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Hot take: workplace and social media April Fools jokes aren't funny and are often inappropriate and disrespectful to people's time. It's cool to do these to yo

Hot take: workplace and social media April Fools jokes aren't funny and are often inappropriate and disrespectful to people's time. It's cool to do these to your friends in High school, but I once wasted a good amount of time at work because of an April's fool joke. I already didn't want to do the work so I got really upset to have wasted time doing something boring and useless. Additionally, the scale of social media can create situations where it wastes everybody's time several times per day... Including on HN. Feel free to prank your friends, but don't bring it to work or the Internet, please.

II2II 2y ago
My take is that April fools jokes cross the line when they affect people you do not know. Put in other terms: if you can't deliver a direct and sincere apology, you're being a jerk.
johnisgood 2y ago
"Don't bring it to work" I could agree with, not the whole Internet, however.
ghaff 2y ago
I probably wouldn't make it so absolute. But when I was doing some writing for CNET, there was invariably a warning leading up to April 1 that if you are considering an April Fool's joke in print, just don't.
fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
All jobs I have ever worked have collectively wasted more man hours through incompetence and the usual corporate BS than I could ever hope to with any conceivable April fools joke.
- roenxi 2y ago
  The deal is they pay you a fair amount of money to put up with that. Whereas people such as the gentlemen in the article are causing people stress for no reason and with no compensation - and barely even an acknowledgement of misbehaviour. There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad.
  - circlefavshape 2y ago
    > There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad Bollocks, and bollocks to the parent hot take. Any moral framework that forbids fun, whether it's because it offends God or "causes people (a tiny bit of) stress", is repugnant to me
    - StefanBatory 2y ago
      Ah, but do you get to have fun at the cost of others? That is the question.
      - Cycl0ps 2y ago
        Of course! I'm doing it right now!
        StefanBatory 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - wat10000 2y ago
      It's not the offense, it's the wasted time and money. Think of one of those meeting timers that counts in dollars instead of minutes. Now apply that to all the time spent by random people calling the main office, and by the main office fielding all those calls. It's one thing to cost your employer thousands of dollars because you made a mistake (I'm sure we've all been there), and quite another to cost your employer thousands of dollars with a prank. You can't even make the (quite bad) defense that people should have known better and it's their own fault for falling for it. The message was 100% plausible.
      - freehorse 2y ago
        > timers that counts in dollars instead of minutes Not the best way to measure time imo.
- wat10000 2y ago
  That doesn't mean you go and deliberately make it worse for a laugh.
  - fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
    It's just disingenuous to pretend it's about corporate efficiency when it's more about personal feelings/vibes.
    - wat10000 2y ago
      “Corporate efficiency” is vague and largely meaningless. “Don’t waste a bunch of your coworkers’ time” is a lot more concrete. Especially don’t set up the people who answer the phones to get angry calls due to your prank.
lynx97 2y ago
Haha, the times they are a changing. I still remember c't april fools joke from the 90s where they published a scencil (template) to indicate where you have to drill a hole into your pentium CPU to be able to overclock it. I still chuckle about the whole thing almost 30 years after the fact, still wondering how many morons actually destroyed their perfectly working CPU back then. At times, active thinking of your peers just needs to be challenged so they don't get too confident...
- nyanpasu64 2y ago
  Meanwhile the Xbox 360 kamikaze hack actually involved drilling a chip...
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  This reminds me of the joke videos where you could drill a hole into the iPhone to access the headphone jack or microwave it for wireless charging. I don't recall seeing any pictures of people actually doing those things though, just "angry" comments which were also probably jokes.
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    Someone actually did it (for real): https://youtu.be/utfbE3_uAMA https://youtu.be/utfbE3_uAMA
- hulitu 2y ago
  > wondering how many morons actually destroyed their perfectly working CPU back then. Well, if they knew where the CPU is, and still drilled a hole through it, they deserved it.
causal 2y ago
Nah. I like the small things that remind us we're still humans, and a little inconvenience is a small price
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Small things are fine. It's not fun when the corporate marketing team meets in September to start planning their April Fools jokes.
itsanaccount 2y ago
[flagged]
0x3444ac53 2y ago
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jonstewart 2y ago
HP LaserJet 4s squarely date TFA’s prank in the early-mid 90s. I can agree with you that lame corporate April Fool’s Day jokes on the Internet are overdone; but 1990s-era campus sysadmin’ing ruled. Sysadmins kept a close eye on things to ensure no one (especially the servers) got hurt, but computer geeks were far from mainstream and a spirit of playful tolerance and taking-care-of-our-own prevailed. Well do I remember telneting to sendmail on port 25 and sending spoofed email to classmates… The university-wide email was probably too much but displaying INSERT 5 CENTS on an HP LaserJet 4 for a day is great.
namenotrequired 2y ago
I feel the opposite. Work pranks are the best pranks because they only waste time that I was already selling anyway.
hackable_sand 2y ago
April 1st always falls on a weekend though
- Cycl0ps 2y ago
  My brother in Christ it's Tuesday
  - nosrepa 2y ago
    Woosh
wat10000 2y ago
I'm surprised this is being downvoted. Don't waste hours of other people's time for your fun. Imagine being one of the people who had to field all of those phone calls. Probably quite a few of those callers were quite angry. Imagine being subject to that anger because some moron in IT you never met thought it would be funny to play a prank that lands on your head.
xxr 2y ago
Y’know, I’m inclined to agree here, but I don’t think it was always this way. Over the last few years I’ve been feeling really fatigued, I suppose, by April Fool’s Day, and I think feeling this way has coincided with the rise of fake everything on the web. Rather than one day a year where we get to be amused by pranks in good faith, we’re mentally on-guard every day trying to identify whether a story or (increasingly) an image is real or not. Rather than one day a year where you’ve got people sending you stuff like “ALIEN LABORATORY DISCOVERED UNDERNEATH PYRAMIDS” accompanied by obvious-to-you GenAI images, now it’s every day, and still not everyone is in on the joke (and a joke is the best-case scenario behind creator’s intent).
Suppafly 2y ago
>Feel free to prank your friends, but don't bring it to work or the Internet, please. Hell don't even prank your friends, most of them don't appreciate it either.
dilyevsky 2y ago
haha, very funny!

