Four years ago, I decided to make my inner child proud. (My inner child was, however, a mischief-maker that got sent to the principal’s office on a weekly basis.) Since then, my life has exponentially improved. I made wonderful friends, became the most authentic version of myself, went internationally viral various times, and just had a ton of fun.
I believe one should always be mischiefmaxxing. This is a introductory course on what that means and how to do it.1
I define mischief as an amusing endeavor that exists for no purpose but to spark delight. It’s a defiance against the status quo that everything must be a means to an end, and a resistance to the monotony and passiveness of everyday life.
Welcome to: a beginner’s guide to mischief.
seeding ideas
Take that off-hand joke you made, and actually make it real.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if…” Do it. Do it. Do it. Don’t just hypothesize. Don’t overthink it.
Wouldn’t it be funny if we made an anti-run club, a “sit club,” since everyone’s joining run clubs these days to meet people, but most of them don’t even enjoy running?
Wouldn’t it be funny to throw a party with a hundred Alexes, to help my roommate Alex find friends?
Wouldn’t it be funny to find my friend a girlfriend via flyers on the street, as if he’s a lost dog?
Wouldn’t it be funny to list my house on google maps as a restaurant, because of my roommate’s infamous steak dinners?
“Ha ha, good one!” You could leave it at that. Or you could yank it into reality, and craft a scheme that takes on a life of its own. A joke among your friends could become entertainment for millions of people across the world. It could lead to meeting your now-closest friends. Funnily enough, it could even result in serious business people trying to hire you.
If this sounds preposterous to you, well, it sounds preposterous to everyone else. So most people don’t ever try, and the few that do reap outsized rewards.
start small, and build up (if you’re scared)
Take your joke, and dial it up a notch. And again. And again. And then maybe half a notch down, so you don’t overdo it.
Some starting points:
Subvert expectations. Take a popular social phenomenon and flip it on its head.2
Identify a problem and craft a comically over-engineered solution.
Create a genuinely useful tool then add a bunch of silly, useless features.
Take a subject/solution from one domain and apply it to a very unrelated domain.
Combine two things that should be polar opposites.
Search for loopholes and exploit them.
Take something you hate doing and invent a way to make it fun.
Tech bros in San Francisco always complain about the gender ratio → everyone says we need more women → but maybe we just need less men → I should make men fight “to the death” with giant inflatable “weapons” → we’d play songs like “Kung Fu Fighting,” “Eye of the Tiger,” and soundtracks from Super Smash Bros → the men could be shirtless and get oiled up before they fight
Everyone’s joining run clubs to meet people, but most of them don’t even like running → we should stage a counter club → how about a Sit Club → instead of running, we just sit in the park in protest of “Big Run” → it’ll be BYOC (bring your own chair) → we could do sitting warmups, like they do running warmups → we could play musical chairs to find the best sitter
It’d be fun to run an advice line → hmm, kinda overdone, how about a reverse advice line, where instead of getting advice, callers have to give advice → my friends could record their silliest problems, and callers could leave a voicemail suggestion → since it’s already on a phone line, I could add a ridiculously complex phone tree → people left such incredible voicemails, I should turn them into a song
I previously founded a nonprofit, and now I live near a strip club → it’d be kinda funny to combine charity and strippers, the epitome of virtue intertwined with the epitome of degeneracy → let’s call it… Strippers for Charity → I could get my friends/strangers to strip for a charity of their choosing → they perform a song and dance themed around that charity → all money raised is donated to that charity
Bounce ideas off of friends. “Yes, and” your thoughts. Enlisting a friend also makes creation less intimidating, and helps you focus on process over outcome. Because worst case scenario, if you’re the only two that care about your project, that means you had fun creating something with your friend! And that is always worthwhile.
Start in your home. Fabricate some interior design. Throw a silly party. Mail your friends absurd items. Your scheme doesn’t have to be a grand spectacle. Begin in a safe space to get comfortable with play.
form factors
My scheming trifecta is: flyers, websites, and parties.
Flyers (they’re like shitposting but IRL)
You can tape whatever you want to a pole and nobody can stop you3.
