19 ms·

The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

490 points by hoodoof 13y ago

I have a sense of humor. Really I do. I just don't find being pounded with systematic absurdity for an entire day every year as being very funny. I don't know how to solve it. It seems every single company and publication that communicates via the web has a corporate communications department or something that thinks it's a corporate priority to come out with something for April Fools. The Internet systematizes, amplifies, focuses, fully resources, funds, schedules, plans and implements high production value foolery. Corporate drone: "Larry, Sergey, have you signed off yet on this years $4M April Fools budget? How are we going to attract and recruit the best engineers unless we've got a reputation for the very best and most foolish April Fools trickery?" Ugh. It's just kind of silly and boring and makes we wish April 2 would come as soon as possible. As I read the Internet on April 1 I just try to self filter out all the silly unbelievable garbage. Most news sites (including HN) are hardly worth reading April 1. You know when someone who thinks they are funny insists on telling lame jokes, and the audience feels an obligation to give an acknowledging guffaw? It's like an whole Internet day worth of that. I feel like the Grinch Who Stole April Fools but really it has to be said. If you've got it in mind to do some fine ol' foolin then maybe the classy thing to do is leave the foolin to others and spare us one more depressingly lame absurdity.

zimpenfish 13y ago
April Fools Day is funny the first couple of times you experience it. Then it's just soul destroying.
cbaleanu 13y ago
No. We should have fun. This is geek humor, maybe some take it a bit too far, but still.
- hoodoof 13y ago
  April Fools power in the old days was that the foolin wasn't expected. Nothing quite so ordinary as a thoroughly expected trick.
- duaneb 13y ago
  Geek humor? More like PR humor.
  - gchokov 13y ago
    Exactly.
    - nikhilio 13y ago
      Chemtrails.
- middleclick 13y ago
  Except it is not funny at all and annoying TBH.
- jafaku 13y ago
  More like American humor/tradition. Try to keep it within your borders, because in the rest of the world this is a normal business day.
codecondo 13y ago
I'm with you man, but then again - I'm busy with doing some actual work, and the pranks that I do encounter are either from Google or a mindless click on a link, few times at most. We should be allowed to have fun, but this is hardly funny - it's painful.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> It seems every single company and publication that communicates via the web has a corporate communications department or something that thinks it's a corporate priority to come out with something for April Fools. It's not really the lameness of April Fools Day, it's the lameness of internet businesses, social media marketing, or marketers and salesmen in general. They need to take over, trivialize, devaluate and destroy every thing that becomes special in society, in hope to get some additional sales. I also don't know how to solve this, but April Fools Day is only a more visible than usual demonstration of a problem that happens every single day.
- jessieplk 13y ago
  What if April Fool's jokes were actually funny ... I think half the annoyance is most of the time, unfunny people reveal themselves on this day.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - devolute 13y ago
    It's not possible to be genuinely funny when the real objective is defined by traffic and 'clout' metrics.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  Yep, this is it. Neutered culture intended for mass consumption, right down to the utterly safe, whimsical April Fool's Day gag -- "wow, $CORP is so random!"
  - 5fs3 13y ago
    An April Fool gag, even if carried out by a corp can be funny if it is truly random. I got fooled by the BigCorp I contract to when they put up a makeshift sign up asking us to consider covering our faces, because the parking had been fumigated ("although we expect it to be safe"). It played right into our prejudices about the declining health and safety culture in my country. The problem, in my opinion, with gags like Google's is that they are utterly predictable. They are safe, and have no "edge" - which is sensible, since they don't want to alienate customers, but utterly fail as jokes.
FatalLogic 13y ago
20 years ago, the average person was exposed to a handful of media channels. So, if they each produced one April Fools gag, they wouldn't have been annoying. Now, our media diet consists of hundreds of channels, sites and blogs, and it seems like every single one of them does an April Fools gag The result is tired, formulaic humor, repeated ad nauseam.
S_A_P 13y ago
This is obviously an April Fools Day joke. Well played, sir/madam...
gadders 13y ago
This is the second post about how people don't like April Fools Day. Are we replacing the actual April Fool jokes with posts moaning about them? I'm not sure that's much of an improvement.
- duaneb 13y ago
  Well, at least we aren't being sold anything!
  - helium 13y ago
    Not yet. Give it some time.
    - actionscripted 13y ago
      http://foolsblocker.io http://foolsblocker.io
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  I saw a poster like this yesterday: "Change it, Avoid it, Accept it. Complaining is just victimizing yourself."
  - iamdave 13y ago
    I call bullshit to the highest rank on that line. A complaint gets eyeballs on the problem, a complaint opens ears to the problem. Complaining is not whining. Complaining is not furtive. Complaining is speaking up.
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      Hm. Proposing reasonable alternatives is speaking up. Suggesting changes to the process opens ears to the problem. Complaining is whining, unproductive and corrosive to discussion. I call BS on the attitude that complaining is really a public service, that its done with the highest motives. Its done to vent, to gain sympathy, to feel better. Not to help.
carlob 13y ago
> How are we going to attract and recruit the best engineers unless we've got a reputation for the very best and most foolish April Fools trickery? I would actually discourage anyone from taking a job from any company that takes April Fools too seriously. Having to put in extra hours to get the April Fools out in time is the only thing that's more soul-crushing than the stupid corporate joke itself.
- alandarev 13y ago
  Spending some time to actually raise the mood of your clients is a no-go place for you? I assume your preference is to work for a no-emotion company 100% dedicated to the product, and a casual chit-chat is a strong NO policy. The question is whether a joke is funny and made you smile of course.
  - carlob 13y ago
    You're reading stuff that clearly wasn't in my comment. I just said I didn't want to spend extra hours on something that is just a one day joke when I have proper bugs to fix.
Hawkee 13y ago
I used to be into online retail sales before I got fed up with all the money grubbing. It was all about Black Friday and if you weren't ready with a major production by then or at least Cyber Monday you'd miss the boat on a huge influx of potential revenue. If your Black Friday effort went viral you'd be riding the gravy train all holiday season. I get the sense April Fools has become the Black Friday of social media. If your joke goes viral you've got a huge opportunity for viewership and brand awareness. No thank you. My site doesn't celebrate any "holiday".
ivanhoe 13y ago
my thoughts exactly... you can't make a good prank anymore when it has become a "PR must" to publish one
mavroprovato 13y ago
Simple, don't read the news today. Really, it's just one day. You don't have a huge problem to solve.
- laoba 13y ago
  I agree with this. Seriously, it's just one day: Have some fun or let the others enjoy their fun.. I guess this is a first world problem
unfamiliar 13y ago
>I have a sense of humor. Really I do. I just don't find being pounded with systematic absurdity for an entire day every year as being very funny. I don't know why its so funny to think of you getting irritated by this, but it is.
riffraff 13y ago
