April Fools' Day Pranks To Play On Facebook

People post about their tattoos all the time — honestly, it's pretty much required — so take April 1 as the opportunity to announce a "new" tattoo to your Facebook friends. You have a couple options here: If you're an artist or happen to know one, you can draw a deliberately poor-quality tattoo on yourself. Otherwise, you could head to the nearest purveyor of fake tattoos and pick out the tackiest you can find.

Next, slap a filter on a photo of the tattoo and share it to Facebook. Be sure to pretend you're super excited about the tattoo, and watch as the comment section fills up with awkward congratulations.

Photoshopping actor-turned-living-meme Nicolas Cage into things has become a time-honored tradition. For April Fools' Day this year, edit your profile picture to include

Did you threaten to move to Canada after the results of the 2016 election? Create a life event saying you moved to the land of hockey and politeness, preferably blaming some recent political mishap. For added verisimilitude, round up a few moving boxes and Instagram your "packing" process. Keep up the charade as long as you feel like it, or until your mom calls in a panic.

For those truly dedicated to the art of annoyance, choose a victim and like as many of their photos and posts that you can stomach. If you want to be truly irritating, start from their first post or photo on Facebook, and be sure to comment on the more embarrassing stuff so it shows up in other people's news feeds. Just try and choose someone you know well, so you know your relationship will withstand the strain of the prank.

It's simple but guaranteed to confuse people: Sometime before the end of March, change your birthday to Apr. 1. Watch as your profile is flooded with well-wishes. To add another layer to the prank, change someone else's birthday without their knowledge if they leave themselves logged into Facebook while you're around.

Mashable came up with this prank: Find a fan-encounter photo of someone famous and post it to Facebook, claiming you randomly met the celebrity/artist/politician on the street. You'll definitely get called out, but it's harmless fun while it lasts.

Facebook lets you tag other people in photos, which is useful when someone forgets to tag your BFF in an Instagram where they look super cute. It's even more useful on Apr. 1, when you can tag your BFF in a bunch (but not too many) random Facebook photos where they're not actually present. Better yet, pick a random category of object, like a sock or a hat, so the tagging is consistent.

Esquire wrote about this particularly brilliant prank, and having been the victim of it before, I can say with certainty that it works. If you can find a way to log into someone's Facebook account, post a status that seems normal on the surface, but slightly exaggerates your victim's attributes. "Are they generally upbeat and full of vim? Then make them look like a nauseating narcissist," Esquire explains. The result is pure, reasonably plausible genius.

If you have vacation photos you've never posted to Facebook, now is the time to put them out there. Pretend you decided to take a spontaneous vacation somewhere amazing, complete with photographic evidence. Nobody needs to know the photos are from 2014.