There are all types of pranks, some harmless and some that take things a little too far.
Some, however, are so out of line that they are just straight out unacceptable.
Thanks to social media, we’ve been treated to all sorts of videos showing people in romantic relationships pranking each other. Whatever we may think about that practice, the common denominator is that one or both partners do them out of fun and not because of any bad intentions.
However, the following story goes way beyond what a prank is and can simply be called malicious.
When 24-year-old Sophie Stevenson met Jesse Mateman while on holiday in Barcelona, she thought that they had something.
They kept in touch afterward and, all the while, Sophie treated it like a long-distance relationship. So she decided to visit Jesse in Amsterdam but found out after she had arrived that the relationship was only one way.
But that wasn’t the worst part. Jesse later informed her that it was all a “joke” and that she had been on the receiving end of a cruel prank called “pigging.”
Sophie already had an inkling something was wrong when Jesse didn’t show up at the airport and just went silent when he had been constantly in touch with her up until the moment she arrived.
It was only six hours later that Jesse told her that she was the butt of a joke. And he even waited for her to spend the £350 it took to get to Amsterdam before telling her the “punchline.”
Jesse’s message read like this:
Sophie later said: “We were talking up until I got on the plane. But when I arrived, he wasn’t there to pick me up.
“I called him a bunch of times, and he didn’t answer. I waited at the airport for two hours and I hadn’t heard anything, I was really starting to panic about being abandoned.
“There was a free shuttle bus to the hotel, so I made my way there and six hours later he finally messaged me – on Snapchat.”
She described the horror she felt at finding out what the real deal was: “Pulling a pig” is where a guy tries to pull the fat ugly girl. When I saw that message, I wanted to be sick.
“I was in a foreign country, on my own and the guy that I liked had just abandoned me.”
“I replied and said ‘how could you be so cruel’ and all he did was block me. I just couldn’t believe it. I had no way of contacting him. I was petrified of being in Amsterdam all on my own.”
Sophie flew home the next day. Sophie’s mom, Julie, went ballistic at finding out what had happened.
In an interview with Daily Mail, Julie said: “It is a good job this lad lives in Holland because if he was here I’d string him up. Why would any man do that to a woman? It is just heartless.
“I couldn’t believe it and felt devastated for Sophie as she had so been looking forward to the trip. I told her to get on the first plane home.
“She has been humiliated by that man and I don’t know why? Why would he go to such lengths to string her along for all this time?”
What Jesse did was wrong, plain and simple. However, one cannot deny the devastating effect that the tasteless joke must have dealt with Sophie’s confidence.