I remember plenty of april fool's jokes on the radio and on TV. I think your problem is just that on the internet you are just exposed to a lot more of them.
onion2k 13y ago
If your hypothesis is correct and the reason that April Fool's jokes are lame is because there's one day dedicated to them every year, "an entire day every year", then a rational proposal for a solution would be for companies to put random funny things out more often. If we had a "Fool's Day" every month then there wouldn't be such a shock, and they'd start to be something enjoyable rather than laboured. Additionally, we'd need people to make them, so employment would increase, and people could sell merchandise promoting the best jokes, services to quantify what's funny, and so on, so there'd be business opportunities created too. This could be the start of a whole new industry.
- hoodoof 13y ago
  I think people who are good at being funny are the ones who should do the job of being funny.
  - nikhilio 13y ago
    Oh dear god. I hope I never have the misfortune of working with you.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  > rational proposal for a solution would be for companies to put random funny things out more often The best way would be if they put those funny things at random, i.e. not on a specified date known by everyone in advance. But IMO the root of the problem is not the day, it's that 'being funny' is not a terminal goal for companies. They make jokes to drive sales/traffic, whereas humour is something that has to be done for its own sake. This is the same difference I think makes SpaceX and Tesla so awesome compared to others - because going to space and electrifying transport for humanity's good are terminal goals for Musk, and not - like with most businesses - proxies for making money (i.e. a company would stop doing what it's doing and start selling useless widgets if it paid more).
jedicoffee 13y ago
Yea, I hate fun!
mdmarra 13y ago
But there are unicorns on Stack Overflow.
- beobab 13y ago
  And I spent far too long "mining" unicorn coins...
- Theodores 13y ago
  ...they are great and I like what you can buy with them. However... They are a 'joke' in the broadest sense of the word, but not a joke. I am not 'fooled'. A true April Fool's Day joke is about pulling the wool over someone's eyes in such a way that they really do not know if it is true or not.
- mhurron 13y ago
  The only decent thing on the internet I've seen on April 1 was when Slashdot went OMGPONIES! That was just silly funny. Then they ruined it with their stream of fake shitty joke news. I think next year I'm going to take the advice posted by someone else here and just take April 1 off. I'll just spend the day playing games or something else away from anything other people are doing.
dangoor 13y ago
Some of the April Fools jokes are quite funny and some of ThinkGeek's in particular actually turn into real products. I could imagine this one becoming real: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/1ba1/?pfm=af14_homepage_Featured_4_1ba1 http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/1ba1/?pfm=af14_homepage_Fea... Sure, it's silly... but it's fun.
- hnal943 13y ago
  It kind of underlines the point though - most of these joke products aren't any more ridiculous than their real products. Is that really a joke?
cessor 13y ago
I totally agree with you. April 1st renders my local, personal experience of the internet completely useless. This goes on almost for a week, because people will repost the clever 'jokes' for a couple of days. April fools day on the internet is, as it feels to me, a Marketing Department Slack-Off Day. Every company feels they have to contribute, because the others are doing it. Some tech sites will do the same with ridiculous stuff. 04/1/14: Python 2.8 to lose the GIL. HAHAHAHAHAHA DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?! It doesn't even make sense. I would like to point out that this issue extends to other, especially North American happenings. As soon as Haloween, the super bowl or "the Oscars" are up, the internet becomes almost unusable because all the sites with user-"shared" (let's be honest, it is rarely really generated by them) content have no other topics and half of the news sites appear to have nothing better to do then to comment on the obvious real life events; even worse, the European news sites will start commenting on the American stuff as well. It is times like this when I get out old 90's PC Single Player games just to be away from people for a while. I have the dumbest sense of humor and will laugh about almost anything but April 1st is just gear-grindingly annoying...
hywel 13y ago
StackOverflow unicoins are sort of fine with me because I can still use the site. But up until midday php.net was rotating every single documentation page which was hyper-annoying.
lukasm 13y ago
This is most likely joke, but there is nothing more uncool that trying be cool very hard. Especially, these american style campaigns. So off-putting.
jedrek 13y ago
April Fools' Day is amateur hour for people who aren't funny the other 364 days of the year. It's much like New Year's Eve for people who don't party or Valentine's Day for people who aren't romantic. They feel like they have to do this on this exact day, which of course leads to an embarrassing situation for everybody.
- crusso 13y ago
  Boom! You nailed it. It's the social expectation to do something and BE something that is an excuse for people without those natural tendencies to act out. Out of their comfort zone, feeling social force to try to be funny, they overextend themselves in obvious ways.
- michaelcampbell 13y ago
  > April Fools' Day is amateur hour for people who aren't funny the other 364 days of the year. I'm keeping this in my "quotable quotes" file - do you have a preferred attribution, or is "jedrek" sufficient?
  - jedrek 13y ago
    jedrek/jędrek is sufficient
- matznerd 13y ago
  I don't know that I agree with this. I do like your analogies, especially the Valentines Day one for people who aren't romantic the rest of the year, but companies do have to act serious most of the time. April fools feels like the day they can "let their hair down" and be a little goofy. I think you can see some of the culture of the company exposed in that moment, and I like that.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  All of these holidays are also amateur hour for people who view themselves as intellectual social critics--people like the OP. I contend there are worse things that businesses can do with their time than think up bad jokes. Let's keep some perspective here, people.
danielweber 13y ago
Don't forget to spend all day of the Super Bowl telling everyone on the Internet how you don't watch football.
- jafaku 13y ago
  Except we didn't subscribe to the LameJokes channel, so why should we receive jokes instead of whatever the channel was supposed to give us? You should realize that this is the internet, not America, and April's Fool is an American tradition.
  - dgabriel 13y ago
    This is completely incorrect. It's celebrated widely in European countries & elsewhere. April Fools didn't even start in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day
    - jafaku 13y ago
      It's not celebrated in Asia, Africa, South America, and in most European countries. Probably your propagandized media and education system lead you to think that everyone celebrates American holidays.
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    FWIW, Wikipedia has good looking sources putting the April Fools tradition long before America [0]. I think it's safe to say it's a Western tradition at the very least. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day#Origins
tobi2006 13y ago
The only thing that is much worse are spam emails claiming "Our prices are so low that they look like an April Fools joke, but we're serious!"
kraag22 13y ago
I just don't read news on April 1. Sometimes is really hard to decide what is joke and what is true.
hamax 13y ago
Besides spending 15 minutes searching for pokemons and 5 minutes enjoying the htc gluuv joke, this is just a normal day for me. I really don't see anything to be mad about.
vermontdevil 13y ago
It's been downhill since BBC aired the spaghetti tree.
pessimizer 13y ago
