As an expert on the art of annoying and irritating others, I have endeavored to compile a list of methods I have developed, used,or read about, with which to annoy people. Some are very simple, some take preparation, some are very old, some are new. At least 1/4 of them are guaranteed to annoy your victim. Have fun!
1. Put your face really close to theirs while they’re facing a
different direction, tap them on the shoulder, and watch them jump
when they turn to face you.
2. Copy their actions and everything they say.
3. Step on the backs of their heels while they’re walking.
4. Yell across a crowded room to them: “Hey, John, the results came
back from the V.D. clinic: we’re clean!”
5. In a communal shower or shower house, turn the hot water all the
way up and the cold water all the way down (or vice versa) while
they’re rinsing the shampoo out of their hair and can’t see
anything. Or, when you’re finished showering, go outside and turn
the main valve off.
6. Pretend you don’t understand what they’re saying, no matter how
much they yell and how slowly they say it.
7. When somebody asks, “Hey, did you get a haircut?” reply, “No, all
of them.”
8. When somebody asks, “Do you have the time?” reply, “Yeah.”
9. If you have a dot matrix printer, leave the little computer paper
tracks on the paper when turning in a report or essay.
10. Ask an artist, “It’s not finished yet, is it?”
11. On a summer day, ask anybody, “Hot enuff for ya?”(NOTE: Proper
response to this question is to hit offender in the face and ask,
“Hurt enough for you?”)
12. Sign someone up on a junk mail list.
13. Go into a frozen yogurt joint where they have lots of toppings.
Order a cup, and say to the guy, in the most annoying tone
imaginable, “Do you have M&M’s? Yeah? Good. How ’bout raisins?
Yeah, and sprinkles. Do you have cookie crumbs?” After he has
proceeded to put them on the yogurt, exclaim, “I hate cookie
crumbs. They make me sick. I can’t even smell them, that’s how
much I hate them. Aagh, yuck!” Watch the salesperson fume as he is
forced to throw away the entire cup.
14. Walk into a store that has a sign that says, “Have a penny? Give a
penny! Need a penny? Take a penny!” with a HUGE jar of pennies.
Take a penny out of the cup, put it into your jar, and walk out.
15. Pull up alongside somebody while driving on the freeway, and
gesture violently, indicating that they should pull over
immediately. When they pull over, just continue driving.
16. Take a pencil, stick a piece of chewed gum onto it, and stick it
to the ground. Then wait for some cheap-o to come along and try to
pick it up.
17. Play ‘Penis.’
18. While standing next to someone, unobtrusively reach your arm
around their back, and tap them on the opposite shoulder.
19. Tell someone, “Okay, here’s what you do: bite down on both your
pinky nails really hard for about thirty seconds, and then when I
tell you that time is up, link your pinkies and pull really hard.”
If they ask, “Why?” tell them that it feels really neat. If done
correctly, this trick should cause excruciating pain.
20. Engage someone in a conversation, and have a friend sneak up
behind them, and get down on his hands and knees. Then, all of a
sudden, violently push the person to whom you are talking, and
laugh with sadistic glee as they tumble backwards over the person
kneeling behind them.
21. Tell someone, “Man, your hands smell bad!” When they try to smell
their hand, smack it so it hits their face. This one can also be
performed with a piece of pie. When they lean down to smell the
pie, grab the back of their head and smoosh it into the pie.
22. After somebody finishes telling a joke, say in a very grave tone,
“My brother (sister/mother/father) died that way.”
23. Walk up behind somebody wearing a button down shirt or a short
sleeved collar shirt, insert your finger into the little strip of
fabric sewn across the top just below the collar, yell “FAG TAG!”
at the top of your lungs, and rip it off.
24. Give somebody a grundy.
25. Pinch a guy’s nipple. You may also pinch a girl’s nipple if you
please, but this falls under ’101 Ways to Sexually Harass People.’
26. Leave the following message on someone’s answering machine: “Sir,
we’re not sure if you wanted us to do it, you know, after what
happened, so, well, we went ahead and did it anyway. If you don’t
like it, we can probably take it out, but we’ll have to charge you
extra. Please return this call immediately. Thanks.”
27. Tell somebody that’s wearing velcro shoes or slip-ons that their
shoelaces are untied.
28. Tell lots of puns.
29. Be a Jew for Jesus.
30. Give somebody a Wet Willy.
31. Turn on somebody’s radio up all the way and turn their windshield
wipers on while the car is off.
32. Take a stick of gum out of it’s paper and foil wrapper, then
carefully re-fold the foil wrapper and stick it back into the
paper wrapper. Offer this to someone as a stick of gum.
