Mischief: Pranks May not be all Jokes
For the last three graduating classes of Singapore American School, something has been noticeably absent: Senior Prank Day. In my freshman year, a day before my first high school exam, walking into the school felt different. Stairs were blanketed in toilet paper, cafeteria windows were plastered with student ID cards, and classroom desks were wrapped in aluminum foil. It was a prank, and by the end of the day, the seniors dutifully cleaned up.
Such tales of mischief are generally unwelcome. Singapore American School students saw this when the school administration banned the next three years of seniors from their own Senior Prank Day. Their decision seems to make sense, though. Mischief is a type of misbehavior, and misbehavior is typically punished, not praised. But there’s something curious about this. I didn’t think the senior pranks warranted punishment; I found them hilarious—spending the next many days brainstorming ideas for my future (ultimately nonexistent) Senior Prank Day. Whether we like to admit it or not, acts of mischief—despite being forms of wrongdoing—are amusing. But how? Is it that the amusement we derive from pranks is simply a product of some selfish, sadistic human tendency? Or is there, perhaps, something virtuous about mischief itself?
My answer is the latter. Mischief is indeed a type of misbehavior, but that is where its virtue lies. Mischievous acts offer a harmless, non-destructive way to challenge the status-quo. Something we desperately need in today’s world.
But first, all acts of mischief can’t be considered equal. Take a mom in Ohio who, as an April Fools joke, called her daughter and told her she had been shot (Brenman 2024). Dozens of police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances arrived at the mother’s house to find her sitting on her bed, chatting on her phone. If this is said to be an act of mischief, it’s hard to admire it. But I also have an issue calling this a mischievous act. Mischief is a playful form of trouble-making, aimed not to induce harm but to cheekily amuse those involved. The seniors who conducted the Senior Prank Day didn’t aim to hurt teachers, students, or custodians; they just hoped to elicit a chuckle or two when someone walked up a toilet paper covered stair. That Ohio mom’s April Fools joke, however, intended to harm: it misled public servants and wasted valuable public defense resources. There’s a distinction between flatout wrongdoing and mischief—this is that distinction.
Even with this definition, it may seem that acts of mischief, despite not intending to, end up causing harm. Harm is indeed difficult to predict. I may switch two of my friends’ water bottles, hoping to playfully toy with them. Once they realize they’ve been ingesting contaminated water, my friends have two possible reactions. They could match my laughter, making it a harmless prank, or they could feel exploited, making it a cruel one. We don’t know which response the act will elicit; should the possibility of harm deter us from the prank in the first place?
I don’t think so. The potential of harm lies not just in acts of mischief; it lies in everything we do, even our praiseworthy acts. Consider donating clothes. High school service clubs host many clothing drives each year. When I donate bags of shrunken clothes to the Caring for Cambodia drive, we can all say I’m doing a praiseworthy act. But even something as innocent as giving a poor child a sweater to keep her warm isn’t excused from the possibility of inflicting harm. These donations that we praise can harm local clothing companies. Donated clothes are cheaper than locally produced ones. The lower price sways people to buy donated clothes, preventing local companies from staying afloat (Curnow, 2013). This doesn’t happen often, but it has happened—and there’s the possibility that it will again. Despite this, I don’t think anyone will tell me to stop donating clothes. In the same way, the risk of harm can’t render mischief unacceptable, for if it did, then helping the poor also becomes unacceptable.
Mischief gives a lot in return for this possibility of harm.
Perhaps most importantly, mischief makes the world a better, more interesting place to live. We, as a kind, are becoming more self-absorbed than ever. This isn’t our fault, though; it’s a natural consequence of social media driven society. Social media is a “machine for showing off” (Mount 2023). It’s where profiles filled with posts about me—“my lunch,” “my outfit,” and “my job”—get scrutinized by everyone around us. We are validated when a friend likes our daily outfit post, and snubbed when they don’t. Our standing is determined by what others think of us, forcing us to worry. We worry that a pizza lunch will raise doubts about our weight-loss goals. We worry that wearing the sweater our mother spent two months knitting would make us seem cheap and unsophisticated. We are always performing for others, even in the most mundane aspects of our lives. This drive to stay validated strips our individual authenticity. New things are avoided out of fear of societal rejection, while the same TikTok trends are ubiquitously adopted. But isn’t that boring? Our diversity makes us special. To condense that diversity into a small “social media acceptable” list kills its beauty. It makes my Indian friends wear western shirts and jeans on Diwali, while simultaneously not dancing to any Bollywood song all night. It makes the world boring.
