Evil Genius? An Art Director Is Pranking San Franciscans with AirPods Stickers

AirPods Sticker Prank Credit: Pablo Rochat
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The next time you see what looks like lost AirPods on the ground, you may want to give them a closer look.

That’s because San Francisco-based art director Pablo Rochat created extremely realistic stickers of AirPods. And, as a prank, Rochat started sticking them to the ground all around the Bay Area.

The 2D stickers are actually high-resolution images of both second-generation AirPods and AirPods Pro.

They’re even the exact size of regular AirPods and, when stuck to the ground, look just like someone may have dropped their wireless earbuds.

In fact, they look so lifelike that many people going about their day stopped to take a closer look at the stickers. Rochat even said he primarily designed the prank to catch people’s attention.

“It was fun to watch people walk by the stickers, do a double take, and occasionally bend over to try to pick the AirPods up,” Rochat told Business Insider, adding that although some were angry at the prank, “most people found it funny.”

As you might expect, many Twitter users reacted to the “evil genius” of the prank, while others added that they would have liked to see reaction videos.

At least one user noted that picking up someone else’s AirPods is likely not the most sanitary thing to do.

The AirPods prank is likely all the more believable because of how common dropping or losing AirPods are, thanks to their small size and shape. While there are measures to help get AirPods back, that doesn’t mean that they’re always recovered when lost.

In fact, lost AirPods are even becoming a major problem for some cities. In New York City, for example, the Metropolitan Transit Authority recently considered a PSA to advise subway riders not to take out their AirPods while entering or exiting a train.

While we wouldn’t recommend you intentionally try to ruin someone’s day with a similar prank, Rochat has actually made high-resolution images of the stickers available so that others can download them and print them out, too.

Rochat is a Bay Area-based artist and art director whose previous clients include Microsoft, Tinder and, unexpectedly, Apple itself.

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