Pulling off a good April Fools’ Day prank can be easy, but it’s important to make sure it doesn’t lead to someone being physically harmed or totally humiliated. A certain amount of intuition regarding your target’s emotions should come into play when deciding on the trick you’ll play on them. For instance, play on their fears or dislikes without being malicious, which they will hate. With the right finesse, you can be a master at pranking; and everyone will pretty much love it.
Characteristics of Bad Pranks
A prank in really bad taste is likely a bad prank, like rearranging the furniture of an actual blind person. Although, actually, some blind people would love it and find a few bruises worth the fun of being pranked. The following are more qualities of (likely) bad pranks:
- They humiliate the targeted individuals. Example: You serve cookies heavily laced with laxative and also put saran wrap across the toilet seats.
- The prank will or could cause physical pain or discomfort. Example: Stage a fake kidnapping, put someone in the trunk of a vehicle, and drive to a remote location.
- Major clean-up is required without any offsetting reward. Example: See #1 above.
Qualities of Good Pranks
In general, the sign of a successful prank is when the person pranked ends up either enjoying it or at least deriving fun or the humor out of it.
An important quality in good pranks is that no one is exposed to harm or disease. For example, instead of possibly giving someone a serious illness by scrubbing the toilet with their toothbrush, which is bad!, put something in the toothpaste temporarily changes the color of their teeth. How? By placing a single drop of food coloring onto the toothbrush—the color should be the same as the bristles on the toothbrush. Another option is to put a numbing gel for teeth deep at the base of the toothbrush bristles. More ideas follow
- Some good pranks can be both safe and somewhat evil. For example, place ball bearings or marbles in a friend’s trunks. When driving, it will sound like something’s wrong with their engine.
- If someone is deathly afraid of bugs, a good trick is to put a cutout of a big roach on the inside of their lampshade. It would be going too far, for example, to put an actual roach on that person or in something they’re going to open—if they are “deathly afraid” of them.
- Having someone wake up with a scary head next to them in bed could be hilarious. A bad idea would be to dress up like the clown in Stephen King’s It and chase someone with a “bloody” knife.
- The best pranks are usually quick and perfectly timed with a duration short enough that no one is in danger of being hurt. It’s okay to put a lot of dry macaroni noodles under the toilet seat, which will make it sound like the seat broke as the “prankee” sat down. A similar prank is one that could be risky. Place pop-its, which are small firecrackers that explode from pressure, under the the toilet seat.
- It’s good when you give attention to someone with a prank, as long as it doesn’t expose them to ridicule.
Happy April Fools’ Day!
Don’t forget. Be on the alert all day on April 1st, just in case you’re the person being pranked. Depending on how devious some of your friends and family members might be, you could save yourself a small heart attack by being alert to shenanigans.
