Evil Week: The Best Ways to Get Revenge (Legally)

Welcome to Evil Week, our annual dive into all the slightly sketchy hacks we’d usually refrain from recommending. Want to weasel your way into free drinks, play elaborate mind games, or, er, launder some money? We’ve got all the info you need to be successfully unsavory.

It’s Evil Week, so let’s talk revenge. Just for this week, let’s lay aside the (many) reasons that seeking revenge is a bad idea—all that “revenge is ultimately self-harm,” or “living well is the best revenge” business—and get down to the specifics of personal vengeance. Below is a set of rules for revenge, a simple checklist of actionable items to help plan and execute a campaign to bring trouble to your nemesis that won’t be traced back to you.

These rules are not for fly-off-the-handle types for whom revenge is punching someone in the face. That kind of crude, emotional response leads to escalation, personal danger, and prison time. Revenge, as Khan Noonien Singh said in Star Trek 2, is a dish best served cold, and serving icy revenge takes planning, time, and personal dedication.

Decide if it’s really worth it to you

Revenge is messy and can come back on you. Proper planning may lessen the chance of your vendetta turning into an out-of-control feedback loop, but there is no sure thing. So ask yourself if the pain you’re delivering to your adversary is worth the time, trouble, and karmic debt you’re incurring. (Spoiler: It probably isn’t.)

Determine the level of revenge they deserve

Personal campaigns of vengeance can range from minor annoyance to total destruction of your enemy’s life. Since you’re appointing yourself judge, jury, and executioner, you should take into account the morality of your actions, not just in terms of how it could affect your target, but also how it could affect you and the people you care about. Ask yourself if your enemy really deserves it, and if so, how much they deserve.

Don’t break the law

Prisons are full of people spending the one life they are granted locked in a cage because they retaliated against someone for a stupid reason, leaving them with a lot of time to think about how revenge probably wasn’t the best choice. Don’t be one of these people. There’s a ton of devious tactics for delivering your own version of Justice that stay within the letter of the law.

Tell no one

You might be tempted to tell someone of your plan, but don’t. You have to carry the dark weight of revenge yourself, so don’t confide in a trusted friend or spouse. Don’t try to brainstorm with others. Don’t even post about it anonymously. This is how people get caught. Also: Take no credit when the deed is done. Be humble, and take your secret to your grave.

Set a two-year waiting period

“Have patience” is the most important rule of cold revenge. Once you’ve determined that the bastard you hate really deserves it and you’ve accepted the level of personal risk that will come from raining vengeance upon them, remove them from your life, then mark your calendar for two years in the future and wait.

This “cooling off” period gives you time to meticulously plan your revenge operation and reduces the chance of you being seen as the culprit, but most importantly, it will make the revenge much worse for the victim.

For instance, if you get fired from a job, you could slash your old boss’s tires in the parking lot that evening, but they (and the police) would strongly suspect you and you could be locked up. But if you wait a couple years, and the FEC starts an inquiry into your enemy’s company on the same day their spouse receives an anonymous email about the affairs they’re having, it’s going to feel like the universe itself is conspiring against them. They’ll never tie it back to some disgruntled office drone who was fired years ago.

A long waiting period also gives you time to consider backing out. Maybe spending two years planning an elaborate terror campaign is enough to provide personal catharsis without actually doing anything. I’m dangerously close to saying “living well is the best revenge” here, but maybe you’ll determine that it’s pathetic to waste time and energy plotting against others instead of working on yourself, and that whatever satisfaction you might feel at someone else’s pain would ultimately be hollow.

Revenge tactics that are legal

It’s probably for the best that we have laws against the most harmful expressions of revenge, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still things you can do to take someone down. (I’m no lawyer, so check into your state’s statutes regarding harassment, stalking, and defamation and follow them to the letter—it’s really not worth committing a crime.)

Involve the authorities: If your target is engaging in anything the authorities would be interested in, don’t hesitate to call in an anonymous tip. There’s no end to the number of shady people and businesses that have been laid low by investigative journalists using entirely legal methods to dig up dirt. Take a lesson from them and figure out where the bodies are buried, then point them out to the cops. You’re not only getting revenge, you’re doing society a favor. But don’t call in false tips to any authorities—that’s extremely illegal.

Go public: Even if your adversary isn’t doing anything illegal, an anonymous Facebook group or webpage detailing their failings can effectively destroy their reputation, especially if there are other people who have been wronged by them. But before you do this, make sure you’re not defaming anyone. Libel is serious. On the other hand, a person is allowed to share their opinions—so tread carefully.

Online reviews: If your target owns a business that relies on online reviews, here’s your chance to vent your spleen. Intentionally targeting a business online could be legally questionable if you’re not telling the truth, but going to GlassDoor to anonymously tell the world that your ex-boss is a jerk, or hitting up Yelp to say the local taco place serves disgusting food is fine as long as you don’t lie. This works for emailing places of employment, too. You can’t lie, but you can have an opinion.

Employ surrealist revenge tactics: Sometimes revenge is best served weird, so I recommend mailing your adversary a single slice of Kraft cheese in an unmarked envelope every day, without a note or return address. It sounds silly, but it’s the kind of thing that they will not be able to stop thinking about. Every day, they’ll wonder who is doing this and why. Even telling someone else this is happening would be embarrassing—imagine calling the cops and reporting that you got the cheese again.

The “returning your keys” prank: This is more of a prank than a serious revenge tactic, but still. You can purchase a ton of keys on eBay for cheap. Then you can label them with target’s name and phone number. Then you can leave them all over the place. Imagine suddenly getting calls from 15 people about your lost keys. You can do all of these things. You shouldn’t, but you can.

High-pitched beeping machine: Another prank, but this one is so simple, and so devious, I had to include it. The AnnoyingPCB is a simple device about the size of a quarter that emits a beep, screech, or cricket sound at random intervals every five to 45 minutes. If you can (legally) place it in some hard-to-find place, like under a co-workers’ desk, it will perform its function for three years, and if you hide it cleverly, they’ll never find it.