What does “по приколу” mean in Russian?

По приколу is the go-to slang phrase when you do something purely on impulse, with no real reason except that it seemed funny. It comes from прикол — originally a mooring post you tie a boat to, then youth slang for a joke or gag from the early 1990s onward. Today по приколу sits at the informal extreme of “for fun”: more spontaneous than ради интереса and more tongue-in-cheek than просто так.

The near-synonym для прикола is interchangeable in most contexts. Both phrases work whenever the motivation was pure whim: Я по приколу написал ему — “I texted him just for the laugh.” In the clip, runner Jeyko films himself jogging 5 km around his own desk по приколу — a throwaway idea that unexpectedly goes viral and launches his whole absurdist channel. The phrase captures the moment perfectly: no plan, no reason, and somehow 250,000 subscribers later.