[Student Voices] Pranks Don’t Always Bring Laughter
Published: 21 Apr. 2025, 09:16
Tae Yang Kim, Chadwick International
by Tae Yang Kim, Chadwick International
One day when my friend was in the restroom during a lecture, I carried out a seemingly harmless prank. I decided to hide one of his class notebooks inside my backpack. I thought it would give him a small scare. It turned out that he needed that notebook for an exam the next day. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to review his notes.
The obvious happened—he didn’t do well on the test. When he found out I was the one who took his notebook, he was furious. He refused to talk to me. What I thought was a harmless prank led my friend to fail his test and eventually cut off our friendship.
Mistakes like this are hard to forget. They can drastically affect another person’s life. Even if the affected person forgives you, feelings of regret and guilt will haunt you, tugging at the back of your mind. In my case, I was left wondering: Why did I do it? What did I hope to accomplish?
Benedict Carey, a science reporter for the New York Times, describes a good prank as “a simulation of a crisis and not the real thing.” When the crisis is over, we feel a sense of relief. We’re happy to have escaped something bad. And since the crisis was fake, there was never any real risk.
But do people appreciate these pranks? According to a 2021 poll by YouGov, 47% of respondents found April Fool’s Day pranks annoying, while 45% said they were amusing. Interestingly, most people commented that they liked to pull the occasional prank but found pranks done to them annoying. This suggests that the act of pulling a prank is often a selfish act for one’s own enjoyment.
Even worse, pranks can be dangerous. At my school, I’ve seen multiple friendships break due to reckless pranks. During a field trip, for example, a girl in my class decided to prank her friend who hated fish. What the girl didn’t know was that her friend was actually allergic to it. After the girl replaced the meat in her friend’s sandwich with a fish fillet, her friend had to be rushed to the hospital.
Pranks can have great consequences. If you decide to go through with one, you should know the person well enough to be sure they’ll appreciate it. And you have to make sure it’s really a simulated crisis—not a real one. In my case, if I had done the prank a few days earlier or later, my friend would have had his notebook for his exam. If I had put a bit more thought into the prank, I could have kept a great friend.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)