks. Mine tend to be purely misdirection, like when my mother demanded I take down the wallpaper in the hallway. So when she got home, she sat down, opened a Diet Coke and said, "So did you get the wallpaper down?"

"Yeah," I said, "but the stuff in the entry hall didn't want to be removed easily. That took a while." [Note: The entry hall had been re-papered a couple of months earlier.] My mom stopped pouring her Diet Coke and got this look on her face that somewhere near to panic. I let her in on the gag and she tossed her empty can at me.

However, the "fill a co-workers office with balloons and confetti" just makes me scratch my head.