Today We Won't Post a Rant On How Lame April Fools' Day Is
Haha PUNK'D! Happy Day When Everyone Thinks They're Fucking Hilarious, guys! Let's all have a chuckle at the "hoaxes" and "pranks" and depressing stabs at heavy-handed jocularity that make up April Fools' Day.
The stupid tradition goes back to, who knows, British newspapers, who had this prank thing down pat, because they make shit up every day. But, you know, the BBC did the spaghetti tree thing in 1957, and the papers still run almost-plausible stories every year. We have some small modicum of respect for the well-executed Fleet Street April Fools' prank, because, hey, they're actual real legitimate newspapers that print lies for laughs once a year. Subverting the 'authority' of a printed newspaper with bullshit is just funnier than, like, making your "funny news" web community look like a social networking site for a day.
The problem is everyone, especially on the internet, is so clever now, and hip to the joke—that is the primary tone of 90% of all communication these days, "in on the joke"—so all the fun has just been leeched out of the pranks. You know no one at all will buy it, and everyone, at the same time, is expecting it, so it's actually just this depressing obligation to make a joke that you know no one will actually enjoy.
Google has to "outdo" themselves every year with a stupid new pretend feature or application, and the only time it's ever been funny was when they actually for-real announced Gmail on April 1, 2004.
Just look at this exhaustive/exhausting list of every lousy prank going on today and tell us you wouldn't rather just read any given issue of The Onion than slog through DailyCandy's yukfest. Maybe the last genuinely amusing 'pranks' left are the internal media memos. They at least have the benefit of seeming bitchy, and not just more "oh aren't we cheeky" fun-for-public-consumption. (The Politico memo is more "funny because it's true"—or maybe not funny because it's true?)
It's all a depressing parade of sad clowns jeered at for not being funny enough by the onlookers congratulating themselves for not finding clowns funny anymore.