Mischief is a powerful corrective to this growing plague of conformity. Mischief doesn’t let us be egotists. It thrives on the ability to laugh at oneself even when others think the opposite. The doers of mischievous acts aren’t self-absorbed show-offs; they’re people who freely do the different—with the simple goal of amusing. Just the intention—to amuse—is so rare in the world now. It’s refreshing. This mindset that mischief enables gives us the freedom to break out of this conformity. The freedom to make the world a more diverse and exciting place. Consider, for example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) “police car on the dome” prank of 1994. MIT students placed a police car on MIT’s iconic building dome (Izawa 1994). It made ripples. MIT’s campus is the paragon of seriousness. Every student works over 10 hours a day, and Saturday nights are dedicated to the library (Izawa 1994). You can imagine how much life this harmless prank brought to the campus. It broke the seriousness engulfing the campus and made life there just that much more interesting. That’s also probably why now, 30 years later, that single prank is still the greatest moment of pride for nearly every MIT student you ask. A world without mischief is one with the monotony of us conformists—boring, dull, and plain. The rare moments of mischief are what give us the laughter and joy that keep the world an interesting place to live. Why shouldn’t we have more of it?
Mischief also grants us the power to reclaim our individual autonomy—one of our principal rights. All humans should have the right to individual autonomy. To govern their life the way they want to. But our self-autonomy has been dwindling. The conformity from the self-obsession that stems from social media contributes to this. We’re pressured to stick to the norm, for we fear that anything that deviates from it won’t be accepted by our peers. And that stops us from doing what we want to do. We don’t wear the clothes we feel confident in to our favourite Italian restaurant in fear that everyone will look at us strangely. But we should be able to. Mischief is a harmless misbehavior. A harmless way to go against the status-quo and stand up for what we believe. British philosopher Anscombe demonstrated this. She wore comfortable slacks to a fancy dinner restaurant, but was met with fellow diners saying it’s inappropriate for women to wear slacks in such a restaurant (O Grady 2001). Most of us wouldn’t even get this far. But Anscombe, in an act of mischief, reacted to them by removing her pants. Nobody got harmed, but she made her point. Now I’m not proposing getting naked in public. But the same philosophy can be scaled back too. The Senior Prank Day, for example, was an expression against the serious rules and institution of high school. Something that granted them the autonomy to do everything they dreamed of doing in school. It’s interesting, isn’t it? In mischief’s greatest vice—that it condones the wrong—lies a great virtue. The harmless wrongdoing grants us the power to do what we want.
Mischief is, by definition, wrong. But within a vice may lie many hidden virtues. Mischief counters an ever-growing narrative in our world: conformity. I don’t know if I’ll ever get my rightful Senior Skip Day. But I don’t need it. Mischief also lives on the tiny pranks and the small everyday acts of rebellion. Mischief shows us that rules aren’t always sacred. Playfully challenging them makes life freer, richer, and infinitely more colorful.
References
CNN, Teo Kermeliotis and Robyn Curnow. n.d. “Is Your Old T-Shirt Hurting African Economies?” CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/12/business/second-hand-clothes-africa/index.html.
Mount, Harry. 2023. “The Ego Has Landed and Taken over the World Thanks to the Internet.” New Thinking. April 19, 2023. https://www.newthinking.com/culture/the-ego-has-landed-and-taken-over-the-world-thanks-to-the-internet.
Brennan, David. 2021. “April Fools’ Prank Backfires for Mother Who Faked Being Shot in ‘Very Dangerous’ Text.” Newsweek. April 2, 2021. https://www.newsweek.com/april-fools-prank-backfires-mother-faked-being-shot-very-dangerous-text-1580631.