April Fool’s day is Sunday and instead of highlighting corporate jokes or writing the traditional “gotcha” news item, we figured we’d compile a list of ways you can prank your friends. To make this really useful, feel free to add to the ideas in the comments.
The smartphone is the controller! These jokes all make use of smartphone apps that control elements of your daily life, such as your TV or maybe your home lighting system. As this woman wrote in to Time Warner Cable explaining how she and her daughter use the remote control app to change the channels while her husband is watching TV, all it takes is the right app and a moment when the victim isn’t looking to cause momentary confusion. Kevin Tofel says he likes to play a variation of this by turning off the lights in his home from his smartphone when guests get near a light switch.
Apps that act as whoopee cushions and animal translations. For those who don’t have the means to control someone’s household appliances there are apps such as iFart or Animal Translator, which bring giggles to small children and high-school boys. Make iFart into a digital whoopee cushion or show your elementary-school child what your dog is saying. A few years ago The New York Times did a complete run down on fake calling and texting services, so visit that if you’d like to do a modern-day prank call.
Forget the apps and prank the phone! Maybe you don’t have a smartphone, or perhaps you think your friends are pretty smart. Then it’s time to resort to more physical humor using stickers or pulling a switcheroo. Yeah I just used the word switcheroo. I’m a fan of the broken phone decal such as this one, but getting it in time for Sunday probably won’t happen. If your victim doesn’t have a lock on their phone (and really, if they don’t, they deserve to be pranked) then you can play any number of jokes, from tweeting from their account to rearranging their apps. At a bare minimum if you have the same phone but in different cases you can swap them out. Just be sure you have a password set on your phone.
I’m sure there are some fairly elaborate pranks out there that you guys have performed or might wish to see someone else perform, so feel free to leave them in the comments. And happy pranking.
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Mykl Roventine
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