The joy of April Fools' Day: Why your brain enjoys pranking (and being pranked)
I don't want to spoil your prank, but.....
https://www.salon.com/2021/04/01/april-fools-day-sociology/
Kuipers, who also wrote the book "Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke," laughed with me at her cat's impertinent behavior, which in its own way speaks to the best part of the April Fools' Day spirit. When you pull a prank on someone, by necessity you have to laugh at their expense. The best kinds of pranks are those which connect people in a good-natured way — in the case of Kuipers and myself, how we both like animals and were amused by her cat's brazen interruption of our interview. The worst pranks, by contrast, are those that leave one party feeling humiliated, frightened or inferior.
Both types of pranks, however, stem from the same basic impulse: A desire to playfully assert dominance over a target by making them the butt of a joke.
"It's a form of superiority," Kuipers explained, recalling how the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously argued that humor is a method of psychologically benefiting from others' shortcomings or misfortunes. "There are many people who have said that humor is not exactly a form of aggression, but maybe more like a form of superiority. So I'm sensing the laughter very often also has to do with feeling better in some way than another person." Pranks are distinctive because the comedy involves real people, not fictional characters, and requires planning
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I read about it in Humpty Dumpty Magazine and it involved making a little jumping and spinning top and placing it under an upside down coffee cup. I tried it on my Dad, he picked up his upside down coffee cup set out on the table as usual, totally unsuspecting, and my little top thing jumped out and spun all over the place as intended, must have really woken him up! I had left for school by the time Dad got his coffee before work, but my mother told me about it. Even though I wasn't there to see it, I can still picture my Dad's surprise - my Dad was very humorous, liked pulling pranks himself - and it still makes me smile. 