So, Romney Viciously Bullied His Sons, Too

[lunatica]

134. I agree with you completely about practical jokes

Practical jokes humiliate, even if only for a moment. I think this is what motives the jokesters to do them.

I hate the idea of them so much that when someone wants me to participate in one I have always refused vehemently and tried to talk them out of it. It sets up the victim as an object of deliberate humiliation in the eyes of the people pulling the joke long before the person is a victim and in the end the victim knows this. It's cruel in a way that shows a telling lack of respect for the innate dignity of people and it is deliberately unkind.

But to be fair, I think many jokesters don't have such a feeling. Not everyone is sensitive to the small humiliations that are inflicted on people every day, and not all people feel humiliated. I just think that if you think it would feel bad to be a target of a prank that you shouldn't be part of one.