Yesterday was April Fools’, a special holidday for assholes act like themselves and then be like WHAT? IT’S APRIL FOOLS! LIGHTEN UP, BRAH.
The entire world turns into scammers and the entire world turns into skeptics.
I admit that I am a huge fan of the well-done prank. Historically, I’m a lover of April Fools’ Day. But lately I’m finding it tired and boring. I feel like all the good pranks have been done. All the mean and lazy pranks keep going and I want to punch every person who says “WHAT? IS THIS AN APRIL FOOLS PRANK” in place of their usual “WHAT? IS THIS AN ONION ARTICLE?” when they come across awful things in the news.
I was also way over April Fools’ after about 3 hours of my two year old daughter trying to get me to believe she lost her ears. Her ears. Because she thinks I’m stupid. Eventually I just told her I was sorry, but I accidentally flushed them down the toilet and I won’t get her a new pair because she’s irresponsible and reckless. She cried for a long time. Whatever. You wanted to prank with the big kids.
She got back at me today by peeing on my foot. Which is kind of bullshit because day-after pranks are out-of-bounds. As are pranks where you pee on someone.
One thing I think is interesting is the number of skeptics who just turn the internet off on April 1. A lot of us are incredibly gullible and have adopted skepticism as a survival skill. For those of us in that camp, sometimes April Fools’ can just be endlessly overwhelming and intellectually and emotionally exhausting, an entire day where you have to check and recheck and recheck every fact, knowing you’re a target but not knowing who the shooters are or where they are, just that they’re out to get you. It’s a lot to handle.
What do you think of April Fools’ Day? Do you like pranks, getting pranked, pranking people? Did you play any great pranks? Do you take extra precautions on April 1? Will we ever come up with a better icon for fools than Mr T?
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My favorite part of April Fools is when an article is so ridiculous that you complain to yourself that it is not so funny when it is so obvious that it is joke. Yet a while later, you find out it the news bit was actually true.
Like this: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/04/01/rude-password-login-denied-the-att-april-fool-that-wasnt/
Last year George Takei got me when he said that Paramount had green-lit a new Star Trek movie with him as captain of the USS Excelsior. I was so stoked over that that I was taken in, hook, line and sinker. This year he tried to get me with a claim he was going to be a Jedi Knight in Star Wars VII. Didn’t fool me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Generally I hates April Fools, but the REI kitty backpacks were so friggin cute I had to repost. I imagine one of my wee ones in their anthropologicalized voice: I can haz backpack?
After the third time I was rickrolled yesterday I just stopped clicking links. I find that I DO like April Fools fake products – the REI kitty stuff was funny because it clearly wasn’t real.
Exactly. I like the obvious funny stuff. Not the could be true stuff. There’s not enough of he just plain funny. I hate mean stuff.
I enjoyed yesterday’s ‘Escher Gills’ posts.
For me, all I want to do is NOT be working on April Fools’ Day … as I mentioned under the previous Quickies post, copy editing and fact checking on April 1st can, at times, be stressful.
I’ve always been somewhat neutral about April fool’s jokes or pranks. One of my favorites was back in the 80’s when a local Seattle comedy show did a fake but real looking newscast about the Space Needle falling down. Lots of people were taken in even though there was a banner on the top of the screen saying it was an April fool’s joke. My wife’s birthday is April first and I haven’t done any pranks or jokes in years and I figured she was tired of them anyway. So yesterday she told me that she was disappointed no one did any April fools jokes on her for her birthday. I guess I have a year of planning in front of me now!
“A lot of us are incredibly gullible and have adopted skepticism as a survival skill. For those of us in that camp, sometimes April Fools’ can just be endlessly overwhelming…”
This is exactly right. I don’t like to be fooled, so I don’t like April Fools.
I saw nothing funny yesterday and was really mad that one of my favorite bloggers said she was quitting, citing every trope she could think of as a reason. Minimalizing real reasons people have real problems in their lives isn’t cute or cool. I am so not amused.
There are good April Fools jokes and there are bad April Fool’s jokes.
The good ones tend to be something that I get excited about (q.v. Takei’s Star Wars bit had me momentarily excited), or ones that activate my nerdrage but seem like something that would happen (DC Women Kicking Ass posted a fake article saying that the next “Superhero Power Couple” was going to be Batman and Batgirl… which has enough problems that I got all nerdragey until someone pointed out it was April Fool’s day).