For example: “Why don’t people just ask you if you’re chill with being hit with water balloons, and then ever after they can hit you with water balloons?”
My college had an Official Solution to this which worked pretty well in practice: the No-Prank List. Someone who generally didn’t want to be pranked (or included in various other traditions, like being thrown into a fountain on one’s birthday) would put their name on the No-Prank List. This avoids people who generally want to avoid such things being hit with water balloons, without spoiling the surprise for those who do.
One interesting implication of the empirical success of the no-prank list: in practice, peoples’ boundaries are pretty well-captured by ~one dimension. (People were allowed to put arbitrary freeform conditions on the No Prank List, but IIRC these rarely mattered in practice, and could be pretty well summarized as “pranks yes” or “pranks no”.)
The one LW community weekend I attended had stickers you could put on your name-tag one for people who welcomed hugs and another one for people who welcomed unsolicited feedback. It was great!
My college had an Official Solution to this which worked pretty well in practice: the No-Prank List. Someone who generally didn’t want to be pranked (or included in various other traditions, like being thrown into a fountain on one’s birthday) would put their name on the No-Prank List. This avoids people who generally want to avoid such things being hit with water balloons, without spoiling the surprise for those who do.
One interesting implication of the empirical success of the no-prank list: in practice, peoples’ boundaries are pretty well-captured by ~one dimension. (People were allowed to put arbitrary freeform conditions on the No Prank List, but IIRC these rarely mattered in practice, and could be pretty well summarized as “pranks yes” or “pranks no”.)
The one LW community weekend I attended had stickers you could put on your name-tag one for people who welcomed hugs and another one for people who welcomed unsolicited feedback. It was great!