33. Pay for a tube of toothpaste with a check at the supermarket.
34. On the bus, try to engage somebody in a conversation about genital
warts.
35. Delete somebody’s AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.
36. When walking behind someone outside, pull up a long piece of
grass, and gently tickle them behind the ear with it. The first
time, they’ll try to brush it away. The second time they’ll swat
at it, and smack themselves. Generally, the third time they turn
around and look behind themselves.
37. Take a wire, and stick it all the way through a cigar or
cigarette. Let the ash get really long, and pretend you don’t
notice everybody staring at it, waiting for it to fall.
38. When they’re about half way through with it, remove one piece from
the box of a jigsaw puzzle, and throw it away.
39. Hide the remote control.
40. Call a house at random, and ask for Gary. When they tell you that
there’s no Gary there, call again a little while later. Do this at
intervals about four times. Finally, when they’re fuming and about
to scream bloody murder, call a fifth time, and say, “Hi, this is
Gary. Are there any messages for me?”
41. Take a deck of cards, and say, “Okay, I’m gonna do a magic trick.”
Ask the person to pick any card, and put it anywhere in the deck.
After they have shuffled the deck thoroughly, take the deck back.
Ask, “What was your card?” When they tell you, say, “Not only has
your card magically come to the top of the deck, but it has also
magically turned into…” Pick up the top card, look at it, and
name it.
42. When somebody is talking very excitedly at a restaurant, pick up
their plate, hand it to them, and nod gravely. Wait for them to
notice and wonder why they are holding their plate.
43. Exclaim in a crowded theater, “No, I won’t touch you there for a
dollar! No, not two dollars, either!”
44. Approach somebody quietly from behind, grab them, and scream,
“Booga booga!” or any other such exclamation loudly. This works
extremely well on high strung people.
45. Be chronically late. Not really late, but always be about five or
seven minutes late. This really gets anal retentive people. I
know.
46. Shave with someone elses razor. For some reason, a lot of people
are really touchy about that. Once again, I know.
47. Once again at a restaurant, one with a candle in the middle of the
table, while someone is up before the food has come, take their
plate, hold the bottom rim over the candle, and rotate it so you
get a lot of soot on the bottom of the plate. When they come back,
say, “I’m going to hypnotize you. Pick up your plate in your left
hand, and with your right hand, copy all my actions.” Proceed to
rub your index finger around the bottom rim of your plate, and in
a circle on your forehead. Then around the rim, and each of your
eyes. Keep going, with different parts of the face, until they
notice.
48. Cut out an article or section of the newspaper before someone else
has had a chance to read it.
49. Send a letter with twenty-nine one cent stamps.
50. Go into a locker room with a pocket knife, and cut off all the
shoelaces that are hanging out of the lockers.
51. When someone asks, “Are there any questions?” ask, “Where do
babies come from?” This is one of my favorites.
52. Step on someone’s feet, and push them backwards.
53. Take their hat.
54. Grab a book that someone is reading, open it to the last page, and
read this out loud.
55. When riding shotgun in a convertible, surreptitiously reach over
and put up just the rear windows. In a convertible, this looks
REALLY stupid.
56. Take an envelope, fill it with baking powder or flour,and send it
to somebody.
57. At a fast food restaurant, push down the bubbles on the drink tops
of everybody’s drink.
58. Crack all your knuckles. A lot of people can’t stand fingers, and
I know some people who have almost fainted upon the cracking of
the neck.
59. Sing, “I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves, I know a
song that gets on everybody’s nerves…” over and over again to
the tune of the first two lines of The Battle Hymn of the
Republic.
60. Pay for an item at a store with all pennies.
61. When you’re out of the house all night for a weekend, leave your
clock-radio on for it’s normal wake-up time of about 6:30 or 7:30,
and turn the volume up.
62. At a red light, put your car in gear and creep slowly forward,
while gesturing to the person in the car next to you that they
must be rolling backwards.
63. Drive with your brights on just to see how many people flash their
lights at you.
64. Tailgating can be one of the most effective forms of annoyance
know to man.
65. Walk up to someone you know, and say something to the effect of,
“Hey, did you hear what happened to Jim? Well he was with…oh,
man, I really shouldn’t tell you this. No, I promised I wouldn’t
tell. No, I can’t tell you, sorry.”
66. When they are out of their room, move everything they own to a
different location.
67. Change all the preset stations on their car radio tuner to
classical and country/western stations.
68. Slurp your soup or your breakfast cereal.
69. Tap the person on the shoulder continuously, and when you have
their attention, just continue tapping them on the shoulder.
70. At a movie theater, unwrap a candy bar as loudly as is humanly
possible, preferably during dialogue.
71. At a public library, get a book which hasn’t been checked out yet,
and slip it into somebody’s book bag when they’re not looking.
