Cyberpranks

Cyberpranks

By Anthony J. Piccione

There was once a boy named Kyle. He was an 18 year old high school senior from Connecticut. Like most other teenagers, Kyle was addicted to the Internet. He would constantly keep checking his Facebook profile throughout the day, whether it was to post something new on his timeline, or just to chat with friends. Whenever he wasn’t on Facebook, he was probably on YouTube watching something that was random and funny. Something that he always enjoyed doing was pulling pranks on some of his best friends on the Internet. He thought they were hilarious, but quite a few of his friends thought that a lot of them weren’t that funny.

Earlier in the year, Kyle sent out a massive event invite on Facebook to a bunch of the popular, athletic guys in school. It was an event invite that was set to “Custom” so that only they could see. He invited them to go see the new Twilight movie that was coming out soon. He knew that most of the guys in the school would never even consider going to see any of those movies. He knew that it would be very hard to convince them to go. But he persuaded them that a lot of girls would be there, including Britney Gomez: the hottest, most popular girl in the entire school. A couple of guys were later convinced, and soon, the number of people who clicked the “Going” button on Facebook began to rise. However, when the guys got there, Kyle wasn’t there. Even worse was that Britney was with all her friends, many of whom wouldn’t like it if she started dating any of them. By the time they got home, they saw that Kyle had posted as his new status update: “Saw that a bunch of guys on the football team went to go see Twilight tonight. LMAO!” The word was out, and they couldn’t deny they were there because other people had seen them there that night. They couldn’t believe they would actually fall for a stupid joke like that, especially one that came from Kyle.

But Kyle didn’t stop there. He had an annoying 14 year old sister named Stacy – who was just a freshman - whom he wanted to pull a prank on using Facebook. So he went ahead and made a brand new Facebook account, and he named it Justin Bieber. He logged on with the new account, and added Stacy as a friend. Stacy quickly accepted the friend request, and was in complete awe that Justin Bieber, whom she had a huge crush on, had actually friended her on Facebook. She wanted to start chatting with him really badly, but she was nervous and didn’t know what to say. But then, “Justin” sent her a message saying “hey, whats up”. Stacy nervously began chatting with him, and was still shocked about it. How could Justin Bieber possibly be talking to her on Facebook? But as they kept chatting, “Justin” started to say some things that didn’t really make sense. Why would he say that he was not that talented, and just another teen pop star? Why would he refer to himself as if he was a girl? Why did he keep saying that he wished he had hit puberty sooner? That’s when Stacy ran over to Kyle’s room, and saw that he was logged on as “Justin Bieber”. Stacy was extremely embarrassed, and could not believe she would actually fall for one of her brother’s immature jokes.

But even then, Kyle still wasn’t done. He decided to pull a prank on his best friend, Matt. Knowing that he was a die-hard Batman fan, Kyle told him that he had gotten a bootleg leaked copy of The Dark Knight Rises before it was released in movie theatres, and that he had uploaded it in multiple parts to YouTube. He could tell by his face that he was excited, but not sure if maybe it was too good to be true. He hoped that it hadn’t been removed from the site yet. Matt went on YouTube, entered “The Dark Knight Rises” into the search box, and he found a video posted by Kyle’s YouTube account entitled “The Dark Knight Rises: Part 1/12”. He clicked on the video, and what he saw was just the beginning of the trailer for the movie instead. He kept watching it, but 10 seconds into the video, the music video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” started playing. The words “YOU GOT RICK ROLLED” then popped up as the music video played. Matt felt so stupid for believing that it was the actual movie. Even he could not believe that he actually fell for one of his Kyle’s jokes.

By June, Kyle decided to send out another event invite. This time, it was an invite to his Graduation Party. He was going to have lots of food and drinks, a DJ, and a pool. But lots of people didn’t believe him. How could he actually have a DJ come to his party? Did anyone even know whether or not Kyle had a pool? So many people had thought that Kyle’s pranks were immature and not all that funny, and they all had gotten tired of his pranks. Now nobody left in the senior class had trusted him. Now he was a loser who couldn’t get anyone, except for two people, to come to his party. He had planned so hard for his party, but nobody showed up because they thought it was just another joke that he was planning. That’s when he realized that he had gone way too far with some of his pranks. He realized that some of them were starting to not be funny anymore. That’s why when he went off to college, he realized that he should not pull internet pranks as much as he did in high school, and that he should only do it once in a while. Otherwise, not only will people get tired of it. They will know what to expect, and that would make them not very funny at all.

The End