61–70 of 175 posts
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.
But that 1 in 100 is enough to keep the tradition going.
No. We should have fun. This is geek humor, maybe some take it a bit too far, but still.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would seem to be easier to break the cycle on the marketer's side because you're viewing the problem at the choke point where marketers are ostensibly in control - but really it's a systemic problem with people that would have to be fixed. Fix a couple of marketers and a couple of other marketers step in to fill the void. Plugging a couple of obvious holes in the dike does no good when the dike is fundamentally un…
I think you're right. So this leads to an obvious question: how do we fix the dike?
In general, the same way it's always done: years of social activism, patient stating and re-stating of your case to an uncaring public who is barely impacted by your position, possible civil disobedience (though I have no idea what form that would take in this context... Being told by our employer to roll out an April Fool's project and responding "No, it's a waste of our time and our customers' time, I'm not doing it" perhaps).
With regards to April Fool's: I wouldn't bother. It's a once-a-year annoyance, not nearly as disruptive as Christmas. If your goal is to encourage people to knock off nonsense, than I'd easily start with the pagan-holiday-cum-Christian-nativity-celebration-cum-marketing-extravaganza that we hold every December; it's far more disruptive to the economy and people's psychological well-being.
If you find April Fool's too annoying, take a personal day and tune out; go read a book, go on a walk, take the disruption of functional communication on the Internet as an opportunity to step back from the Internet. Use the opportunity to look around at the world outside the screen and see what needs improvement; maybe you'll come back on April 2nd inspired.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would seem to be easier to break the cycle on the marketer's side because you're viewing the problem at the choke point where marketers are ostensibly in control - but really it's a systemic problem with people that would have to be fixed. Fix a couple of marketers and a couple of other marketers step in to fill the void. Plugging a couple of obvious holes in the dike does no good when the dike is fundamentally un…
I think you're right. So this leads to an obvious question: how do we fix the dike?
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%.
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.
> 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.
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.