Today is a day wrought with first world problems. No matter where I go on the Internet, no matter what I read, I don’t believe it. I don’t care if you are my doctor calling me to tell me about a bad diagnosis, I’m going to take it with a grain of salt. If my wife told me today that. Unless you are a new comedy publication, web site, video, whatever than you have no business publishing any type of important news on this date.
I used to love April Fool’s Day, I really did. I appreciate a well thought out joke, one that takes planning. One of my favorites harkens to an older time when there were these strange things called nooowspaypers that people would use to get caught up on the events of the world. If you thought enough in advance you could take one of these publications from the current year, wrap it in plastic and hide it away, and then put it out the following year for your parent/friend/neighbor to come out and get. How about putting a false operating system onto a disc that would boot into a false and whacked out desktop to freak your friends out with? Even if you don’t want to get too complex you could just put a piece of clear tape over the red light of someones optical mouse and it will stop working to their frustration. These are decent pranks.
Social Media, however, has ruined this day for me because it’s opened up an entire slew of sub-par pranks where people use stupid announcements that aren’t funny thinking that they are performing a great prank. I’m not about political correctness, or pandering to those that demand we can only post Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, however in my opinion using today to falsely state they are pregnant isn’t funny. I’m experienced first hand the frustrations involved in battling with infertility, as well as the pain of losing a child, and it’s just not that funny. People in general don’t joke about cancer, and the reason why they don’t? It’s not a funny topic, especially when you’ve dealt with it. A false pregnancy announcement ranks right up there for me. I’d be more than happy to never see one of those types of April Fool’s Day jokes again.
Thankfully there are some saving graces out there in the world. The good folks at Think Geek not only know how to do it right, they also turn some of their jokes into reality. They alway feature false products and then we get to vote on making them real. If it hadn’t been for this we’d never have the amazing and wonderful Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. Google usually is good for a chuckle as well. This year they’ve enhanced photo sharing on Google + by including The Hoff in all your shared photos.
What I’ve spent many words trying to say is this folks: “Please prank responsibly, and for the love of all that is rubber chickens please be funny.”
-Will
