Quote Originally Posted by Avian View Post
Wow you are really enthusiastic about not having pranks. Sure, it is usually an ass thing to do but to say that these can cause "very real harm" is an exaggeration. Ya, maybe the person will have a heart attack when you scare them, but if you punch your friend in the stomach they might also die from internal bleeding, and if you are driving with someone else in the car they might die from you crashing, and if you are running you might hit someone and they could die, and if you throw a baseball it could break someone's skull and kill them, and if you make an offensive joke it might cause someone serious trauma because they are hypersensitive, and if you yell something someone might panic and hurt themselves, and if you make fun of someone in a joking way they might take it seriously and commit suicide, and if you are knocking on someone's door they might think you are a criminal and freak out, and....
What I am saying here is that pretty much everything you do could have potentially lethal or permanent repercussions but that is no reason not to do them. Unless you want to be some robot. Again, I agree with you in that it is really uncool to seriously scare someone, but in my prank-filled childhood not once was someone harmed from getting scared.
Pranks are completely unnecessary, usually based (as someone else said) upon a need to assert power over someone else. Riding in a car, throwing a ball all have a primary purpose other than taking sadistic enjoyment from causing needless pain/shock to another and so are poor examples. Yes, you're right you SHOULDN'T punch someone in the stomach.

This is the sort of rationalization used to support bad behavior. "There are any number of ways in which someone could be injured, so why not do <something that could cause harm>?" which is a juvenile sort of reasoning.