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The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.

news.ycombinator.com

101–110 of 175 posts

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

#101
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!

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

#102
post #52

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?

Simple - stop giving them your attention. If no one paid attention to it, it wouldn't work. If it didn't work, no rational management would foot the bill for it.

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

#103

"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…

> 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?

I'd rather them make jokes and try to make me laugh to "farm" page hits rather than publish click-bait headlines that lead to idiotic articles. At least we're all in on the joke on April Fools.

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

#104
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…

Well, hopefully the engineering team is taking part too. This can be used for fun company culture AND marketing.

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

#105
post #36
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…

This. Every single holiday. Is The Same. Problem.

Here here! Contrived holidays => corporate profit. What isn't contrived these days? But I guess many of us work at these places so...

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

#106
post #24
post #23

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. Additional…

I think people who are good at being funny are the ones who should do the job of being funny.

Oh dear god. I hope I never have the misfortune of working with you.

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

#107
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.

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

#108

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?

I'd rather them make jokes and try to make me laugh to "farm" page hits rather than publish click-bait headlines that lead to idiotic articles. At least we're all in on the joke on April Fools.

I don't know that I agree - I find really bad humor to be sometimes worse than no humor.

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

#109
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…

See also: Christmas.

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

#110
post #58

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

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
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