II2II 2y ago

My take is that April fools jokes cross the line when they affect people you do not know. Put in other terms: if you can't deliver a direct and sincere apology, you're being a jerk.

johnisgood 2y ago

"Don't bring it to work" I could agree with, not the whole Internet, however.

ghaff 2y ago

I probably wouldn't make it so absolute. But when I was doing some writing for CNET, there was invariably a warning leading up to April 1 that if you are considering an April Fool's joke in print, just don't.

fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago

All jobs I have ever worked have collectively wasted more man hours through incompetence and the usual corporate BS than I could ever hope to with any conceivable April fools joke.

roenxi 2y ago
The deal is they pay you a fair amount of money to put up with that. Whereas people such as the gentlemen in the article are causing people stress for no reason and with no compensation - and barely even an acknowledgement of misbehaviour. There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad.
- circlefavshape 2y ago
  > There are worse crimes in the world, but it is bad Bollocks, and bollocks to the parent hot take. Any moral framework that forbids fun, whether it's because it offends God or "causes people (a tiny bit of) stress", is repugnant to me
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    Ah, but do you get to have fun at the cost of others? That is the question.
    - Cycl0ps 2y ago
      Of course! I'm doing it right now!
      - StefanBatory 2y ago
        [flagged]
  - wat10000 2y ago
    It's not the offense, it's the wasted time and money. Think of one of those meeting timers that counts in dollars instead of minutes. Now apply that to all the time spent by random people calling the main office, and by the main office fielding all those calls. It's one thing to cost your employer thousands of dollars because you made a mistake (I'm sure we've all been there), and quite another to cost your employer thousands of dollars with a prank. You can't even make the (quite bad) defense that people should have known better and it's their own fault for falling for it. The message was 100% plausible.
    - freehorse 2y ago
      > timers that counts in dollars instead of minutes Not the best way to measure time imo.
wat10000 2y ago
That doesn't mean you go and deliberately make it worse for a laugh.
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago
  It's just disingenuous to pretend it's about corporate efficiency when it's more about personal feelings/vibes.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    “Corporate efficiency” is vague and largely meaningless. “Don’t waste a bunch of your coworkers’ time” is a lot more concrete. Especially don’t set up the people who answer the phones to get angry calls due to your prank.

