It's Just A Prank, Bro; aka, "Why April Fools Is My Least-Liked Day Of The Year" · 2:48am Apr 2nd, 2016
In which I be "that girl" and demonstrate my inability to "have fun".
April Fools Day, or "All Fools Day", is in itself a joke. The one day of the year where countless people make assholes and idiots of themselves for no other reason than to say "lol april fools I totally pranked ya" by the end of it. A day full of mean-spirited, tasteless pranks that serve only to make the one pulling them look and feel superior, and degrade, irritate, and upset countless others. Even by now, despite how everyone remarks about avoiding the internet for the day, or just treating basically everything as a joke and ignoring it, there are people that still somehow fall for these jokes. And most of the "jokes" are fuckin' awful. To the point where I physically cringe at the sight of them.
The sad thing is, people (and often major online companies) can get away with clever, witty pranks on this day. Something that people can laugh along with. Something relatively harmless, and doesn't inconvenience everyone, because it's a silly little distraction. Something fun. Funny, even. Hell, for as stupid and corny as it is, Pornhub renaming itself to Cornhub and showing nothing but pictures and videos of corn still managed to get a chuckle out of me.
Unfortunately, for every "fun" prank, there are at least a dozen or so dumb, idiotic, and just plain daft and incompetent ones. You hear about them all the time. Whether it's people pretending to be complete retards before turning around and shouting "APRIL FOOLS BITCHES" to zero positive response, to tasteless jokes serving more to annoy than actually be funny, it happens all the time. It's one thing to be a little silly, but it's another thing entirely to be annoying. Boring, even. It undermines the point of the day itself. I get that culture changes and evolves, but if this is the direction it's going, then I want off this damned ride, Mr. Bones.
Somewhat wisely, Fimfic looks to have decided not to undergo some batshit site-wide prank as they have in other years. (Beyond the almost ritualistic unbanning of Chuckward, I mean.) That's fine by me, considering the last couple "pranks" the site undertook have been... less than tasteful. I wonder how many people recall the fiasco that resulted when they made the "announcement" that the feature box would be altered to benefit authors with high follower counts and penalize those with low counts. Besides being in bad taste, they made the announcement hours before April Fools even started, and then the day after April Fools, after hundreds of Fimfic users had stewed for the entire day with uncertainty and salt, a post was made that prefaced everything with the words "the change is real"... whilst also stealthily sneaking in a line that revealed that is was all a fabrication in the middle of several blocks of text. You can guess which part the majority of people didn't read. Even when it was highlighted in-text after people still did not "get" the joke, and then finally flat-out added to the blog's title and outright stated that it was all a ruse, people still thought it was a genuine change, and the drama continued to flow for hours.
They also announced a fake ban on LoHAV fics, which I REALLY wanted to believe was real. (Bunch of fuckin' teases, I swear.)
Needless to say, after that shitshow in particular, I wouldn't be surprised if they were done with trying to pull one over on the Fimfic userbase now. Because not only will there be idiots that believe it (and start shit over it), but it causes a bunch of needless ruckus that I'm pretty sure staff and other, sane users really would not want to be dealing with. April Fools carries a stigma with it, now: You can't say anything on that day and expect to be taken seriously, and you can't make a joke without people getting angry at you for doing so, whether or not the joke was even any good. It makes this day the one day where your average everyday round of browsing becomes an inconvenience, rather than a pleasure. I thought the point of having fun was not to make someone want to punt their computer out of the nearest window, internet?
The main problem with these pranks is that, quite simply, the joke wears out its welcome. Quickly. You see the joke, laugh and/or roll your eyes, and want to move the fuck on. You inherently EXPECT the joke to happen, and just want to see it and be done with it. But, no; it's shit that you have to put up with all day long. The joke stops being funny for you, but because of the very nature of April Fools, the prank has to be perpetuated over the course of the entire day. Sometimes even before and after. Try as you might to ignore it, everywhere you look, it's always something else.
And it's bad enough when it's being shoved in your face. Equestria Daily is now the "Equality Inquirer", because fuck the fact that Starlight Glimmer's "equality" is long-since outdated bullshit, let's roll with it some more for laughs and put out some retarded "articles" pretending they were written by Starlight herself. Meanwhile, Derpibooru introduced a "premium" service, slapping watermarks over every damned image on the site and removing the view/download buttons for them on top of that -- a restriction that you have to go out of your way to view their "premium plan" then pretend to enable a "free trial" of the service just to turn the fuckin' bullshit "prank" off. And even THEN, after I left earlier today and then went back, the damn thing reset itself, so I had to re-enable the "free trial" AGAIN just to browse the site unimpeded.
News flash, guys: making your site actively harder to use for the sake of a dumb gag? Not fun.