Generally, you should include a call to action (CTA): e.g. a QR code that goes to a survey about one’s bean habits, a number you text to join an enigmatic quest, or a website to mobilize the people to STOP CLIMBING.
The benefit of a CTA is you can gleefully watch as people engage with your work. But there’s also a beauty in having absolutely no feedback loop, as it leaves your audience even more puzzled on your abstract and enigmatic intentions.
You will be surprised and delighted by the number of people intrigued by your flyers.
After I’ve amassed enough responses, I like to gift something back to participants. It could be a pseudo-scientific report analyzing data from the survey, a one-way plane ticket to Chicago, or a song made from their voicemails. It closes the loop.4
I design my flyers in Figma, but if you’re a curmudgeon like me who resists learning new tech until you’re convinced of its value, you can literally make a flyer in google slides.5 Just adjust the slide to be letter-sized and you can drag shit in there without having to learn some newfangled tech.
You could also just make flyers from pen and paper. That’s what summoned hundreds of Alexes to the Alextravaganza. No excuses! There are zero barriers to entry!
Websites (they’re like flyers but online)
You can just cast whatever you want into the seas of the open web!
I cannot recommend carrd.co enough for creating no-code websites. Especially for beginners, I wouldn’t recommend using anything more complex. Carrd’s formatting can be a bit rigid, but as much as I desire complete control over every pixel, when site builders allow that, it means you have to manually adjust the design for web, mobile, different device sizes, etc, and it’s a huge bitch to deal with and not worth it 90% of the time. Carrd’s free version is robust, and its premium version is only $19/year.6
For something more complex, you could try vibecoding with Cursor. For something moderately complex, you could add blocks of code into carrd.
The most beautiful quality of sites is the plethora of fun elements you can integrate. Links to other sites! Surveys! Interactivity! Lately I have been very into SMS deep links, where when a user clicks on a button, it pre-loads a text message for them to send to a friend.
When designing sites, I often hop straight into carrd, but for anything complex, I’ll design it in Figma. And I use namecheap to buy domains. (I love buying silly domains, the amount of money I spend on domains is actually absurd.)
Parties (they’re like websites but for friends)
Parties are the highest echelon of schemes. You’re not only reaching into the uncharted universe to beckon strangers, but crafting a container in which strangers can interact with each other.
There’s so much fun in a party’s unpredictability. Whenever I host some absurd public spectacle, people always ask me what’s going to happen. And I reply, I have no idea! I’m along for the ride as much as anyone else.
I’ve met many friends through my parties. I mean, I’m literally filtering for people who are down to clown, which is my favorite quality in a person.
The greatest blockers here are 1) where to host it and 2) the fear of no one showing up.
For the former - if you’re hesitant to have people in your home (especially if you’re advertising the party on the street), I’d recommend scoping out local parks and beaches. Some have more strict park rangers than others, but as long as you’re being reasonable (i.e. no crazy equipment, no excessive drinking, etc), you should be fine. If you live in San Francisco, I highly recommend The SF Nook, which was created by a group of friends as an affordable community/arts space.
For the latter - to mitigate the fear of no one showing up, plan it with a friend or several. Then, worst case scenario, you’re just hanging out with your friends on a beautiful day in the park.
There was a viral Substack essay circling a few months ago, about how everyone wants to be a DJ, but no one wants to dance. I.e. everyone wants to be the creative, the star of the show, but few want to be the audience purely enjoying others’ work. I believe the arbitrage opportunity here is in event hosting, that’s an area in which everyone wants to be a participant, but few want to be the host.
doubts to dispel
Stepping outside of the prescribed path, I sometimes feel like a grand piano’s gonna fall out of the window and bonk me on the head like in a cartoon. But that doesn’t happen, actually.
It’s surprisingly very easy to do any of this. The hardest part is just fighting the inertia and starting.
Creativity is a muscle. If you’re worried that your idea is too stupid, who cares? Do it, so you’ll learn from it and have less stupid ideas in the future. That’s part of what’s freeing about schemes, they’re not meant to be taken seriously. By nature, they’re not a reflection of your intelligence or capability. So there’s no such thing as failure. I’ve learned to say: no matter what happens, it’ll be funny.
it’s not that deep bro, but it also is that deep, bro.
