What harmless pranks have you pulled?

[Soubriquet]

Told dh there was a huge mouse in the room and I had trapped it under the metal bin

and there was…..a computer mouse!

Ive also done a massive leak in the toilet….cue to an actual leek

and there’s water coming from the toilet! It’s all over the floor….in cups

A friend of mine hates being photographed, so we have next to zero pictures of her. For her 30th birthday I wanted to make a video with photos like I usually do, but since I had almost none of her pictures I used those that were taken during our gatherings or vacations and added her to them (I'm sure there is some AI for that, but I followed this guide and did everything myself, because I'm not feeding my personal content to AI), then made the video. She loved it and had a good laugh, so no one was offended and it was a fairly funny project to do!

This!! I've seen threads like this before and came here expected another set of lighthearted stories. OP, you really do sound funny and thank you for the thread.

I know mines not really a prank but it’s similar.

When DP pisses me off I put things in his shoes. In the past I’ve used wooden bark from pot pourri, peanuts, frozen peas or sand.

We don’t really argue but he can be very annoying. The last time was because a friend bought me some expensive chocolate and he opened it and helped himself without my permission.

It took him a good few months to work out that it was me doing it, when he found out he thought it was very funny. Now when he knows he’s being annoying he hides his shoes so I need a new pass agg way of getting revenge.

I bought a vacuum sealer and I’m obviously very easily pleased, I kept showing DP that I was putting things into little plastic jails. He wasn’t that impressed when I tried to teach him to use it, I said it would keep food fresher for longer.

I put his phone and car keys into little plastic jails 😂. He apparently thought I did such a good job with the phone he kept it wrapped up because he does a job where he gets his hands dirty.

That is hilarious, truly "only on MN". Poor Tarquin's emotional support gnome has been taken hostage and the hostage takers are sending postcards 😭

There's a huge difference between pranks and bullying (and I say that as someone bullied relentlessly as a child). It's ridiculous to generalise and say that pranking people is just bullying.

DH and I love pranks, and DD is starting to like it too (very shy so would only ever prank DH and I). Love a good April Fools. DH once came home from work to find I'd put googly eyes on everything in our first flat; he was still finding googly eyes when we moved out.

This April fools I told me class the incredibly beautiful and rare sloof lirpa bird had been spotted locally. This bird is very friendly having had little interactions with humans. I showed them some photos of some birds of paradise and explained one was the male and the other the female. They loved carrots and that's why you couldn't get carrots in the shops right now - they had eaten them all (lots of kids nodding and exclaiming how they hadn't had carrots in ages). Gave them all a carrot and had them out in the playground holding their carrots and doing a weird whistle call to attract one. Much excitement when someone saw a pigeon on the roof and thought it was one.

After 20 mins I brought them inside and slowly wrote the birds name on the board in big letters.

I understood your point until the small child confiding in the gnome part.
Absolutely brilliant MN gold. Thanks for that 👏.
I am all for harmless pranks but I'd be annoyed if someone took something of mine too.
Although I have to admit I once drunkenly moved a load of gnomes from front gardens to a local bus stop.
I thought it was hilarious at the time.
Now I'm older and sober I can see it must have just been annoying.
They got them back though, I watched tgem retrieve them the next day.

A couple of workplace ones, not by me.

Colleague A left his work computer unlocked. So Colleague B went into MS Word and tweaked the autocorrect so that whenever Colleague A typed his name, Word autocorrected it to "the bastard".

Colleague C also left her computer unlocked. So Colleague D sent an email from it to Colleague E, who was leaving, saying how very much Colleague D would miss him. Colleague E received it, read it, and then asked Colleague D for a date.

But this is my favourite.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/aug/28/topstories3.books

Pure David Brent!

Just what I was thinking but I couldn't remember his name.

I've done the, "I think there's a leek in the bathroom". My carer threatened to beat me to death with it.

For a couple of weeks we had a game of 'hide the spam'. It was in lockdown, my friend loves spam but her local supermarket didn't sell it so I got some for her and left it out so it didn't disappear in to the tin cupboard.

One morning I walked in to the living room and no spam, I found it on a book shelf, so I moved it to a coffee table drawer and thus a game was born.

I worked with someone who had, the quite nice idea, that people who are nice deserve a valentines card not because they have an admirer but just as a nice thing.

So we bought a pack of cards and sent them to various people in the workplace. One person thought it was from someone she did an evening class with, reader she married him.

I think anyone with gnomes deserves pranks and putting them at the bus stop, please tell me in a queue, is brilliant.

