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Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 94 posts

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#71
There are creative positive pranks though, that can give people a boost or atleast a smile.

I like the Michael Carbonaro/Just For Laugh Gags variety. That kind of positive humor and creativity is helpful during crisis. You can see the effect it has on people in the youtube comments.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#72
post #23

I find this a mean-spirited, depressing and (ironically) tone-deaf idea. 1. People need humour in challenging moments 2. Black comedy and gallows humour can lift the spirit at even the worst of times 3. As much of the northern hemisphere enters spring we could collectively do with a fillip to jolt us into a more optimistic mindset The only value in this proposal I see is that if you are working on a tedious April Foo…

I agree with you, but in agreement with OP, April Fool jokes just aren't funny. They're inherently mean. You can be funny without tricking someone, and everyone is already on an emotional knifepoint at the moment.

I kinda hate April fools in any case. I'd be up for banning it indefinitely going forward.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#73
April fools can be very fun. My mom convinced my two younger brothers once they were moving to Spain and would leave the house in our country to be run by them. They called friends and family, completely forgot it was April 1st.

On the other hand I have yet to encounter a coporate HR approved April Fools that have me a laugh.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#74

The best April Fools joke I can remember was an anti-joke, when Google announced Gmail on the 1st of April. They were promising what were then unbelievably generous allowances and no one could agree on whether they were serious or not.

parrot VM: initially a joke until someone twigged that a dynamic-lang runtime to compete with .Net & JRE wasn't so absurd.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but in agreement with OP, April Fool jokes just aren't funny. They're inherently mean. You can be funny without tricking someone, and everyone is already on an emotional knifepoint at the moment.

I agree. I haven’t found a single April fools prank funny in years. It’s just an annoying day where even more fake news is passed of as fact only this time tolerated by all because lols. In the past few years I’ve tried to simply stay offline for the day. Joke all you like if that helps you stay sane through the pandemic, but leave those who don’t wish to out of it and don’t play pranks on people.

While they rarely hit the mark being funny, I still find that AF projects can be fun, and the ones by bigger companies don't seriously intend to prank people beyond the standard format of passing off creative writing in a factual format.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#76
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is an instant recipe for being downvoted. :-(

As it should. Empty comments posted for the giggles of author (and maybe a few others) would just add too much spam. Look at what reddit grew into, you have templates of comments and meta comments everywhere, very low quality content.

Reddit still has plenty of high quality content, even with the jokes and meta-commentary. And much of the humorless content on HN isn't exactly high quality.

Indeed, the humorlessness of this place tends to encourage tedious pedantry and vindictive sniping.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I haven’t found a single April fools prank funny in years. It’s just an annoying day where even more fake news is passed of as fact only this time tolerated by all because lols. In the past few years I’ve tried to simply stay offline for the day. Joke all you like if that helps you stay sane through the pandemic, but leave those who don’t wish to out of it and don’t play pranks on people.

While they rarely hit the mark being funny, I still find that AF projects can be fun, and the ones by bigger companies don't seriously intend to prank people beyond the standard format of passing off creative writing in a factual format.

Sure, and many of the ones like Google’s, which are just fun things you wouldn’t normally expect, but aren’t so much pranks or anything, are totally ok. It’s the pranks, fake news and what not that’s not amusing or funny.

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#78
post #16

Personally I feel I am desperate for some humour in the current climate. I'm going into my birthday tomorrow isolated and in a few days would greatly appreciate a chuckle. Go for it.

Happy birthday buddy! Here's a joke for you: > Two elephants were skydiving > and suddenly one gets a > Cinnabon bun in the eye. I have to admit this doesn't seem very funny at all, but someone told me this and I couldn't stop laughing. Then again, I was twelve at the time. :o) Hope you have a great birthday, despite the times!

I really don't get it.... My three favourite jokes from when I was twelve

* What is E.T. short for? Because he has little legs * How do you titilate and ocelot? Oscillate it's tit a lot. * What is Batman's favourite food? Toast - still don't get why that is funny but even now I laugh.

Thanks for reaching out!

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#79

Personally I feel I am desperate for some humour in the current climate. I'm going into my birthday tomorrow isolated and in a few days would greatly appreciate a chuckle. Go for it.

Want to make a Zoom meeting for your birthday? You can celebrate for 48 hours across all time zones!

Wow this sounds tempting. So far I have three friends who are planning a beer and Factorio session - they have even posted beer...

Re: Suggest HN: No April Fools this year

#80
post #76
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should. Empty comments posted for the giggles of author (and maybe a few others) would just add too much spam. Look at what reddit grew into, you have templates of comments and meta comments everywhere, very low quality content.

Reddit still has plenty of high quality content, even with the jokes and meta-commentary. And much of the humorless content on HN isn't exactly high quality. Indeed, the humorlessness of this place tends to encourage tedious pedantry and vindictive sniping.

Totally agree. I feel its too hard to strike a balance between the two.
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