You'll find, if you put your head down and keep working, that it's over within 24 hours. Unlike Halloween and Christmas, which keep pounding nails into my head from about a month or two before they occur to about two weeks after they're over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiySknl9zs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiySknl9zs0
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Well, I guess we've reached the ultimate in meta: an internet rant about internet humor. Next I guess somebody should parody this? Then a rant about the parody? Seriously, the internet is full of annoying things, and April Fool's, where folks actually try to have fun with each other, is what's bugging you? I'd place "having to be upset about something 24/7" as much higher on the list than a bunch of bone-headed PR stuff. I'm really happy HN is mostly humor-free. PG made a smart move there. But one day a year where companies compete to be funny? I can think of a million other things to fret about. Seriously. Trust me, somehow you'll live through it. A day without Erlang innards will leave you mostly scar-free.
- hnal943 13y ago
  DogeRant 2048
Argorak 13y ago
Well, people think they cannot miss out and need to do it - because their competitor does it. You'll see the same with world cup advertisement in a few months. Most of it is crap, rising above the crowd is hard. On the other hand, there are some clever things that sound like jokes, but are not: http://stroopwafel.me/ http://stroopwafel.me/ Well, I for my part have my share of fun.
- canvia 13y ago
  I would like to see an ad that is just plain text "We donated the $250k production budget for this ad to Haiti" and a logo. That is far more likely to make me give a company my business than any stupid pointless video clip.
marknutter 13y ago
I agree 100%. I have long considered April Fools Day as National Do-Not-Use-The-Internet Day, and I generally treat it as such.
- unreal37 13y ago
  Not doing very well at that I see. :)
jaimebuelta 13y ago
"This is the day to be mandatorily funny. Go out there and do something funny. That's an order"
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  In the grand scheme of bad orders throughout history, I'm having trouble getting upset about this one.
_superposition_ 13y ago
This is a joke, right?
hawleyal 13y ago
It's just marketing and advertising.
TeeWEE 13y ago
If you dont like it, dont spend your energy and attention onto it. As a response: Lots of people do like it, creating those jokes, and cunsomers reading those jokes. Its (almost) free publicity. Get over it
- therobot24 13y ago
  seriously, these people complaining about april fools are probably the ones telling others to change the station if they don't like the violence from their favorite breaking bad characters, yet can't follow their own advice when it comes to the internet
cpfohl 13y ago
I enjoy it.
mapt 13y ago
If we could ignore April Fools Day and treat it as any other, that would be fine. If we could dismiss anything we hear on April Fools Day and treat it as a lost day in the news cycle, that would also be fine. But we're in a situation where 90% of news is everyday pablum, 9% is AFD BS, and 1% is the creation of GMail, changing the Internet forever.
mathattack 13y ago
Very few come up with something that is both audacious enough to be interesting, and realistic enough to pull people in. Usually it's either too pedestrian to be funny, or not realistic enough to catch the spirit of fooling people. But that 1 in 100 is enough to keep the tradition going.
alvarosm 13y ago
I don't wate my time reading the news on April 1. It's pathetic.
sjs382 13y ago
> I have a sense of humor. Really I do. The problem is that very few of the jokes that any of these companies pull are even a little humorous. There have been a few funny/clever ones, but they're the 1%.
- matznerd 13y ago
  We'll see what comes out this year, but I generally think there is always at least a few smirk/smile inducing pranks every year. Where when you read the headline, there is at least a half-second where your mind believes it...
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Famous guy: '99% of Everything is crap'. So jokes are included in that I guess.
rnernento 13y ago
"I have a sense of humor. Really I do." Are you sure? I think you're taking yourself and the internet a little too seriously. If the jokes aren't funny don't laugh and don't click. If it really bugs you go ahead and spend a day without reading news on the internet, you'll survive, I promise. April Fools is interesting on the internet because attention is rewarded and that encourages companies to put real effort into silliness. It's okay to be silly sometimes, it's actually important. The fact of that a company like Google still has a sense of humor about itself renews my faith in them a little bit. Look at Blizzard's April fools: http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/games/outcasts/ http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/games/outcasts/ The credit card slots in the controller to make for easier microtransactions. With the new business models they're using for Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm it's actually pretty funny. The fact that they're acknowledging it softens me to them even just a little bit. Some of us look forward to April Fools on the internet, maybe the jokes are lame but the effort makes the event interesting.
- mbillie1 13y ago
  > It's okay to be silly sometimes, it's actually important. I agree with this entirely, but I think the argument here is that none of these corporate April Fool's jokes are silly, or funny, or clever, or interesting. They're the minimum effort to justify being a "gag" in order to farm page hits. Honestly, when was the last April Fool's prank that "got you" or made you laugh?
  - rnernento 13y ago
    Blizzard's made me laugh. I think the Google Pokemon map was funny. The celebrity photobombs on the front page of Google. These are nerds making these not standup comedians. Pretty much every internet April Fools gag is funnier than SNL these days...
    - npsimons 13y ago
      Pretty much every internet April Fools gag is funnier than SNL these days... That's a really low bar to hurdle.
imgabe 13y ago
Is this post an April Fools joke? I cannot imagine anyone actually getting this bent out of shape about one day of sometimes lame jokes. The lameness is "crushing"? Really? If something this inconsequential affects you this much I hope you don't ever encounter a real issue.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
parennoob 13y ago
Matt Cutts had the perfect saying on this one. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/450741899146440704 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/450741899146440704 "Hate April Fools? Consider taking a 24 hour offline holiday instead of telling everyone over and over how much you hate April Fools." [I'm going to take his advice and get off HN for the rest of the day.]
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Are you being treated for that depression? Do you kick puppies and holler at children too? Does it really cost you anything, anything at all to ignore a lame joke?
alco 13y ago
Is it so difficult for you to spend one day in a year away from the Internet to avoid the "lameness" that irritates you?
TallboyOne 13y ago
Wow, you sound incredibly bitter... it's one day out of the entire year... How about you unbunch your panties, close your computer and go outside for a day if it really bothers you so much. And, I realize HN is all adding to the conversation - that's me adding to the conversation with actual, non-sarcastic advice. Pretty blown away at why this deserves an entire thread.
nathanvanfleet 13y ago
You don't like cold and cynical companies trying to appear funny and relatable? That's an American tradition as old as Mickey Mouse. The anti-Semitic union busting one.
whiskeySix 13y ago
Ugh, get over yourself.
jkmcf 13y ago
April Fools jokes are only truly funny when they are unexpected, exceptionally clever, and well implemented.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
a3n 13y ago
Today is a good day for a walk.
nikhilio 13y ago
Why don't you have some fun, instead of being that god awful internet pedant that thrives off hating on the way other people do every little thing. Go back to posting about why you think some obscure javascript library is superior to the rest - get that feeling of enlightenment somewhere else instead of hating on people who are having harmless fun. God I hate hacker news.
