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The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

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Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#91

Post by snowwrestler »

jedrek wrote: post #37

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.

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.

Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#92

Post by gyom »

jedrek wrote: post #37

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.

I think you've put your finger on something important, but I don't think that it's just a bad thing that leads to an "embarrassing situation for everybody".

Opportunities to act differently for one day of the year are more valuable than that. That way, you can explore a side of you without being "inconsistent" with your usual public self, or get to know a different side of other people.

Anyone can decide to dress up like a pirate on any given day, but most of will wait for Halloween to enjoy it.

Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#95

Post by snowwrestler »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

> 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 de…

What's more lame, a business trying to attract attention to itself with humor, or a person trying to attract attention to himself or herself by loudly proclaiming how above it all they are?

Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#96

Post by npsimons »

rnernento wrote: post #84
mbillie1 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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...

Pretty much every internet April Fools gag is funnier than SNL these days...

That's a really low bar to hurdle.

Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#98

Post by Neff »

pavlov wrote: post #21
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

> 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 de…

Even if we ignore the social impact of marketing, it's pretty sad when people who work in communications believe that they are only required to be original once a year. The original carnival days like "Feast of Fools" [0] were an outlet for subversive undercurrents in the otherwise immobile medieval societies. You could be Pope for a day, but you were still a beggar for the rest of your life and nothing would change…

> "I feel like my work has no meaning in this world, but at least today I get to pretend that I'm the one making the news."

So what you are saying is I should be pulling stupid pranks today...

Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#99

Post by nikhilio »

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.

Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

#100

Post by dwc »

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.

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