PSA: April Fools' Day

[yendi]

Reminder: Tomorrow (April 1) is April Fools' Day.

As a general rule, take any story you read online with a grain of salt. Two, even.

Personally, I find some aspects of the "holiday" to be repugnant. I'm not a fan of actual practical jokes (something that might tie into my love of horror movies, in which practical jokes often lead to the creation of a new serial killer), as I think they're more often than not an exercise in being mean for its own sake. And I've seen way too many of them backfire. This goes doubly for blog entries.

Remember, too, that people do die on every day of the year. Fake celebrity deaths don't work as a practical joke, in my book. The death of Brandon Lee, for example, was reported on April 1 (although he died the day before). And Martha Graham, Marvin Gaye, and Leslie Cheung all come to mind as folks who died on April 1 (can you imagine, given the way he died, if folks had just dismissed the reports of Gaye's death?).

But I do appreciate the clearly-over-the-top stuff the holiday brings out in some sites. The KOL changes, for example, or the annual ThinkGeek "sales."

So, consider this my statement that A) I won't be posting any bogus entries tomorrow, and B) that I will be pointing out some of the better fakes sites on the net.

Comments

[digriz.livejournal.com]

GMail was announced 5 years ago, on April 1st. I'm convinced that Google wanted everyone to spend an entire day or two figuring out if they were actually serious about it.

This, of course, was in addition to their standard yearly joke, which I believe was the Lunar Base in 2004.

[yendi]

*nod* I remember the gmail announcement, and still think the timing was stupid (especially at Google, which pulls off wonderful jokes every year).

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My wife tries to do something clever every year at work.

Note: clever.

That means something that, when people notice it, they think it's COOL. That the people on whom it is played think it's funny and are happy that it was done.

Such as discovering that there is a way to reprogram the electronic display on the networked printer, so that, instead of saying "ONLINE" or "READY" or whatever, it says "1 COIN 1 PLAY"

[yendi]

Those are exactly the right kinds of things to do.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The MIT Hacker's Code (http://hacks.mit.edu/misc/ethics.html) is a good set of guidelines to strive for on April Fools' Day. If one is going to do anything. Which one oughtn't feel pressured to do if one doesn't want.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I think they're more often than not an exercise in being mean for its own sake.

I was having almost the exact same thoughts a few days ago. I've never really "gotten" April Fool's Day, even before I'd run into mean practical jokes.

(Also? When Pope John Paul II died on April 2nd, 2005, I wrote "May your soul reach a good place, John Paul II. And, karmically speaking, it is probably for the best that you survived April Fool’s Day; passing away yesterday would have seemed far too much like a cosmic joke at your expense.")

Tomorrow I'll be online, but most likely being me, as me as I usually am.

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

I feel pretty much the same way you do about April Fool's Day. Thanks for reminding me to make a similar post at some point before tomorrow.

[hippie-mamabear.livejournal.com]

Argh. I think i'll be staying inside, with the computers and phones turned off.

[morenasangre.livejournal.com]

So far, my favorite April Fools event has been the UF online learning web portal. They've changed their "System Load" notifications to random notifications.

When I pulled up the blackboard frontpage this morning the system load was reported as "Activating the flux capacitor." Around 10 am, it was "Don't Panic."

It's a sad thing when I keep pulling up an online learning webpage to see what random status message they have up now... :P