How to drive them mad

creative ways to discreetly-irritate people you love!

aniruddha daheria
7 min readMay 7, 2014

Disclaimer: Some of these might get you in serious trouble & you might end up hurting someone. Needless to say—do not try this at home.

  1. Switch on your DTH when everybody home is busy doing there work, by default the welcome channel will be the one where they keep on playing a single advertisement for like whole day. You can also go to that tele shopping network & watch that fairness cream ad very seriously for like 100 times & do not pay attention to anyone else in the room or else just unplug the cable connection & watch the white noise for hours. It drives my mom crazy everytime!
  2. Put DairyMilk inside your friends house where they most expect it like inside their fridge then after a while when they start enjoying it, start putting them on weird places like inside their undergarments, under their pillow, inside their bathroom. That will make them go nuts.
  3. Mail your friend three smilies daily from anonymous email address without any explanation. Do that for years & one day send only two smilies & one sad smiley, stop emailing them after that.
  4. Find out what people are possessive about. There was this lady in my office who always talked about switching her job & going to aviation industry but never did. Few days later me & some people in office started writing “AVIATION JOBS” at the bottom of every email we sent to her gmail, in plain white font-color i.e invisible unless highlighted. We did this for a month or so that’s when she lost her mind because every web page she visited has an ad about jobs in Aviation. She thought Google was stalking her.
  5. Meetali—a friend of friend of mine—once complained to me that I never call or text her. So next day I saved one reminder on my phone & started sending her one text daily at sharp 09:30 pm. Little did she know, the following year she kept on receiving those texts daily w/o any fail. Those were small little texts sometimes forwarded friendship quotes which doesn’t require you to reply back. Did that for almost 15 months & missed only once. One day she replied:
    “hey I like you message me and all but I don’t want you to waste your time on this I mean don’t make this a routine of yours” & a smily.
  6. When you are at some cafe, try & figure out a couple who’s enjoying their time. Now stare at the guy for a while. Warning: Do not stare at the girl, you’ll get in trouble not that staring at the guy will be safer but stare at him anyway. This makes people super uncomfortable. #bd
  7. Take a pack of Lay’s & try to open it without making any noise for like 20 minutes.
  8. With someone around—talk to yourself, not in your head; loud & clear, keep saying your name frequently in second person. Ask incomplete questions then try & answer them yourself. #Mala
  9. Reply with “hmm” —Now hmm is very versatile expression. Depends upon the way you pronounce it, you can use this as an agreement with the other person or questioning them what? So consider yourself knowing only these two expressions in this world, reply with hmm to everything they say. I met nobody who can bear this for more than 5 minutes, it drives people crazy.
  10. Try ignoring your best friend or your siblings for a while. It has to be mutual, try & decide a period of time like a week when you’ll not speak with each other, you won’t even make eye contact, total ignorance, its like they don’t even exist. Unless someone’s dying of course! At the end, you’ll learn a lot of things, I promise.
  11. While waiting for something or someone in public put on your earphones don’t plug it in your phone’s 3.5 mm jack, not enough & then turn on Lady Gaga in full volume of your speaker phone. Enjoy the music!
  12. Recharge their number by 10 bucks at the exact same time daily. They’ll enjoy it for a while & then after few weeks they’ll lose their mind.
  13. When eating with someone on the same table, take one bite/minute. Enjoy your food like The Last Supper. Talk more—eat less, hold your food in you hand, bring it towards your mouth but don’t eat it—not too soon—at that very moment start talking about something very stupid as if its more important than the food. Keep doing that every time, but don’t eat! Watch their expression.
  14. Forward them those promotional sms by your service provider about cut down STD-ISD call rates or full talk time offers.
  15. Sign up for a free bulk sms sending website & start sending same message to your friend about a 100 times daily.
  16. When you meet someone—a stranger in train/bus/airways, whome you do not plan to be in touch in near future. Start a conversation by making up your name & all personal details as you talk. Then tell them your crazy story, the real one. The one you haven’t told anybody. Trust me its more fun that way.
  17. There was this girl in my school named Mallika. Now Mallika had very beautiful long hairs, everytime she left her hair open I write “looking beautiful” on her desk before the last period ends. After almost 4 months she realised the reason why someone’s writing this. She got afraid or something & started making pony tails. And one day she left her hair open & wrote back on her desk “thank you very much.”
  18. Text your boyfriend “I know about it…” & do not reply for the rest of the day.
  19. When your dad talks serious stuff with you. Repeat the last two words he said, slowly & nicely & then walk away slowly & nicely then turn around & put a question mark “Is it, dad? Really?” It’ll make him thinking, all night!
  20. If your mom refuse to your stupid demands like changing a TV channel or buying a new dress, take a long pause about a minute & with some heaviness in your voice ask her “Was I adopted, mom?”
  21. Whenever you got a spam call(IVRS), mostly you have an idea. Pick up confidently say “oh you wanna talk to?” ohh shit, seriously?!!! when!!? you got it, build it up nice before giving the phone to you friend whosoever is with you that time… Do not panic when your friend ask questions like “Who’s on phone?” or “What happened?”
  22. Draft a mail keeping a holy picture of a religious figure & drop it on the email id of your friend & tell them to write “Forgive me” 101 times ink on paper & post it to 11 people immediately. Failing to do so will result in 7 years of bad luck even death before 12 am. Write them the story of the poor guy who ignored this messaged & got suffered by Parkinson’s disease & died after 3 months.
  23. When people don’t pay attention to what you’re saying like your mom watching the climax of her favourite daily soap or your best friend playing candy crush saga on his phone. Tell them suddenly “I am pregnant!!” or someting like “I am doing drugs!!” They’ll have all your attention now & you have to become numb after that.
  24. Stuck to that late night wrong number, talk like you know what you’re talking about “Jyoti ki zarurat toh toh sabhi ko hai lekin rana-tagrana ko hi uska pata malum hai!” #Nikhil.
  25. Before going to bed tell your li’l brother or sister—who’s studying/or plan to study late-night—that you think that there’s someone inside that nearby room, point out & leave…
  26. Tell everyone how much you hate smartphones & people should stop using it & start living their life. Then buy an iPhone—latest model. Then go tell them its f****** awesome! #Vaibhav
  27. Keep a red chilly inside your gifts. #Joshi
  28. Tell your mom that you wanted to be a nun when you grow up…
  29. Ask your mom that being a guy myself is it alright to marry a guy!?
  30. Tell your mom that you know who your parents were in past life & you want to go meet them now!
  31. Smile at strangers & let them wonder why! #Guneet.

#When talking to your friend

  1. keep just one expression ON all the time that is opposite to the mood of your conversation, say keep smiling when talking serious.
  2. repeat every last word of their sentance like an echo, loud enough & shake your head in rhythm with the word.
  3. speak real slow and stand too near or too far from their face while talking.
  4. give examples while explaining something which are nowhere related to what you are talking about say “that’s because alkenes can react with bromine!”
  5. speak half sentence of every line you say & speak the other half in your head. Always skip half line. “but its… you know I... don’t you think its… I do not… yeah its…”
  6. keep looking at their nose or something & if they ask is there something wrong with their nose? Act strange like you have no idea of what they are talking about. Do that for few days.
  7. keep putting finger into your nose every once in a while while talking preferably at the times when the other person is talking to you & do not look into their eyes while doing that.

P.S—And someday you ll realise that the best parts of your life were actually those tiny nameless random moments spent smiling with someone who matters to you!

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aniruddha daheria

design-engineer, love to travel, love people, couldn’t care less, not good with language, that being said—love to write & lot of other things..