Who's The Fool Now?

To be honest, I've never seen the appeal of April Fool's Day. Much like other holidays which you can't enjoy because the fun feels forced, like New Year's Eve, I don't think a day in which everyone is supposed to be a joker is all that funny. Plus, while I am usually all for a good joke, I have never been a big fan of pranks. I just don't think a joke is funny if it requires someone else to be put down to make it work. Everyone standing around laughing at someone who doesn't realize what just happened is mean. I simply prefer humor everyone can be a part of. It's harder to get people to laugh at you and it takes a lot of guts, but that challenge is probably what I like about it. Beyond that I really don't get pranks where people set them up and then walk away for other people to get caught up in the web of deception. I mean, what good is a joke where you can't even see if it worked or not? I may not find your joke funny, but at least if you are standing in front of me when you tell it I will respect your effort. Also, failure is the only way to get better at comedy. After all, unless you see that no one is laughing at your jokes than you will continually to be blissfully unaware how unfunny you are.

That is why this year I've been pleasantly surprised to see that as I surfed around the web this afternoon there really weren't many prank items on the web. It really feels like most websites were playing it straight today. This has made me wonder why. My first though was that it's because people simply didn't have the energy to put something elaborate together this time around. It would make some sense since April Fool's Day fell on a Monday this year. For as much office time as people will spend thinking up and planning an elaborate prank to pull on their coworkers, they usually don't want to put in that same effort when that planning has to take place during their weekend. In addition to that, I would be curious to know if pranks were also curtailed by the fact that yesterday was Easter. I'm sure the majority of pranksters aren't too religious, because as we discussed pranking takes a cruel mindset and it can be hard to conjure up the best way to make someone's life miserable (even for a few seconds) when you spent the morning in Church and then having a lovely day with your family. On top of that this weekend was lovely in Boston - the first nice weekend in months - and I feel like most people would rather get out and enjoy the day rather than sit inside and draw up schematics for a joke which will probably only get a chuckle at best. It really was the perfect storm for April Fool's day inaction.

Of course, this is all ignoring the biggest April Fool'd Day killer of them all - the internet itself. Thanks to years of reading crap from sarcastic and bombastic internet trolls who can write anonymously and are desperate for attention (how many celebrities have 'died' on Twitter?), the majority of internet users are pretty much disinclined to believe anything they read on the internet to begin with. For example, unless I see a story on three or more websites I assume it is either wrong or a flat-out lie, and that's on any normal day of the year. It has gotten so bad we no longer believe things we see with our own eyes on the internet. Go read the comments under any video in which something out of the ordinary happens on Youtube - mixed in among the bottom-feeders being racist you will find dozens of people who assume the video has been doctored. Advances in technology have made it impossible to tell the difference, which is great for video production but have left us all very cynical. When it's the one day of the year where every hack tries to be funny and clever it just means my bullshit detector is on even higher alert and I'm far from the only person who has this kind of mindset.

Because people are so ready to doubt the validity of everything they see or read on the internet, it has raised the bar for people who still want to attempt a prank. If you want to make people laugh on April 1st it is no longer enough to call up a pizza place and place a fake order or write fake copy about some celebrity and publish it on your blog. Now not only are you required to come up with a clever idea, you then have to give it a proper write-up and shoot a high-quality video with good production (and often have it star the celebrity who is the subject of the joke). Seriously, go look at some of the effort put in by the "Funny or Die" people for their April Fool's Day gags; they are not some quick things shot at the last minute with a camera phone, they probably had a catering budget. The required effort alone is enough to separate the genuinely funny people from the ones who think someone getting unexpectedly punched in the crotch is comedy gold. (The sad part is that even with all that effort most April Fool's Day videos still aren't that funny, they are just long.) All of this means the only fools on this day are the people who still think they can get away with putting a Whoopee cushion under the boss's chair.