AITA for going to the police over a ‘prank’

A vegan Redditor (24F) found herself the target of a cruel prank when her friends tricked her into eating chicken nuggets while she was drunk. They assured her they were vegan, but later posted a video mocking her reaction online. Feeling betrayed, she took the evidence to the police for food tampering. Now, her ex-friends are facing legal consequences and claim she overreacted to a “harmless” joke. Read the full story below.

‘ AITA for going to the police over a ‘prank”

To preface this, I (24F) am vegan, and have been for a good 10 years. I have not eaten meat since I was roughly 3-4 years old when I found out where meat comes from (spoiler alert: there were a lot of tears). This is no secret and everyone in my life knows and respects this – or so I thought.

Four nights ago, I was at a party and I will admit, I got white girl wasted. My friends thought it would be funny to feed me chicken nuggets as a prank. I checked with them before chowing down “are these vegan?” To which my friends replied “yeah, they’re sunfed” (a type of vegan chickenless chicken). They tasted off to me but I figured it was just because I was drunk. I was wrong.

I found out the next day when my sister sent me a message telling me to check my friends Snapchat story. The story was them showing the nugget packaging, and then showing them giving them to me (including the conversation where I asked if it was vegan).

The and then later them mocking me and pretending to be me when I found out I ate meat (things like fake crying and yelling “the CHICKENS!!!”). I took a screen recording of the video and took it to the police, on the grounds of food tampering, and now 3 of my (ex) friends are facing charges.

They all think that I’m overreacting to a ‘harmless’ prank, so Reddit, AITA? In my view, they took advantage of my drunken state, tampered with my food, and publically humiliated me. In their view, it was just a prank.

Check out how the community responded:

watermelonkiwi −  NTA I’m impressed and kinda think this is awesome. Edit: I think that it’s awesome you went to the police and they’re taking it seriously.

ReverseMathematics −  NTA. As a chef, you never f**k with someone food. Ever.

Narkolleptika −  NTA – you don’t f**k with other people’s food.

[Reddit User] −  NTA You’re all forgetting that they uploaded a snapchat video making fun of her too, it wasnt just food tampering

GroundhogNight −  What kind of answers are these?. ESH. You’re pressing charges over chicken nuggets. You have a moral stance against meat. That’s fine. But it’s not a life threatening allergy. It’s absolutely a s**tty thing for them to do. They aren’t friends. They should be ashamed. But pressing charges is just way too much.

It’s like if you tricked me into wearing a real fur hat when I’m morally against fur, so I called the FBI and told them you were a domestic terrorist.

Edit: with some time, the hat example doesn’t make sense. I just can’t think of something that’s the equivalent of a chicken nugget. A chicken nugget is so generally un egregious. It’s hard to find comparisons that aren’t dramatic in comparison. Like people have said “imagine being tricked into eating your own pet.” Doesn’t quite match up to me.

[Reddit User] −  NTA especially since you hadn’t eaten meat since you were so young. Often times vegans and vegetarians get very sick after eating meat if they hadn’t for years before that.

I know you didn’t mention anything, and maybe everything was fine, but if you had of had a bad reaction to the meat after not eating it for many years, it would have been on them. It’s ridiculous and rude and although I might not have pressed charges, I think it’s your right to do so

Edited because I started getting a lot of responses and messages from people upset about my comment. I never claimed to be a medical professional, in fact I stated many times in the replies that I have little knowledge on the subject. Feel free to research on your own. Although there seems to be no scientific proof of this, it’s incredibly common

[Reddit User] −  **update**: I’d like to clarify some things here. When I left this post I was at negative 10ish upvotes and figured that this post wouldn’t really get seen by anyone. Clearly I was wrong here, so my bad on the first line.

I’d like to clarify my thoughts now that it isn’t 2 am and such. What I was trying to convey here is that in this particular situation, I don’t think that the punishment fits the crime. My food allergy allegory wasn’t meant to downplay her dietary concerns, it was meant as a way to somewhat relate to the situation.

Luckily for myself, the one time I had my food legitimately tampered with (spiked with an allergen because they thought that my allergies would just give me the shits), I wound up just using an epi pen and being all right. In that situation, I didn’t press charges. I had a rational conversation with the person about why what they did was stupid as f**k, had them pay for my new epi pen, cut them out of my life, and left it at that.

Had I been legitimately damaged by that incident, I likely would have felt very differently about the situation. At the end of the day, I wasn’t- much like OP in this situation. Restaurants tampering with food IS and SHOULD BE a crime.

People tampering with food (adding an ingredient that shouldn’t be there) is also a crime. But the punishment should fit the crime- which I don’t really believe fit here. This was a group of wasted friends who in incredibly poor taste fed their friend something that they knew wouldn’t ultimately damage her, even if it was an awful thing hurt her psychologically. I don’t think that the possible punishment from a police report being filed fits that, hence my ESH ruling.

This isn’t a stranger (chef or otherwise) deliberately tampering food with intent to harm. This is a group of “friends” trying to pull a really, really, REALLY fucked up and morally wrong prank.

If the maximum possible punishment for this was, say, a fine, then absolutely not the a**hole. But that’s not the situation here- this s**tty but ultimately harmless prank could completely ruin these people’s lives.. **end of update**

I’m going to hop on the downvote train and go against the reddit hive mind to say that ESH. I have life threatening food allergies, and I let people know that, obviously. I know how fucked up it is if someone fucks with my food on the grounds of not believing me or not caring because it has caused me issues in the past.

The thing is, your dietary concern is a preference. It’s really s**tty your “friends” violated your trust like that, but outside of maybe a rough s**t the next morning it didn’t cause you any harm. Food tampering charges are a *felony* in quite a few states. That seems like a massive overreaction to what at the end of the day was just a prank in very, very poor taste.

These friends deserve to be cut out of your life. What they did is absolutely inexcusable. But as someone who has also had issues with tampered food in the past that actually caused health problems, possibly subjecting someone to a felony for something that at the end of the day was meant to be a joke (no matter how s**tty of a joke it was), is a pretty big overreaction.

disco-bloodbath −  ESH. Your ex friends are the most assholes, but by involving law enforcement you are f**king with their futures in a real, extreme, and permanent way. This was a horrifying prank, but no one deserves to go down over a drunk (and let’s be real non-harmful) prank. A talking-to and unfriending would have been sufficient and not heartless. You are a major a**hole.

bumbadabim −  ESH just talk about it to them, even make a big scene… But police… Bruh

[Reddit User] −  NTA. This is disgusting and just an all around awful thing to do to someone. What terrible people.

Everyone loves a good prank, but when does it cross the line? Is tricking someone into breaking their core values and mocking them online ever okay? Was she right to involve the police, or should she have handled it differently? Share your thoughts below!