And you know what? That's another thing that pisses me off. When I can't even opt to ignore the stupid "pranks" these people try to pull. For as dumb as YouTube's "prank" this year is, at least it's something out of the way, unobtrusive, and barely noticeable if you aren't really looking for it. But beyond the pranks themselves, many of which are either boring, unfunny, or just plain mean-spirited... it's the one day where, if you plan on doing anything remotely serious on the internet, today is just "not the day", apparently. It's no time to be a goddamn adult, it seems. No, fuck that. Today is the day we act like a bunch of damn children.
Last year, Foal Free Press ran a memorial post on a teenager the committed suicide by jumping in front of a train. It was even worded seriously, and rather maturely, considering the publication that made it. The timing was intentional, I'm told, and the reaction was... expected. Nothing about it screamed "offensive". Yet, people took offense, anyway. "This is sickening!" "Why would do this on this day in particular, you insensitive fucks?" Were it posted on any other day, it would have been fuckin' fine to do so. No one would have minded. But this one, arbitrary day in particular? Nope, can't have it. Can't be mature on the day of dumb, after all. It's really quite interesting, actually, to see things being said or announced on this day, with people assuming it to be a joke, only to find out it's actually dead serious. Makes me wonder if they even bother posting obituaries today, or just put them off until tomorrow.
What even is about today that inspires people to be so dumb? I get that's the idea of the "fool" part, but I hardly see how it could ever be justified. Being witty and clever is fine. Hell, being that on any day is more than fine. Being dumb for the sake of dumb on one arbitrary day? I can't understand it. I hate it. I hate it because I can't understand it. It's not fun, for me. There's nothing about playing stupid or acting like a dumbass that appeals to me in the slightest. That's not to say that I hate everything about this day, because people do manage to get some particularly clever ruses in, but for the most part... it's just bad. Cancerous, even. Bunch of "me too" idiots who jump in on the ride, just to try and copy the (unfunny) pranks of others for the sake of eliciting lulz and attention, and being exponentially worse at it. It's almost impressive, in a way.
"Lol it's just a joke, gurl. Don't be such a buzzkill!"
No. Fuck you. I'll kill as much of your buzz as I damn well please, because it's stupid. I really hate to have to step up to bat as one of those "stop having fun" pricks, but pretending to be like an idiot still requires that you act like an actual idiot. Stop perpetuating the charade and farce that is April Fools, and stop pointlessly contributing to the pile of copycat "durrrr april fools" dumbfucks that grow in number and become more indistinguishable from one another year after year. Just... stop. It's not funny, not fun, and never will be.
"So? It's just for one day. It comes and goes, then nobody cares anymore. Why do you even care?"
Why do I care? Why am I bitching about all this? Why am I compelled to complain and ramble about this shit on a site where barely anyone seems to give any?
Because, quite simply... I'm salty. Yes, salty. I'm dried and cured in the stuff over this shit. I am butthurt.
Year after year, it's the same damn charade, and yet it continues to sucker people in. And all I can do is sit around, bleakly nodding my head at every retarded thing I chance upon, muttering curses under my breath and wondering why the fuck people have to be idiots. It's practically a cliché to be stupid and make stupid pranks on April Fools. Crotchety, cynical grumps (like myself) hate it when people try to pull dumb jokes and expect others to go along with it. No one cares about April Fools anymore. At least, they don't care about it in the traditional sense. They don't care when people make jokes. They don't care when people try to be serious. It's become a day to endure. A day to dread, for many.
It's the one day of the year that I somehow feel the most miserable I've ever been.
So, have what little "fun" you can have until tomorrow breaks, I guess. It's probably already over by now, for many. Everyone'll surely go back to laughing it off and pretending it never happened, before going back to business as usual. The usual grind and monotony of daily life, both on and off the internet. The events of the latest day of stupidity being completely inconsequential in the greater scope of things. Here were are, in our safe little bubble of civilization. Here we are. Here am I. Whining about nothing. And it's all I'm good for, it seems.
April Fools, you fucks.
~Blinkie
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I'll drink to that.
I agree.
How many people you think thought the "Washington reviewing the DMCA" thing was fake because of this day? (Epically bad timing on Washington's part, btw).
Ironically, I think your bitterness over April Fools is a result of insufficient cynicism about humanity in general.
The way I see it, people are perfectly capable of being idiots 365 days of the year, and even something terribad like GMail's UI fail with the mic drop GIFs will ultimately turn out to be a temporary shitstorm just like the ones we endure with botched good-faith updates. This way, at least we get Cornhub, the Hamburger Helper rap album, etc., as random acts of beauty that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
The holiday gets people to put themselves out of their comfort zones. I think there's value to that.
It has its downsides, and you've got a legitimate view, but I think the core idea is not at all irredeemable.
To be honest April fools on this site has gotten dull not a single person not even an admin can trick me, knightly banned himself today but I knew it was a joke.
Yeah, April Fools is a holiday I dread a lot too. But hey, in the comedy world, you either succeed greatly, or fail miserably. And I guess that's the problem with April Fools: it creates opportunities for people who are horrible at comedy to try out their 'jokes' on people. I just prey that they don't try to justify them by calling them a 'social experiment'.