I haven’t been involved in any grand orchestrated prank, but that doesn’t keep me from being amused by them when others pull them off. One thing that’s consistantly got me is the Fark comments section. Every year, the comments are run through random filters, completely messing up most of the comments. Sometimes they’ll turn at as “bork bork bork,” sometimes they’ll turn out in l33t speak. You’d think the joke would get old after several years, but it never fails to see people wondering what the hell is up with everyone talking funny, only to get caught by the filter too.
Personally, I think it would be funny if the Admins here had a bit of fun with us. I would die laughing to wake up April 1st, log onto the boards and see my username had been changed to…well…I can’t think of anything funny right now, damnit. But I’m sure it would be!
So, what pranks have you pulled off or seen done that stick out in your memory?
It wasn’t an April Fools joke, but recently the admins (temporarily, unfortunately) changed Scylla’s username to Chewie because of his thread about his wife and the car and the salesman. You know the one. And it was funny.
A really simple, no-expense trick: take a screenshot of someone’s computer desktop, set that as the wallpaper, and then hide all the icons and toolbars. It’ll look like their computer is set up normally, but they can’t click on anything. Whee.
The one I’ve also heard is to go into Word’s menu and change a commonly-used autocorrect word to something else. I am extremely eager to sneak onto a co-worker’s computer and change something like “property” to DOOFUS! DOOFUS! She’s not that familiar with Word’s less-obvious features.
I have to think of a good word that she’d use often in her correspondence, though.
I want it to be easily seen enough that she won’t accidentally sent out business correspondence with the prank word, hence all caps and something that sticks out.
A few years back, some kids pulled an awesome prank where they let 3 pigs into the halls of their school. They numbered the pigs 1, 2, and 4. The people who came to gather the pigs and take them away ended up searching for the #3 pig for an extra two hours, only to find that it didn’t exist. :smack:
Cops are notorious for practical jokes, and I do enjoy a good prank.
We had a reserve officer who was going through the background investigation for a full-time job. After he took his psychological exam, I faked up a letter from the State, telling him that he failed the psych and had to retake it. One of my fellow officers even drove 75 miles to mail it so that it would have the right postmark.
Not long after we were first issued pepper spray, I switched my can for a training cannister (propellant, no pepper). When one of the other guys said something smart-assed to me, I pulled it out and sprayed him. He ducked right into a wall.
I then convinced him to try the same thing on the next officer coming in. I got another guy to meet the new victim outside, fill him in, and give him a training cannister as well. When #1 sprayed #2, #2 acted pissed and sprayed him back. #1 ducked right into the wall, again!
We have mannequins that are used for range practice (the can be set up to be holding guns or various objects, so that we have to judge the situation before shooting). One of the guys put one in another officer’s personal car while he was working. When he opened the door and the interior light came on, he actually yelped. Fortunately, he didn’t shoot up his own car.
I removed someone’s door. Then drywalled over it, then painted the wall to match the rest of the wall, then even added a section of baseboard. I used to have it documented online, but not anymore. It was great. Had you not known there was a door there before, you wouldn’t have guessed there ever was. Hell, we even hung a picture on the space the door was at!
We did this instead of our original plan, placing thousands of small paper cups filled with water over every surface of the room. We figured they would certainly leak before he got back, and he had stuff that might have gotten ruined from it.
Get hold of someone’s mobile (cellphone) and change the language settings to Polish. Because all the menus are now in that language ,and probably incomprehensible, the only way to reset it to English is to try and dig out the instruction manual which usually has been lost.
That is one of my favorite pranks of all time. I’ve never had the guts to actually do it for fear of someone launching their moniter out a window, but I think the idea of the prank is genius.
Awhile back, someone posted a prank on here where they put a very noticeable garbage can filled with soda over someone’s door. Of course, the mark saw the can and took it down. Thinking he had foiled the prankster, he poured the soda into the sink- only to realize that the U-bend had been removed.
Another good one is to remove a shower head and fill it with chicken bullion. When the person takes a shower, they are showered in chicken broth. Funny!
A few years ago, we came in to work the night before April 1, took everything off our boss’s desk, removed the desk from the office and put everything back exactly in its place…on the floor.
A better one was to have her computer boot to the C prompt, but we changed the prompt from a flashing cursor to a line of text that said "All files are about to be erased; press any key to continue. She freaked the fuck out.
When my dad was in college (Penn State, electrical engineering, class of 1945), he and his classmates tied a teabag filled with iron filings to the bedspring of another guy’s bed, and placed a bowl of sulfuric acid beneith it.
They timed it for an evening when they knew this guy would have a girl in his room (yes, they did have sex in 1945), so that, when they sat on the bed, the room filled with hydrogen sulfide, ie: rotten egg smell.
I did it to my dad once. He’s not the most tech-savvy person so he got frustrated pretty quickly. I didn’t leave him in the dark for too long, though - after all, we only had one computer at that time and I didn’t want it in pieces.
Here’s a website the chronicles MIT hacks (pranks). They’re not April Fool’s jokes necessarily, but some of them are dead clever.
