Right - the hope is that if you no-sell the prank it'll be boring and everyone will stop versus if you have a funny/over the top reaction, or worse, cry - in which case you get picked on more and/or everyone thinks less of you.

Also I absolutely think there is a power hierarchy to teasing. I would try to have banter with my guy friends who initiated it with me and they would get mad-mad. The more I observed The Dynamic the more I saw that the bants roll downhill and then, as a girl, I was mostly expected to know my place (automatically at the bottom) and not be funnier or quicker than any of them.