I love this story of an Aussie man who asked his neighbour to, "Take my bin out" so he did.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/24/australian-man-asked-his-neighbour-to-take-the-bins-out-so-he-did-literally

Colin Hunt... as in 'Colin Hunt's office trolley'!

I realise that my 'confiding in the gnome' comment was somewhat pushing it!

But my point is that you can't know how much value a stranger may attach to one of their possessions that you personally wouldn't.

We all know about grubby, raggy teddies that our kids would be heartbroken and inconsolable to lose. Pre-digital photos too: to anybody else, they're worthless pictures of randoms; but if they're of your deceased loves ones, they're very precious to you.

Pranks are for kids. I hate seeing adults do them on SM.

I know everyone’s sense of humour is different, but by god I find pranks and pranksters tedious. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s bullying, just that it is very boring and unfunny.

And before I am accused of being boring for not finding this stuff amusing, I used to run a pretty successful comedy club and still love comedy. So I am not the sort of person who just finds everything unfunny.

Speaking of David Brent, I am blessed with fast wpm typing speed. I once was leaning over a male colleague's shoulder talking about a work task of some sort. Me, him and another male colleague all worked closely together.

I noted he was just about to send an email to third colleague, when I walked over, and when he glanced briefly away while we were talking I added the sentence 'P.S, you should wear tighter trousers' and pressed send.😂

It actually made my day.
You're right though you never know what attachments people have to items in their home / garden.
Or how they would feel about someone going into their space to take things.
Like I said I've done this is the past and thought it was funny.
Now I'm older and less daft I can see it from other people's perspectives.

I'm with you on this. The idea that not finding pranks funny means you have no sense of humour could only come from the tedious pranksters.

I hate pranks because they come with an in-built command to respond in one way only: 'Stop what you are doing. Follow my directions to the prank. Now laugh or be judged joyless!' They seem to lack any ability to grasp that the other person may be in a different frame of mind, or preoccupied by something else or have a brilliant sense of humour that just doesn't respond to the crassness of pranks. There's a narrow-minded controller quality about pranksters that just irritates me.

I've done the leak (leek) in the bathroom one too.

I agree that sometimes pranks are tedious and in bad taste.

I think for a prank to be a 'successful' prank it needs to be found funny by the prankee as well as the prankster-and this requires prior knowledge of the person and the situation. I knew my gf would find the dog thing funny and I came clear very quickly, I wouldn't have done it if I was dog sitting for a neighbor I didn't know very well, for example.

The gnome thing I'd never do personally-I'd be afraid of sentimental values plus if one got broken or a vandal or thief got hold of them, or if the owner never found them and was upset (again, context).

When I was a child, my grandmother had a lot of ornaments on the fireplace and I'd always turn them around when she wasn't looking so that they were all showing their bums. It wasn't a problem, she found it funny if a tad irritating-but I'd not (even at that age) have done it to my other grandmother, who was a lot more of a prude and a lot more serious as a person.

If they're done with the intent of upsetting the prankee, with a view to other people finding it funny, I'd say that can be bullying, definitely.

The gnome thing I'd never do personally-I'd be afraid of sentimental values plus if one got broken or a vandal or thief got hold of them

Well, if somebody has taken your property from your garden and isn't giving it back for a year (as they know, but you don't know it hasn't gone forever), the thieves effectively already have got hold of it.

We used to live on a road near a train station as a child. My friends bedroom was at the front of her house and of an early evening there were plenty of commuters walking home down our road.

Fishing wire, hook and one of her dads empty wallets gave us hours of entertainement.

Back in the day, my father had a multi CD changer in his car, which he left loaded with the same favourite CDs for years. One day I changed them all for very bubblegum pop music, not at all his style. Apparently he was incredibly confused and it took him quite a long time to work out that his CD player wasn't broken.

would agree that "some" pranks are more cruel than humourous.

@Soubriquet your examples, though made me smile and wishing we still had the "laugh" emoji 😆

My mil once pranked us all with fake scratch cards. They were a christmas present. My sil had no money whatsoever, she used food banks, skipped meals so her children could eat couldn't afford any treats. She cried when she thought she had won because she was going to treat the dc to a holiday.
That's probably the cruelest prank I know of.
Most of her dc are low or no contact with her surprisingly.
I like the fun ones though. I think if you know your audience and everyone finds it funny then it's ok.

It wasn’t until I saw this thread that it occurred to me that the only “pranksters” I’ve known are male. Obviously this thread demonstrates that there are women who do it too.

The very few pranksters I have known had a very basic sense of humour along slapstick and farts/poo/body parts and functions lines.