dwc 13y ago
At the office, a few people might do gags, and maybe one is really good and sucks you in totally. That's funny. No, it's awesome to get punked to that degree even when you were looking out for it! On the net it's (become) unbearable, because it's a solid wall. News, thoughtful articles, social media are so full of AFD stuff that the net is almost worthless[1]. I.e., it doesn't scale. I don't mind being punked. I don't mind it a few times in the same day. When the whole day is a never ending stream of it, it becomes tiresome and irritating. Footnote: 1. This is substantially different from, say, the Super Bowl. If I'm not interested in the Super Bowl I just skim past it. But AFD pranks are meant to look plausible. In an alternate universe "Facebook buys Oculus" is an AFD prank instead of real. So you can't skim over them.
njharman 13y ago
Today is my most productive day. Cause I just don't have the will to figure out if "news" stories are real or 4/1. So, I don't read HN or Reddit or anything. (I didn't realize it was april 1st until seeing this.) Like the redis Hyperloglog? is it a joke, is it real? Fuck if I'm wasting my time to figure out. If it's real it will be still be talked about next week and I'll learn about then. Until tomorrow, Norm out!
AznHisoka 13y ago
Actually, HN today is filled with almost no April fools stories. I tried looking, there's maybe 1.. 2?
ianstallings 13y ago
Here's how to "solve" this problem - grow up and ignore things you don't like.
djunod 13y ago
A chance for every NonCreativeEntity to feel special.
api 13y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu7vySQbgXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu7vySQbgXI
gtirloni 13y ago
If you want to read anything on the Internet, April 1 is a very exhausting day due to all the filtering you have to do. You waste time reading the minimum necessary to detect if it's a joke or not and move to the next thing (hoping it's not). It's better to just ignore the whole thing. If a company/person/group decides to release something really cool on April 1, too bad... I won't be paying attention.
dragontamer 13y ago
Lame jokes make it easier for the non-creative to participate in the April Fools process. Not everyone can make a good joke. And those who are bad at making pranks are given the opportunity to stretch out beyond their comfort zone.
carlisle_ 13y ago
I actually just brought this up with my coworkers yesterday. I don't like april fools anymore because all the pranks people pull are completely uninspired and the entire day I have to ask myself "is this an april fool's gag?" And if you fall prey to a "prank" it's like, "wow you really got me great job" and that's it.
stcredzero 13y ago
How about a "holiday filter" app? Such an app could enable users to flag "insipid holiday content" which would cause it to be hidden. This could be implemented as a browser extension. In fact, you could even aggregate the information and sell it to companies, and people would even be happy to know that companies are paying to be told they're being annoying.
dsjoerg 13y ago
You are visiting the wrong websites, then.
kyro 13y ago
I want to thank most of you for making this one of the funniest threads I've seen on HN. Your theories as to why corporations and the people around us succumb to societal pressures pushing them to take on disingenuous facades of unfunny silliness for profit and attention are deeply profound -- April Fools!
patnos 13y ago
If you're looking for a non big name joke today, here's a pretty hilarious(and not to mention incredibly controversial) one: http://megansmatch.com/ http://megansmatch.com/
elefonts 13y ago
I am viewing this thread Emojified.
elefonts 13y ago
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courtf 13y ago
What cruel fates conspire to tease man with this fool's existence? The solemnity of the grave seems a comfort when faced with the endless torments of a life of gaiety. If only the dead could speak aloud their regrets, that we might continue our sermons long past the crumbling of the mount. Tis but a season's breadth afore yet 'nother trial befalls the stoic knights of castle hacker. Stay true in your labors, lest mirth's foul hand stir your mind to thoughts impure and sundry! Death's grip closes, and time is short, tary not along the path but stride through and bask in the righteous exultations levied upon the earnest and forthright! Down with the usurper, that lowly succubus whose poisonous impositions distract the holy from their cause!
Workaphobia 13y ago
> "How are we going to attract and recruit the best engineers unless we've got a reputation for the very best and most foolish April Fools trickery?" You say that sarcastically, but I see that as a legitimate concern. Why miss out on a great opportunity to make a connection with thousands of users who otherwise wouldn't see any uniqueness or individuality to what you do? And the only risk is that they'd piss off someone with a corny joke. That said, I sympathize. I enjoy jokes, but I'd like to read real news too.
corwinstephen 13y ago
Little do we know, this entire post is an April Fools joke. Better not agree with the guy, or you're in for a world of trouble tomorrow!
codezero 13y ago
Build an April Fools' API that allows crowdsourced contributions and a browser plugin to flag fake URLs and links.
bubbleRefuge 13y ago
So I heard on NPR this morning that San Mateo County was experiencing snow, sleet, and hail at the higher elevations on California 35 and that snow plows were dispatched. Can't tell if that is true or not due to April fools day + the fact that weather is unseasonably cold and rainy last few days. Very lame if its AFD joke.
dang 13y ago
I wonder if everyone here knows that we had a rather animated thread about this last night, after I asked people to flag April Fools' gags off the front page (and then amended it to say lame April Fools' gags): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793 These threads are still open for discussion, but I'm going to downweight this one now, since it's been on the front page a long time and nothing new is likely to emerge from it. I applied the exact same penalty to my own post last night. HN doesn't avoid humor, but it does eschew lame humor as part of eschewing lameness in general. Obviously, people's opinions about what's lame and what's funny differ wildly.
kevrone 13y ago
This whole thread amounts to: "I like a thing" vs "I don't like a thing". How can people really believe they have meaningful opinions about something so innocuous.
peterwwillis 13y ago
This guy just got more than double his total karma over a 1000 day period for whining about April Fool's day. If that's not funny, I don't know what is.
_zen 13y ago
You know when people say "don't be that guy"? You're being that guy.
argumentum 13y ago
When Google first started doing this, it was great. A welcome respite from our expectations of corporate monotony. Plus, it was genuinely unexpected, and therefore more funny. Now that every company has to do something, or risk being labeled uncool by users/potential recruits, the humor seems forced (and therefore less funny). Perhaps the best April Fools Prank Google could pull now would be to treat this day like any other. Imagine the irony of billions of people waiting to be "surprised", anticipation slowly increasing throughout the day, wild speculation about any normal announcement that Google makes. Now that would be funny.
- hoodoof 13y ago
  No April Fools tricks? That's a very big risk for a company the size of Google to take.
evanwolf 13y ago
Wait a day. It gets better.
treistab2 13y ago
-1
sedds 13y ago
I think April Fool's day internet pranks may be one of the easiest way for companies to maintain corporate whimsy and allow their employee's to create something momentarily off their grinding path.
Houshalter 13y ago
Can you give some examples? The only april fools things I saw was reddit's webcam thing which I thought was great, and an icon on the corner of youtube which went to a great parody video mocking memes. I later found out about Kaggle's Random Number Challenge which I thought was funny.

490 points by hoodoof 13y ago

zimpenfish 13y ago

April Fools Day is funny the first couple of times you experience it. Then it's just soul destroying.

cbaleanu 13y ago

No. We should have fun. This is geek humor, maybe some take it a bit too far, but still.

hoodoof 13y ago
April Fools power in the old days was that the foolin wasn't expected. Nothing quite so ordinary as a thoroughly expected trick.
duaneb 13y ago
Geek humor? More like PR humor.
- gchokov 13y ago
  Exactly.
  - nikhilio 13y ago
    Chemtrails.
middleclick 13y ago
Except it is not funny at all and annoying TBH.
jafaku 13y ago
More like American humor/tradition. Try to keep it within your borders, because in the rest of the world this is a normal business day.

codecondo 13y ago

I'm with you man, but then again - I'm busy with doing some actual work, and the pranks that I do encounter are either from Google or a mindless click on a link, few times at most. We should be allowed to have fun, but this is hardly funny - it's painful.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

> It seems every single company and publication that communicates via the web has a corporate communications department or something that thinks it's a corporate priority to come out with something for April Fools. It's not really the lameness of April Fools Day, it's the lameness of internet businesses, social media marketing, or marketers and salesmen in general. They need to take over, trivialize, devaluate and destroy every thing that becomes special in society, in hope to get some additional sales. I also don't know how to solve this, but April Fools Day is only a more visible than usual demonstration of a problem that happens every single day.

jessieplk 13y ago
What if April Fool's jokes were actually funny ... I think half the annoyance is most of the time, unfunny people reveal themselves on this day.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- devolute 13y ago
  It's not possible to be genuinely funny when the real objective is defined by traffic and 'clout' metrics.
mattgreenrocks 13y ago
Yep, this is it. Neutered culture intended for mass consumption, right down to the utterly safe, whimsical April Fool's Day gag -- "wow, $CORP is so random!"
- 5fs3 13y ago
  An April Fool gag, even if carried out by a corp can be funny if it is truly random. I got fooled by the BigCorp I contract to when they put up a makeshift sign up asking us to consider covering our faces, because the parking had been fumigated ("although we expect it to be safe"). It played right into our prejudices about the declining health and safety culture in my country. The problem, in my opinion, with gags like Google's is that they are utterly predictable. They are safe, and have no "edge" - which is sensible, since they don't want to alienate customers, but utterly fail as jokes.

FatalLogic 13y ago

20 years ago, the average person was exposed to a handful of media channels. So, if they each produced one April Fools gag, they wouldn't have been annoying. Now, our media diet consists of hundreds of channels, sites and blogs, and it seems like every single one of them does an April Fools gag The result is tired, formulaic humor, repeated ad nauseam.

S_A_P 13y ago

This is obviously an April Fools Day joke. Well played, sir/madam...

gadders 13y ago

This is the second post about how people don't like April Fools Day. Are we replacing the actual April Fool jokes with posts moaning about them? I'm not sure that's much of an improvement.

duaneb 13y ago
Well, at least we aren't being sold anything!
- helium 13y ago
  Not yet. Give it some time.
  - actionscripted 13y ago
    http://foolsblocker.io http://foolsblocker.io
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
I saw a poster like this yesterday: "Change it, Avoid it, Accept it. Complaining is just victimizing yourself."
- iamdave 13y ago
  I call bullshit to the highest rank on that line. A complaint gets eyeballs on the problem, a complaint opens ears to the problem. Complaining is not whining. Complaining is not furtive. Complaining is speaking up.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Hm. Proposing reasonable alternatives is speaking up. Suggesting changes to the process opens ears to the problem. Complaining is whining, unproductive and corrosive to discussion. I call BS on the attitude that complaining is really a public service, that its done with the highest motives. Its done to vent, to gain sympathy, to feel better. Not to help.

carlob 13y ago

> How are we going to attract and recruit the best engineers unless we've got a reputation for the very best and most foolish April Fools trickery? I would actually discourage anyone from taking a job from any company that takes April Fools too seriously. Having to put in extra hours to get the April Fools out in time is the only thing that's more soul-crushing than the stupid corporate joke itself.

alandarev 13y ago
Spending some time to actually raise the mood of your clients is a no-go place for you? I assume your preference is to work for a no-emotion company 100% dedicated to the product, and a casual chit-chat is a strong NO policy. The question is whether a joke is funny and made you smile of course.
- carlob 13y ago
  You're reading stuff that clearly wasn't in my comment. I just said I didn't want to spend extra hours on something that is just a one day joke when I have proper bugs to fix.

Hawkee 13y ago

I used to be into online retail sales before I got fed up with all the money grubbing. It was all about Black Friday and if you weren't ready with a major production by then or at least Cyber Monday you'd miss the boat on a huge influx of potential revenue. If your Black Friday effort went viral you'd be riding the gravy train all holiday season. I get the sense April Fools has become the Black Friday of social media. If your joke goes viral you've got a huge opportunity for viewership and brand awareness. No thank you. My site doesn't celebrate any "holiday".

ivanhoe 13y ago

my thoughts exactly... you can't make a good prank anymore when it has become a "PR must" to publish one

mavroprovato 13y ago

Simple, don't read the news today. Really, it's just one day. You don't have a huge problem to solve.

laoba 13y ago
I agree with this. Seriously, it's just one day: Have some fun or let the others enjoy their fun.. I guess this is a first world problem

unfamiliar 13y ago

>I have a sense of humor. Really I do. I just don't find being pounded with systematic absurdity for an entire day every year as being very funny. I don't know why its so funny to think of you getting irritated by this, but it is.

riffraff 13y ago

I remember plenty of april fool's jokes on the radio and on TV. I think your problem is just that on the internet you are just exposed to a lot more of them.

onion2k 13y ago

If your hypothesis is correct and the reason that April Fool's jokes are lame is because there's one day dedicated to them every year, "an entire day every year", then a rational proposal for a solution would be for companies to put random funny things out more often. If we had a "Fool's Day" every month then there wouldn't be such a shock, and they'd start to be something enjoyable rather than laboured. Additionally, we'd need people to make them, so employment would increase, and people could sell merchandise promoting the best jokes, services to quantify what's funny, and so on, so there'd be business opportunities created too. This could be the start of a whole new industry.

hoodoof 13y ago
I think people who are good at being funny are the ones who should do the job of being funny.
- nikhilio 13y ago
  Oh dear god. I hope I never have the misfortune of working with you.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> rational proposal for a solution would be for companies to put random funny things out more often The best way would be if they put those funny things at random, i.e. not on a specified date known by everyone in advance. But IMO the root of the problem is not the day, it's that 'being funny' is not a terminal goal for companies. They make jokes to drive sales/traffic, whereas humour is something that has to be done for its own sake. This is the same difference I think makes SpaceX and Tesla so awesome compared to others - because going to space and electrifying transport for humanity's good are terminal goals for Musk, and not - like with most businesses - proxies for making money (i.e. a company would stop doing what it's doing and start selling useless widgets if it paid more).

jedicoffee 13y ago

Yea, I hate fun!

mdmarra 13y ago

But there are unicorns on Stack Overflow.

beobab 13y ago
And I spent far too long "mining" unicorn coins...
Theodores 13y ago
...they are great and I like what you can buy with them. However... They are a 'joke' in the broadest sense of the word, but not a joke. I am not 'fooled'. A true April Fool's Day joke is about pulling the wool over someone's eyes in such a way that they really do not know if it is true or not.
mhurron 13y ago
The only decent thing on the internet I've seen on April 1 was when Slashdot went OMGPONIES! That was just silly funny. Then they ruined it with their stream of fake shitty joke news. I think next year I'm going to take the advice posted by someone else here and just take April 1 off. I'll just spend the day playing games or something else away from anything other people are doing.

dangoor 13y ago

Some of the April Fools jokes are quite funny and some of ThinkGeek's in particular actually turn into real products. I could imagine this one becoming real: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/1ba1/?pfm=af14_homepage_Featured_4_1ba1 http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/1ba1/?pfm=af14_homepage_Fea... Sure, it's silly... but it's fun.

hnal943 13y ago
It kind of underlines the point though - most of these joke products aren't any more ridiculous than their real products. Is that really a joke?

cessor 13y ago

I totally agree with you. April 1st renders my local, personal experience of the internet completely useless. This goes on almost for a week, because people will repost the clever 'jokes' for a couple of days. April fools day on the internet is, as it feels to me, a Marketing Department Slack-Off Day. Every company feels they have to contribute, because the others are doing it. Some tech sites will do the same with ridiculous stuff. 04/1/14: Python 2.8 to lose the GIL. HAHAHAHAHAHA DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?! It doesn't even make sense. I would like to point out that this issue extends to other, especially North American happenings. As soon as Haloween, the super bowl or "the Oscars" are up, the internet becomes almost unusable because all the sites with user-"shared" (let's be honest, it is rarely really generated by them) content have no other topics and half of the news sites appear to have nothing better to do then to comment on the obvious real life events; even worse, the European news sites will start commenting on the American stuff as well. It is times like this when I get out old 90's PC Single Player games just to be away from people for a while. I have the dumbest sense of humor and will laugh about almost anything but April 1st is just gear-grindingly annoying...

hywel 13y ago

StackOverflow unicoins are sort of fine with me because I can still use the site. But up until midday php.net was rotating every single documentation page which was hyper-annoying.

lukasm 13y ago

This is most likely joke, but there is nothing more uncool that trying be cool very hard. Especially, these american style campaigns. So off-putting.

jedrek 13y ago

April Fools' Day is amateur hour for people who aren't funny the other 364 days of the year. It's much like New Year's Eve for people who don't party or Valentine's Day for people who aren't romantic. They feel like they have to do this on this exact day, which of course leads to an embarrassing situation for everybody.

crusso 13y ago
Boom! You nailed it. It's the social expectation to do something and BE something that is an excuse for people without those natural tendencies to act out. Out of their comfort zone, feeling social force to try to be funny, they overextend themselves in obvious ways.
michaelcampbell 13y ago
> April Fools' Day is amateur hour for people who aren't funny the other 364 days of the year. I'm keeping this in my "quotable quotes" file - do you have a preferred attribution, or is "jedrek" sufficient?
- jedrek 13y ago
  jedrek/jędrek is sufficient
matznerd 13y ago
I don't know that I agree with this. I do like your analogies, especially the Valentines Day one for people who aren't romantic the rest of the year, but companies do have to act serious most of the time. April fools feels like the day they can "let their hair down" and be a little goofy. I think you can see some of the culture of the company exposed in that moment, and I like that.
snowwrestler 13y ago
All of these holidays are also amateur hour for people who view themselves as intellectual social critics--people like the OP. I contend there are worse things that businesses can do with their time than think up bad jokes. Let's keep some perspective here, people.

danielweber 13y ago

Don't forget to spend all day of the Super Bowl telling everyone on the Internet how you don't watch football.

jafaku 13y ago
Except we didn't subscribe to the LameJokes channel, so why should we receive jokes instead of whatever the channel was supposed to give us? You should realize that this is the internet, not America, and April's Fool is an American tradition.
- dgabriel 13y ago
  This is completely incorrect. It's celebrated widely in European countries & elsewhere. April Fools didn't even start in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day
  - jafaku 13y ago
    It's not celebrated in Asia, Africa, South America, and in most European countries. Probably your propagandized media and education system lead you to think that everyone celebrates American holidays.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  FWIW, Wikipedia has good looking sources putting the April Fools tradition long before America [0]. I think it's safe to say it's a Western tradition at the very least. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day#Origins

tobi2006 13y ago

The only thing that is much worse are spam emails claiming "Our prices are so low that they look like an April Fools joke, but we're serious!"

kraag22 13y ago

I just don't read news on April 1. Sometimes is really hard to decide what is joke and what is true.

hamax 13y ago

Besides spending 15 minutes searching for pokemons and 5 minutes enjoying the htc gluuv joke, this is just a normal day for me. I really don't see anything to be mad about.

vermontdevil 13y ago

It's been downhill since BBC aired the spaghetti tree.

pessimizer 13y ago

You'll find, if you put your head down and keep working, that it's over within 24 hours. Unlike Halloween and Christmas, which keep pounding nails into my head from about a month or two before they occur to about two weeks after they're over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiySknl9zs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiySknl9zs0

