Some people make lifelong friends with their college roommates, finding their people instantly and forming a seemingly unbreakable bond. Others find that it takes a lot longer to find the people that they really click with, but if and when they do, there’s no turning back.

This can be a magical thing, especially if you’ve not really come across people that you bond in such a strong way with before. It can be energizing. You might even find a kind of synergy with another person that you never even knew existed. It’s the kind of thing movies are made about, but it’s not always a good thing, let’s be honest, because there are many among us who are as destructive as we are productive, and the wrong kind of friendships only encourage this.

For better or for worse, the guy in this story really did find his person in his college roommate. But rather than making one another better people in the process, they instead came together to make one another way, way worse. From joint forays into sketchy parts of the internet to pranks that kept on getting more and more serious, these two really should have been kept apart, but instead they kept on one-upping one another, likely to both of their detriment.

Read on to find out what happened.

Some sweet, sweet roommate revenge

It was April 1st, 2012 and I was in cramming mode for exams. I had popped an adderall and was extremely concentrated on my work when all of a sudden my phone buzzed.

An unknown number had texted me: “Heyy I saw ur ad on CL and I wanna buy ur phone please”

I supposed it was a wrong number and got back to work and within two minutes my phone rang.

A different number. “Hi I’d like to buy your phone please.”

“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong number.”

And then it clicked.

As soon as I hang up, I realize… oh, this is a prank.

I got on Craig’s List and immediately found out that my roommate was “selling my brand new iPhone 4 for US$100. Call me ASAP at 555-5555-5555”

That jerk. In the next two hours I got a total of probably 100 calls and texts.

I was gonna get him back good.

With the adderall still coursing through me, I racked my brain for the best possible prank I could pull.

Read on to find out how he enacted his revenge.

Then I remembered I had introduced him to the deep web two days ago. We were surfing it, we had checked out the armoury, the silk road, even the assassin’s advertisement pages. And at one point, on his computer, we’d stumbled onto something very illegal.

I knew how I was going to prank him.

When he got home, there was an official FBI envelope waiting for him. Inside, a letter. I’d lifted correct names, signatures, court addresses, court dates and official language (other than misspelling appertaining), but that didn’t really matter.

As soon as he opened it up, he almost started crying.

I had to tell him it was a prank within seconds because he just broke down.

Issues with the dark web and what these two guys had discovered there aside, these two were surely done pranking one another after this.

Because if the emotional consequences of this were too real, they should have thought about the real life consequences of the stuff they’d seen online.

None of this is okay, and hopefully their foray into certain parts of the internet was their last too.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

Some people actually thought that this was a great prank.

While others were more interested in the logistics of what had happened.

Meanwhile, this Redditor was particularly interested in the logistics of what had come before.

If nothing else, he probably scared his roommate out of ever scouring the dark web again – which, let’s not forget, he actually led his friend to. Honestly, in playing a prank with this legitimate consequence, he kind of just showed himself up for the bad influence that he was. If the guy really had been punished by the FBI, his friend would absolutely have been complicit, if not entirely to blame.

However, the roommate wasn’t blameless either, and the prank he played on his friend was cruel timing if nothing else. If you’re a good friend and you know your buddy is studying hard, this is a really mean thing to do, knowing how much it will disturb their work.

Is there a good person in this story? Probably not, it seems like they’re determined to one-up each other, without really thinking or caring about the consequences. It’s not a friendship borne of empathy and care, that’s for sure.

Maybe the pranks will stop now.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who abandoned their own D&D campaign when their friends stopped paying attention.