April Fools! Have you picked your gullible victim for today? Or perhaps you’ve got your cynical face on, determined not to believe anything with a hint of ridiculousness all day long. In either case, you now find yourself a part of a tradition that has existed for decades . If you’re currently on the lookout for a bit of Schadenfreude, then you simply MUST check out this list of some of the best (and worst) pranks.
YouTube has certainly helped contribute to the prevalence of the prankster. You need only enter “prank” in the search engine to be treated to a wall of laughs at the expense of a number of hapless individuals. While the methods vary, there are a notable few that truly stand out.
Why is this dinosaur prank so amazing? Well, consider the fact that you have ordinary, everyday people running from creatures that any rational human being would accept as extinct. But the brilliance is in how the prank was set up. Notice that before the dinosaur is revealed, a group of screaming people are seen running away from something horrible. This puts the victim on their guard immediately, making them decidedly more susceptible to the prank.
Being trapped in an enclosed space is creepy enough on its own. But throw in a screaming ghost girl, and that’s a heart attack waiting to happen. This viral prank comes from Brazil where a TV show put several hapless victims in an elevator with flickering lights. When the little girl shows up, they all accept that she’s dead rather than consider the possibility that they’re on a candid camera show.
This is a rather unusual prank in that the goal is to do more than elicit a laugh; it’s to teach a couple of sexist cat-callers a lesson about disrespecting women. The men were apparently among the worst offenders in Lima, Peru. What better way to show such thoughtless individuals the error of their ways than getting their own mothers on the case?
The creeps took the bait, saying rather inappropriate things to their disguised moms. What followed was a couple of hilarious beat-downs.
Don’t say to strangers what you wouldn’t say to your mother…or, as these guys learned, don’t catcall your mom: http://t.co/Pu5ONHsXyV
— KMBC (@kmbc) January 31, 2015
You can’t appreciate good April Fools’ Day pranks without appreciating a few bad ones
While these bad pranks didn’t necessarily happen on April Fools’ Day, you can see that when taken too far, a prank can get you hurt. Not everyone has a good sense of humor. And some prank-happy people don’t have the sense to know when they’ve gone too far.
While it’s not an April Fools’ Day prank, the “War of the Worlds” radio prank in 1938 is considered to be one of the best AND worst pranks in human history. It is considered the best prank because it fooled hundreds of thousands of people (early estimates of millions is now considered to be overblown). It’s simultaneously considered the worst because the panic that followed could have led to serious injury.
Hopefully, if you’re inspired to go out and participate in April Fools’ Day, you’ll pick a prank that gets a few laughs but doesn’t send anyone to the emergency room.
[Image Credit: Pascal ]