Earlier quoted context omitted.
Geek humor? More like PR humor.
Exactly.
Chemtrails.
The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
151–160 of 175 posts
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#152Earlier 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...
Pokemon and other Google's "jokes" were just pathetic. Apparently, typical Googler has a sense of humour of a 5 years old.
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#153April 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.
It's a completely normal human reaction. If something annoys you, you often have an urge to share that.
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Pokemon and other Google's "jokes" were just pathetic. Apparently, typical Googler has a sense of humour of a 5 years old.
you, sir, appear have the chubby fingers of a five year-old
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#155Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're missing the feedback loop. Marketers will keep trying stuff until they find something we pay attention to. And they will destroy its specialness in the process.
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#157> 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…
I agree with all your points, except for the generalisation on marketers and salespeople. Not all of them are like car salesmen or self proclaimed marketing gurus. Some really care about the product they are selling and the people they are selling to. I am a CTO in a startup, and everyday I'm either selling an idea within the company, or selling a product to customers. All this back and forth produces great insights…
> Instead of bashing, we should embrace these disciplines.
I'm happy to embrace honest selling, but that seems to be a completely different mindset than most of the sales I saw. If your product is really good and provides value to the customer (instead of trying to extract value out of a customer), then the salesman/marketer has an easier job in 'conquering our hearts', and doesn't need to resort to mental hacks or things that are plainly annoying. I'm happy to pay more for such a product, sold by honest people.
What's your startup, by the way? :).
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#158You know when people say "don't be that guy"?
You're being that guy.
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw a poster like this yesterday: "Change it, Avoid it, Accept it. Complaining is just victimizing yourself."
I call bullshit to the highest rank on that line. A complaint gets eyeballs on the problem, a complaint opens ears to the problem. Complaining is not whining . Complaining is not furtive. Complaining is speaking up.
Hm. Proposing reasonable alternatives is speaking up. Suggesting changes to the process opens ears to the problem.
Complaining is whining, unproductive and corrosive to discussion.
I call BS on the attitude that complaining is really a public service, that its done with the highest motives. Its done to vent, to gain sympathy, to feel better. Not to help.
Re: The crushing lameness of April Fools Day on the Internet.
#160> 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…
I have to agree with you on many cases — but I would take exception for the most successful attempts, namely this year: Google Maps’ Pokemon hunt, and a couple others.
When operated by communication offices with little contact with the company’s culture, like most attempt, it falls flat. Otherwise, those can be very representative of a company’s culture, and I would recommend checking their last prank before applying to a company (if you expect to have the luxury to choose). It you think it’s funny, edgy, or demonstrate an expertise, than yes, you might be on track.
A couple of GMail’s pranks have been illustrative of that: creepy to people without knowledge of databases, yet funny because obviously non-scalable to people familiar with large on-line structure.
Humour is by far the most revealing element of anyone’s culture, and that’s why I like questions like ‘Tell me a joke’ during interviews — although, to be honest, I’ve only asked it when being the interviewee.