give someone a hard time vs joke around

give someone a hard time

verb
  • To tease, kid or rib someone. 

  • To cause difficulty or make trouble for someone. 

joke around

verb
  • To kid, prank, joke. 

  • To say something that is not meant to be taken seriously. 

  • (procrastinate, fool around, behave immaturely): bowdlerization of fuck around 

How often have the words give someone a hard time and joke around occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )