When the unfunny forget!
I have very mixed feelings about April Fools' Day - I love a good joke, but I really hate a lot of April Fools jokes. It seems to be an excuse to do something "zany", and the Internet is just encouraging people to do it beyond their circle of friends which is when it gets extra painful. The problem is the craze for user-generated content and self-promotion, fueled by the ego-boosting of trying to find every single joke around to prove how smart you are. It's not a good combination, really it isn't.
The whole reason we have all this guff is we now have so many community sites that supposedly filter out the good and bad content for us, when in actual fact it's just a school popularity contest. That means the same old names can make any old useless joke and the crowds will laugh because you laugh at the cool kids' jokes, and some gems disappear under the surface because you don't laugh at the new kids' jokes. Still, we can always rely on some old favourites like Google with CADIE, although the punchline is really CADIE's blog (I'd love to have witnessed the discussion about making that page) and 3D web browsing, or their Australian office who invented the gBall (you know it's fake, it's not a beta).
The Guardian manage a very impressive showing by changing to Twitter, including the biggest shock of the day by taking such a blatant swipe with:
the Daily Mail recently pioneered an iPhone application providing users with a one-click facility for reporting suspicious behaviour by migrants or gays.
Ouch! I expect that kinda jibe from many people but a business? I'm both impressed and surprised.
The BBC normally manage to make me laugh but apparently this year news is too bizarre. On landing on the page my first thought was that Shearer managing Newcastle was the big joke, it's about as far-fetched as they come (if a tad obscure for non-football readers), but apparently true? Not the day to announce something so implausible chaps. Checking the headlines two lept out as contenders; firstly President Obama's security bubble which is obviously some hilarious bullet-proof hamster ball he's rolling around in right? Nope, that means it must be Earth population 'exceeds limits', some hilarious report on how the Isle Of Wight will sink under all these people or something right? Wrong again. Wow, the truth is stranger than fiction on the BBC today.
Luckily BMW prove Germans do have a sense of humour with another of their famous efforts. Not their strongest it must be said but magnetic towing deserves a mention just because BMW are regular April Fools wags, and like their cars they do attention to detail with the man to email, Uve Vollenvorit (say it slowly).
ThinkGeek take a similar love of detail with their new stock today. Personally I find it a little sad that the Tauntaun sleeping bag won't be around, and I'd love some Squeez Bacon, although I don't have enough USB ports for the pet rock.
Away from the big guns things get worse quickly. My mum wouldn't get half the ThinkGeek jokes but she'd understand some, however when I'm confronted with local community jokes being paraded around like the funniest thing since "Who's on first" I quickly shut down. I also dislike jokes which will vanish so I'm ignoring the FreeBSD box infected with Conficker, but I will pimp (pun unintended) this gem - compulsory pole dancing lessons in Singapore.