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

Well, I guess we've reached the ultimate in meta: an internet rant about internet humor. Next I guess somebody should parody this? Then a rant about the parody? Seriously, the internet is full of annoying things, and April Fool's, where folks actually try to have fun with each other, is what's bugging you? I'd place "having to be upset about something 24/7" as much higher on the list than a bunch of bone-headed PR stuff. I'm really happy HN is mostly humor-free. PG made a smart move there. But one day a year where companies compete to be funny? I can think of a million other things to fret about. Seriously. Trust me, somehow you'll live through it. A day without Erlang innards will leave you mostly scar-free.

hnal943 13y ago
DogeRant 2048

Argorak 13y ago

Well, people think they cannot miss out and need to do it - because their competitor does it. You'll see the same with world cup advertisement in a few months. Most of it is crap, rising above the crowd is hard. On the other hand, there are some clever things that sound like jokes, but are not: http://stroopwafel.me/ http://stroopwafel.me/ Well, I for my part have my share of fun.

canvia 13y ago
I would like to see an ad that is just plain text "We donated the $250k production budget for this ad to Haiti" and a logo. That is far more likely to make me give a company my business than any stupid pointless video clip.

marknutter 13y ago

I agree 100%. I have long considered April Fools Day as National Do-Not-Use-The-Internet Day, and I generally treat it as such.

unreal37 13y ago
Not doing very well at that I see. :)

jaimebuelta 13y ago

"This is the day to be mandatorily funny. Go out there and do something funny. That's an order"

snowwrestler 13y ago
In the grand scheme of bad orders throughout history, I'm having trouble getting upset about this one.

_superposition_ 13y ago

This is a joke, right?

hawleyal 13y ago

It's just marketing and advertising.

TeeWEE 13y ago

If you dont like it, dont spend your energy and attention onto it. As a response: Lots of people do like it, creating those jokes, and cunsomers reading those jokes. Its (almost) free publicity. Get over it

therobot24 13y ago
seriously, these people complaining about april fools are probably the ones telling others to change the station if they don't like the violence from their favorite breaking bad characters, yet can't follow their own advice when it comes to the internet

cpfohl 13y ago

I enjoy it.

mapt 13y ago

If we could ignore April Fools Day and treat it as any other, that would be fine. If we could dismiss anything we hear on April Fools Day and treat it as a lost day in the news cycle, that would also be fine. But we're in a situation where 90% of news is everyday pablum, 9% is AFD BS, and 1% is the creation of GMail, changing the Internet forever.

mathattack 13y ago

Very few come up with something that is both audacious enough to be interesting, and realistic enough to pull people in. Usually it's either too pedestrian to be funny, or not realistic enough to catch the spirit of fooling people. But that 1 in 100 is enough to keep the tradition going.

alvarosm 13y ago

I don't wate my time reading the news on April 1. It's pathetic.

sjs382 13y ago

> I have a sense of humor. Really I do. The problem is that very few of the jokes that any of these companies pull are even a little humorous. There have been a few funny/clever ones, but they're the 1%.

matznerd 13y ago
We'll see what comes out this year, but I generally think there is always at least a few smirk/smile inducing pranks every year. Where when you read the headline, there is at least a half-second where your mind believes it...
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Famous guy: '99% of Everything is crap'. So jokes are included in that I guess.

rnernento 13y ago

"I have a sense of humor. Really I do." Are you sure? I think you're taking yourself and the internet a little too seriously. If the jokes aren't funny don't laugh and don't click. If it really bugs you go ahead and spend a day without reading news on the internet, you'll survive, I promise. April Fools is interesting on the internet because attention is rewarded and that encourages companies to put real effort into silliness. It's okay to be silly sometimes, it's actually important. The fact of that a company like Google still has a sense of humor about itself renews my faith in them a little bit. Look at Blizzard's April fools: http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/games/outcasts/ http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/games/outcasts/ The credit card slots in the controller to make for easier microtransactions. With the new business models they're using for Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm it's actually pretty funny. The fact that they're acknowledging it softens me to them even just a little bit. Some of us look forward to April Fools on the internet, maybe the jokes are lame but the effort makes the event interesting.

mbillie1 13y ago
> It's okay to be silly sometimes, it's actually important. I agree with this entirely, but I think the argument here is that none of these corporate April Fool's jokes are silly, or funny, or clever, or interesting. They're the minimum effort to justify being a "gag" in order to farm page hits. Honestly, when was the last April Fool's prank that "got you" or made you laugh?
- rnernento 13y ago
  Blizzard's made me laugh. I think the Google Pokemon map was funny. The celebrity photobombs on the front page of Google. These are nerds making these not standup comedians. Pretty much every internet April Fools gag is funnier than SNL these days...
  - npsimons 13y ago
    Pretty much every internet April Fools gag is funnier than SNL these days... That's a really low bar to hurdle.

imgabe 13y ago

Is this post an April Fools joke? I cannot imagine anyone actually getting this bent out of shape about one day of sometimes lame jokes. The lameness is "crushing"? Really? If something this inconsequential affects you this much I hope you don't ever encounter a real issue.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

parennoob 13y ago

Matt Cutts had the perfect saying on this one. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/450741899146440704 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/450741899146440704 "Hate April Fools? Consider taking a 24 hour offline holiday instead of telling everyone over and over how much you hate April Fools." [I'm going to take his advice and get off HN for the rest of the day.]

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

Are you being treated for that depression? Do you kick puppies and holler at children too? Does it really cost you anything, anything at all to ignore a lame joke?

alco 13y ago

Is it so difficult for you to spend one day in a year away from the Internet to avoid the "lameness" that irritates you?

TallboyOne 13y ago

Wow, you sound incredibly bitter... it's one day out of the entire year... How about you unbunch your panties, close your computer and go outside for a day if it really bothers you so much. And, I realize HN is all adding to the conversation - that's me adding to the conversation with actual, non-sarcastic advice. Pretty blown away at why this deserves an entire thread.

nathanvanfleet 13y ago

You don't like cold and cynical companies trying to appear funny and relatable? That's an American tradition as old as Mickey Mouse. The anti-Semitic union busting one.

whiskeySix 13y ago

Ugh, get over yourself.

jkmcf 13y ago

April Fools jokes are only truly funny when they are unexpected, exceptionally clever, and well implemented.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

a3n 13y ago

Today is a good day for a walk.

nikhilio 13y ago

Why don't you have some fun, instead of being that god awful internet pedant that thrives off hating on the way other people do every little thing. Go back to posting about why you think some obscure javascript library is superior to the rest - get that feeling of enlightenment somewhere else instead of hating on people who are having harmless fun. God I hate hacker news.

dwc 13y ago

At the office, a few people might do gags, and maybe one is really good and sucks you in totally. That's funny. No, it's awesome to get punked to that degree even when you were looking out for it! On the net it's (become) unbearable, because it's a solid wall. News, thoughtful articles, social media are so full of AFD stuff that the net is almost worthless[1]. I.e., it doesn't scale. I don't mind being punked. I don't mind it a few times in the same day. When the whole day is a never ending stream of it, it becomes tiresome and irritating. Footnote: 1. This is substantially different from, say, the Super Bowl. If I'm not interested in the Super Bowl I just skim past it. But AFD pranks are meant to look plausible. In an alternate universe "Facebook buys Oculus" is an AFD prank instead of real. So you can't skim over them.

njharman 13y ago

Today is my most productive day. Cause I just don't have the will to figure out if "news" stories are real or 4/1. So, I don't read HN or Reddit or anything. (I didn't realize it was april 1st until seeing this.) Like the redis Hyperloglog? is it a joke, is it real? Fuck if I'm wasting my time to figure out. If it's real it will be still be talked about next week and I'll learn about then. Until tomorrow, Norm out!