lynx97 2y ago

Haha, the times they are a changing. I still remember c't april fools joke from the 90s where they published a scencil (template) to indicate where you have to drill a hole into your pentium CPU to be able to overclock it. I still chuckle about the whole thing almost 30 years after the fact, still wondering how many morons actually destroyed their perfectly working CPU back then. At times, active thinking of your peers just needs to be challenged so they don't get too confident...

nyanpasu64 2y ago
Meanwhile the Xbox 360 kamikaze hack actually involved drilling a chip...
RandomBacon 2y ago
This reminds me of the joke videos where you could drill a hole into the iPhone to access the headphone jack or microwave it for wireless charging. I don't recall seeing any pictures of people actually doing those things though, just "angry" comments which were also probably jokes.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  Someone actually did it (for real): https://youtu.be/utfbE3_uAMA https://youtu.be/utfbE3_uAMA
hulitu 2y ago
> wondering how many morons actually destroyed their perfectly working CPU back then. Well, if they knew where the CPU is, and still drilled a hole through it, they deserved it.

causal 2y ago

Nah. I like the small things that remind us we're still humans, and a little inconvenience is a small price

Symbiote 2y ago
Small things are fine. It's not fun when the corporate marketing team meets in September to start planning their April Fools jokes.

itsanaccount 2y ago

[flagged]

0x3444ac53 2y ago

jonstewart 2y ago

HP LaserJet 4s squarely date TFA’s prank in the early-mid 90s. I can agree with you that lame corporate April Fool’s Day jokes on the Internet are overdone; but 1990s-era campus sysadmin’ing ruled. Sysadmins kept a close eye on things to ensure no one (especially the servers) got hurt, but computer geeks were far from mainstream and a spirit of playful tolerance and taking-care-of-our-own prevailed. Well do I remember telneting to sendmail on port 25 and sending spoofed email to classmates… The university-wide email was probably too much but displaying INSERT 5 CENTS on an HP LaserJet 4 for a day is great.

namenotrequired 2y ago

I feel the opposite. Work pranks are the best pranks because they only waste time that I was already selling anyway.

hackable_sand 2y ago

April 1st always falls on a weekend though

Cycl0ps 2y ago
My brother in Christ it's Tuesday
- nosrepa 2y ago
  Woosh

wat10000 2y ago

I'm surprised this is being downvoted. Don't waste hours of other people's time for your fun. Imagine being one of the people who had to field all of those phone calls. Probably quite a few of those callers were quite angry. Imagine being subject to that anger because some moron in IT you never met thought it would be funny to play a prank that lands on your head.

xxr 2y ago

Y’know, I’m inclined to agree here, but I don’t think it was always this way. Over the last few years I’ve been feeling really fatigued, I suppose, by April Fool’s Day, and I think feeling this way has coincided with the rise of fake everything on the web. Rather than one day a year where we get to be amused by pranks in good faith, we’re mentally on-guard every day trying to identify whether a story or (increasingly) an image is real or not. Rather than one day a year where you’ve got people sending you stuff like “ALIEN LABORATORY DISCOVERED UNDERNEATH PYRAMIDS” accompanied by obvious-to-you GenAI images, now it’s every day, and still not everyone is in on the joke (and a joke is the best-case scenario behind creator’s intent).

Suppafly 2y ago

>Feel free to prank your friends, but don't bring it to work or the Internet, please. Hell don't even prank your friends, most of them don't appreciate it either.

dilyevsky 2y ago

haha, very funny!