There are generally two camps when it comes to pranks. Those who view them as harmelss fun and those who think they are akin to torture. I will tell you upfront that I am in the latter camp.
Today is Aprils’ Fools Day (yesterday by the time you read this). I have never understood the appeal of this day, quite frankly. I have playefd one prank in my life that was pretty epic, but then I felt gulity about it afterwards. It was when I was a first-year student in college. I got a bunch of friends to help me with it because there was no way I could have done it on my own. We took all the furniture from a friend’s room and recreated it in the study lounge, down to every last detail. It was amazing, quite frankly, but it was very intrusive. I would not have taken kindly if someone had done it to me because i do not like people touching my stuff without my permission.
This is my issue. Don’t. Touch. My. Stuff. I will say that putting googly eyes on stuff is a harmless prank that most people can enjoy. At the very least, it doesn’t do any harm. If someone doesn’t like it, they can roll their own eyes and just keep it pushing.
For the other office-related pranks, though, even the ones considered mild, I would not appreciate them at all. At Ask A Manager, this is such a contentious topic. Alison herself is on the pro-prank side (which surprises me) as long as everybody is on-board with the prank. Which, I mean, it’s not easy to always be sure that people are on the same page.
The things that people call harmless pranks such as putting tape on the underside of someone’s mouse and switching around the letters on someone’s keyboard are big no-nos for me. The latter wouldn’t bother me because I use the Dvorak system and touch-type. I only care about the very rarely-used keys such as the brackets.
People who talked about doing this were all, “Hahahahahah this is so funny!”, but I did not get it at all. The premise is, “I’m going to do somtehing to your stuff that you don’t know about and then I’m going to laugh at how gullible you are to fall for it even though there’s no way you could have known about.”
That’s the thing that doesn’t make sense to me. How is that a prank? How is that funny to the person who’s getting pranked? Alison emphhasized that the prank had to be funny for everyone, not just the person/people doing the prank. Anything that has to do with messing with someone’s computer just doesn’t seem funny to me. Even if you don’t think it’s offensive or wrong, why is it funny?
Honestly, if that happened to me and I spent more than five seconds trying to figure out what’s wrong, I’m going to feel like someone’s been a jerk. I’ve spent most of my life being bullied, ignored, put down, or denigrated. Something like this would make me feel the same way all that did. I was always the butt of the joke and not in on it. For people who say this shit is funny, they are unilaterally deciding that you have to put up with their shit. Then they get annoyed, hurt, or upset that you don’t think it’s funny, too. “it’s just a prank.” Right. Then it shouldn’t be a problem for you to not fucking do it, either.
In the world of games, there has been one April Fools’ Day joke that I found hilarious, but that’s because I knew it was a joke. After the lads left IGN, the latter did an April Fools’ Day joke about having three different guys play Sekiro as the new Prepare to Try team. I included the video above.
I didn’t see it until after they put the Aprils Fools’ Day disclaimer on the video, and they did that because there was such an uproar over the idea. They’re in England, which meant it was thoroughly shot down by the time I saw it. I thought it was pretty funny because they really captured the vibe of the original with the teaser trailer and because so many people went nuts over it.
Honestly, I would have been fine if they had done it. The boys left to start RKG and Retry. There was no reason IGN couldn’t have had a different Prepare to Try. It’s not as if it would have tainted Retry. People who liked Rory, Krupa, and Gav would follow them to Patreon regardless. I would have watched the new Preapre to Try with pleasure, even while contriubitng to the Patreon of the boys.
But in general, pranks are lazy rather than clever. And, again, the pranker has to be very sure that the prankee won’t be upset. Touching anything on my desk would make me upset. Filling my office with things (like balloons) would make me scrunch up my face. It wouldn’t be as upsetting as messing with my tech, but it wouldn’t be funny, either.
That’s the bottom line to me. None of the typical pranks are funny. Sending out memos about emergency meetings or crisises that are popping off that are not really popping off–where is the humor in that? Again, it’s just, “I’m going to tell you something that you have no reason not to disbelieve, and then I’m going to laugh at you for believing me.”
In addition, now that April Fools’ Day is apparently a thing, most people are aware that anything that happens on that day is suspect. I wouldn’t trust anything revealed on that day. Fortunately, this year, it’s on a Saturday–which cuts down on business shenanigans. Unless people decide to do it on the Friday before or the Monday after.
I am not against people having fun. I am not against good-natured pranks. I just disagree that most of the things categorized as pranks are those. If that makes me a killjoy, so be it.