August 12, 2020
PREFACE: This whole fantasy is based on the tweet or rumor or something that I read or heard that said that lily of the valley is very difficult to find or grow in the new Animal Crossing game. Regardless of if it’s true, whenever I’m told to dig out lily of the valley from someone’s garden (which is everyday) I say to one of my coworkers “You know in the Animal Crossing game these are actually really rare, can you believe that? :^ )”
(As was established in the Preface) One day I am at work weeding lily of the valley from a client’s garden. I look over at my coworker Lauren and I say (as was established in the Preface) “You know in the Animal Crossing game these are actually really rare, can you believe that? :^ )”.
Suddenly a mischievous idea pops into my head: I should go online and sell real lily of the valley to someone online who is trying to buy in-game Animal Crossing lily of the valley for their farm or whatever (I don’t know if this in-game/offline marketplace actually exists, but if it doesn’t .. why not?) Can you imagine how embarrassed (embarrassment leading to good-humoured understanding of the prank on the end of the prankee, that is, the prank-receiver) this buyer would be?!
Here’s how I imagine the sale would happen:
ME: thx for buying my lily of the valley i was afraid i would have to drive out to the st paul waste site and compost it there lmao
COMMON FOOL: Yes I am very glad to take them off your hands. They are hard to come by on my island.
ME: u live on an island that is so dope lol
CF: Lol yes.
ME: kewwwwl ok sweet ill send those puppers in the mail and you should get them in like a week or 5 days or something
CF: ?? You’re mailing it to me? You can just send it to me right now on my island. I’m online right now.
ME: im sending you a e-code no worries bro ;^ ) u will c when u get it lol
CF: ?? I don’t know what you mean. I don’t think e-codes exist? Please just send it to me in the game.
[maniac_pranksterlord1988 (ME) is now offline]
Of course, understanding the basic theories between supply and demand (see You know in the Animal Crossing game these are actually really rare, can you believe that? :^ )) I charge the man a large amount of money for these lily of the valley (which by the way are hardy enough, if you poked holes in the box, I think, to survive being shipped across the country to some tropical locale (which I assume would be the distance and the destination this package would be traveling because this dude lives on a frickin island!)) and I am happy that my prank was so profitable and so harmless.
A few days go by and I receive a message from the man and he is infuriated by my prank. He sends me an image of the (still alive and transplantable, looks like) lily of the valley in their shipping box with his big middle finger in the picture. Looks like he didn’t appreciate the prank. He demands his money back, but all prankees know the Pranksee’s Creed:
All prankees experience first embarrassment, then later good-humoured understanding, at the prankster’s prank. Any loss that occurs from the prank must be suffered in stoicism. You suck!
So, on principle, I do not refund his money. He begins to aggressively send me hate-filled messages via email, Twitter (@maniac_pranksterlord1988), Instagram (ditto), Facebook (B** B****), and everything in between. I love these sites, so I continue to log-on and read these messages he is sending me. Apparently he told his story to sympathetic, lily-of-the-valley-deficient ears on the Animal Crossing forums and now I am receiving hundreds of new hate-filled messages every hour of the day (DO YOU ALL NOT KNOW THE PRANKEE’S CREED?!?!).
I am very sensitive. These messages are getting to me. I begin to lose sleep, and my work begins to suffer. Where I use to find joy and serenity (my sites: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and everything in between) are now traps of hate and self-loathing. What was I thinking?! Did I not realize that I was playing with people’s lives?!
For several years I spiral into complete psychic darkness. I no longer feel anything: my long-term girlfriend and I break-up, I am unable to keep a job anywhere, I never leave my bedroom. All through these years I continue to receive various hate messages that only strengthen my self-loathing — all because of a simple (or so I thought) Animal Crossing prank that I pulled in my mid-20s.
On a cold day in September, in the year 2023, I log-on to Twitter and read a message:
@lovr_bunni1995: u are fucking slime u are worse than slime u should kill urself but u are to much of a gushy (future-slang for pussy, basically) to even do that! u should just kill urself do it do it do u even realize how hard it is to find lily of the valley??? fuck u
@maniac_pranksterlord1988: ur right.
@lovr_bunni1995 is wrong about one thing: I am no coward. I kill myself.