72. Take off the letters one of those sign boards that have the
removable letters. Spell rude things with them.
73. Answer the phone “Domino’s Pizza, how can I help you?” at someone
else’s house. Or at your own house, if you really want.
74. At night, rearrange somebody’s furniture. At the very least,
they’ll be surprised when they get up in the morning. But, better
yet, call them in the middle of the night, so they have to get up,
and stumble over a chair that wasn’t there before.
75. Many telephone answering machines have two digit passwords for
retrieving messages and that kind of thing, and often times, the
default on many models is 25, which people don’t bother to change.
This is an excellent way to hack answering machines, or, if this
doesn’t work, it’s not that hard to try all 100 combinations.
Regardless, once you’ve hacked the machine, a fun thing to do is
to change the message. This is supremely annoying.
76. Call a credit card company and report somebody’s card as missing.
Next time they try to use it, they’ll have it confiscated and cut
into little bitty pieces.
77. Take all the labels off of their video tapes.
78. There are a myriad of non-harmful but incredibly annoying computer
viruses, such as Red-X, Cascade, Heeva Havah, Whale, and more.
Their effects vary, and they can be a pain in the butt to remove
from one’s hard drive.
79. An old but still great and incredibly useful annoyance technique
is the age old, tried and true ‘Kick Me’ sign on the back. A
classic.
80. Write taunting messages at random places in an assignment notebook
or executive planner.
81. Another classic is to get about three other people in on a joke
that has no meaning at all, and tell it with those three people
and the victim in the room. All the people ‘in’ on the joke laugh,
and the victim doesn’t get it. When he asks, say, “Oh, never mind.
If you don’t get it, it’s not worth explaining. My favorite is, “A
hippo and a penguin are taking a bath together. The hippo says,
‘Pass the soap,’ and the penguin says, ‘No soap. Radio!’”
82. Yet another age old family of annoying jokes are as follows:
“Would you happen to have a henway on you?” “A henway? What’s a
henway?” “About three pounds.”
83. Talk to the characters in a television show, like yelling out
loud, “Don’t go in there! The bad guys are in there!”
84. When you take a shower, leave the shower/bath valve on shower.
85. Women hate it when men leave the toilet seat up.
86. During an exam, tap your foot on the floor continuously. This
works very well on linoleum, especially if you can find a part of
the floor where the linoleum is coming loose, and it makes a very
loud sound.
87. Be a street mime.
88. Remove the doorstop from hallway doors. Or better yet, if you have
the time and the motivation, take out the screw that holds the two
‘arms’ of the spring closer together.
89. Write poetry for a school newspaper or publication.
90. For women: ask your friends, “Do I look fat to you?”
91. Put a lubricated condom on somebody’s door knob.
92. Go out behind somebody’s house at night, and find the box marked
“Illinois Bell Customer Service,” or whatever state you live in.
Open this up using a flat head screwdriver, and attach a wire
across the green and red wires. This will leave the phone off
hook, and once the too-long-off-hook signal starts going, the
person will be forced to go to another’s house to use the phone to
call Ma Bell so they can figure out is going on.
93. Put a dead fish in somebody’s trunk. Works best during the summer.
94. Take a chalkboard eraser and insert a piece of chalk into, so that
when somebody goes to erase the board, they leave a chalk mark.
95. At a restaurant, have the victim place both his hands on the table
palms down. Balance a glass of water on the back of each hand. The
person is now trapped, unable to remove either glass without help.
(Actually, there is a solution: place your chin against one glass,
and using that to hold it steady, remove the other glass.)
96. A similar ‘trap’ is to have a person stick their forefinger and
thumb through the space on the hinged side of an open door, just
above the top hinge. Put an egg between their fingers and ask them
to hold it. Then, take their hat and put it on the floor
underneath the egg.
97. Take a paper or styrofoam cup, and punch a small hole in it near
the base. Grasp the cup, with your thumb over the hole, and fill
it with water. Now, casually walk up to someone, and ask them to
hold the cup.
98. Take a bungee cord like the kind used to tie a car hood down, and
while someone is sitting in a chair in front of you, carefully and
quietly hook one end to their belt loop, and the other to the
chair leg or underside. If they are sitting on a plastic chair,
the chair will spring up when they stand up, and fall over, making
a loud clatter. Better yet, though, if they’re sitting near a wall
fixture, just attach them to that.
99. Shake up somebody’s can of soda before they drink it.
100. Loosen the tops on the salt and pepper shakers at a restaurant.
101. Take a cheap ball point pen, and bend it sharply to break open
the ink well, or open the pen up and cut the ink well open. Lend
this pen to somebody.