AznHisoka 13y ago

Actually, HN today is filled with almost no April fools stories. I tried looking, there's maybe 1.. 2?

ianstallings 13y ago

Here's how to "solve" this problem - grow up and ignore things you don't like.

djunod 13y ago

A chance for every NonCreativeEntity to feel special.

api 13y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu7vySQbgXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu7vySQbgXI

gtirloni 13y ago

If you want to read anything on the Internet, April 1 is a very exhausting day due to all the filtering you have to do. You waste time reading the minimum necessary to detect if it's a joke or not and move to the next thing (hoping it's not). It's better to just ignore the whole thing. If a company/person/group decides to release something really cool on April 1, too bad... I won't be paying attention.

dragontamer 13y ago

Lame jokes make it easier for the non-creative to participate in the April Fools process. Not everyone can make a good joke. And those who are bad at making pranks are given the opportunity to stretch out beyond their comfort zone.

carlisle_ 13y ago

I actually just brought this up with my coworkers yesterday. I don't like april fools anymore because all the pranks people pull are completely uninspired and the entire day I have to ask myself "is this an april fool's gag?" And if you fall prey to a "prank" it's like, "wow you really got me great job" and that's it.

stcredzero 13y ago

How about a "holiday filter" app? Such an app could enable users to flag "insipid holiday content" which would cause it to be hidden. This could be implemented as a browser extension. In fact, you could even aggregate the information and sell it to companies, and people would even be happy to know that companies are paying to be told they're being annoying.

dsjoerg 13y ago

You are visiting the wrong websites, then.

kyro 13y ago

I want to thank most of you for making this one of the funniest threads I've seen on HN. Your theories as to why corporations and the people around us succumb to societal pressures pushing them to take on disingenuous facades of unfunny silliness for profit and attention are deeply profound -- April Fools!

patnos 13y ago

If you're looking for a non big name joke today, here's a pretty hilarious(and not to mention incredibly controversial) one: http://megansmatch.com/ http://megansmatch.com/

elefonts 13y ago

I am viewing this thread Emojified.

elefonts 13y ago

I am viewing this thread Emojified.

courtf 13y ago

What cruel fates conspire to tease man with this fool's existence? The solemnity of the grave seems a comfort when faced with the endless torments of a life of gaiety. If only the dead could speak aloud their regrets, that we might continue our sermons long past the crumbling of the mount. Tis but a season's breadth afore yet 'nother trial befalls the stoic knights of castle hacker. Stay true in your labors, lest mirth's foul hand stir your mind to thoughts impure and sundry! Death's grip closes, and time is short, tary not along the path but stride through and bask in the righteous exultations levied upon the earnest and forthright! Down with the usurper, that lowly succubus whose poisonous impositions distract the holy from their cause!

Workaphobia 13y ago

> "How are we going to attract and recruit the best engineers unless we've got a reputation for the very best and most foolish April Fools trickery?" You say that sarcastically, but I see that as a legitimate concern. Why miss out on a great opportunity to make a connection with thousands of users who otherwise wouldn't see any uniqueness or individuality to what you do? And the only risk is that they'd piss off someone with a corny joke. That said, I sympathize. I enjoy jokes, but I'd like to read real news too.

corwinstephen 13y ago

Little do we know, this entire post is an April Fools joke. Better not agree with the guy, or you're in for a world of trouble tomorrow!

codezero 13y ago

Build an April Fools' API that allows crowdsourced contributions and a browser plugin to flag fake URLs and links.

bubbleRefuge 13y ago

So I heard on NPR this morning that San Mateo County was experiencing snow, sleet, and hail at the higher elevations on California 35 and that snow plows were dispatched. Can't tell if that is true or not due to April fools day + the fact that weather is unseasonably cold and rainy last few days. Very lame if its AFD joke.

dang 13y ago

I wonder if everyone here knows that we had a rather animated thread about this last night, after I asked people to flag April Fools' gags off the front page (and then amended it to say lame April Fools' gags): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506793 These threads are still open for discussion, but I'm going to downweight this one now, since it's been on the front page a long time and nothing new is likely to emerge from it. I applied the exact same penalty to my own post last night. HN doesn't avoid humor, but it does eschew lame humor as part of eschewing lameness in general. Obviously, people's opinions about what's lame and what's funny differ wildly.

kevrone 13y ago

This whole thread amounts to: "I like a thing" vs "I don't like a thing". How can people really believe they have meaningful opinions about something so innocuous.

peterwwillis 13y ago

This guy just got more than double his total karma over a 1000 day period for whining about April Fool's day. If that's not funny, I don't know what is.

_zen 13y ago

You know when people say "don't be that guy"? You're being that guy.

argumentum 13y ago

When Google first started doing this, it was great. A welcome respite from our expectations of corporate monotony. Plus, it was genuinely unexpected, and therefore more funny. Now that every company has to do something, or risk being labeled uncool by users/potential recruits, the humor seems forced (and therefore less funny). Perhaps the best April Fools Prank Google could pull now would be to treat this day like any other. Imagine the irony of billions of people waiting to be "surprised", anticipation slowly increasing throughout the day, wild speculation about any normal announcement that Google makes. Now that would be funny.

hoodoof 13y ago
No April Fools tricks? That's a very big risk for a company the size of Google to take.

evanwolf 13y ago

Wait a day. It gets better.

treistab2 13y ago

-1

sedds 13y ago

I think April Fool's day internet pranks may be one of the easiest way for companies to maintain corporate whimsy and allow their employee's to create something momentarily off their grinding path.

Houshalter 13y ago

Can you give some examples? The only april fools things I saw was reddit's webcam thing which I thought was great, and an icon on the corner of youtube which went to a great parody video mocking memes. I later found out about Kaggle's Random Number Challenge which I thought was funny.