Resistance to the status quo is also a muscle. I’m not saying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but it’s important to habitually question norms and take agency. Mischief is intrinsically tied to agency: it’s questioning why things are the way they are, even if it’s just to make fun of them. It’s toeing the line of what’s permissible, even if it’s just for a joke.
In doing so, you’ll learn to bend implicit rules you didn’t even realize you were following. There’s many things in life we have a vague sense that we’re “not allowed to do,” but we don’t pause to think critically about why that is the case, or if that’s even true.7
As children, we always asked why. Why does this exist? How does it work? Why should I listen to you? Somewhere, somehow, most people stopped asking questions. I mean, it’s not practical to be curious about every single thing. But it’s a cold and dreary world in which one has no sense of curiosity, of wonder. And it’s a complicit world in which we all just blindly follow rules, especially rules that don’t even exist.
And in a world so focused on the ends justifying the means, where every endeavor is expected to be monetized or awarded, it’s freeing to do something that exists for nothing but itself. It’s a helpful tool for unconditioning yourself from perfectionist tendencies, as there is no end goal, it’s about the process and living in the moment.
Of course I get some snide remarks from people online, who comment, “You must have a lot of time on your hands. I wish I had the time to do that.” And my retort is: if you have an active Netflix account or over two hours of daily screen time, I don’t want to hear it.8
a note on “pranks”
I don’t really categorize my work as “pranks,” as that has a negative connotation of being at someone’s expense, and I firmly believe in doing no harm.9 I scheme within the realm of chaotic good to chaotic neutral. Humor purely based on degrading someone else is not only morally reprehensible, it’s also just lazy and uninspired.
If the target of your scheme wouldn’t find it funny, don’t do it. (Unless perhaps they’re some notoriously depraved individual.) Let’s all just agree to be cool guys. Use humor for good.
go forth and be mischievous
If you read this far, then you spent ~10 minutes with me. So I challenge you to spend another 10 minutes today scheming a fun little way to break out of the monotony of everyday life. Start small. Write a silly note to a friend. Craft a quick lil poster. Tape something weird to your wall. Create something that exists for no other reason than to spark delight.
Today, your mission is to make yourself giggle. And then report back, because in the universe of mischief, you have at minimum an audience of me.
LinkedIn certification provided upon request.
I once heard this concept described as “flip a sacred cow” and man do I love that.
Don’t take this as legal advice lol. It’s probably fine though.
I largely created my Substack to share these project syntheses, actually. And sending them to participants helped me grow an audience offline! My first hundred or so subscribers were largely strangers who participated in one of my IRL schemes, saw the output of them, then subscribed.
Go to File > Page setup > Custom > 8.5” x 11” - I know this is unhinged, but I do not care.
This is obviously not sponsored by carrd. They probably can’t sponsor anyone, because they’re only making $19/year off each paying user. I just really fw them.
One of the few books that had a drastic impact on my worldview is The Four Agreements. Its premise is that most of your misery can be attributed to ingesting implicit rules of how you should behave, punishing yourself when not meeting those rules, and resenting others who seem free of those rules. When people say rude and bitter things, they’re simply projecting their own miserable inner world onto you. And the more demeaning thoughts you have of others, the more you’ll assume others have demeaning thoughts of you. When you can realize all this, it’s easier to train yourself out of getting hurt by the negativity of others, as well as the habits of inflicting punishment upon yourself.
If creative projects drain rather than recharge you, or you just don’t have the desire to do them, that’s fine, but don’t act like it’s a morally inferior form of entertainment versus consuming content. Let’s all just be cool with each other, okay? Of course, leisure time is a privilege that not everyone has, but having hobbies of creation does not necessarily mean you have more free time than people who have hobbies of consumption.
Unfortunately, a “prank” is sometimes the most intuitive word to explain my schemes to someone new to my work. There isn’t really a descriptive word for a funny bit that features your friend but isn’t at their expense.
OK, I think I'm a little in love with you.
“And in a world so focused on the ends justifying the means, where every endeavor is expected to be monetized or awarded, it’s freeing to do something that exists for nothing but itself“. I love this quote so much.