The rest of us call it April 1st, but over the years it has become “Stay off the Internet Day.” This is the day where every web site in existence decides to put up some big April Fools’ hoax and then sit back and laugh at all the people who fall for it. Now, I have a sick sense of humor, and I do find some of the stuff funny, but lately it is getting pretty lame. I blame it on stupid people, mostly – the ones who, four days later still believe the joke because, well, it was just so believable! I read it on the Interwebz, it must be true! These are the same people who insist on forwarding messages to 20 friends because some country wants to ban the use of dihydrogen monoxide, or insist that you must log out of your system because the Internet is being cleaned today.
Some sites did realize the gullibility of their readers, and as such changed their attempts. I play World of Warcraft, and look forward to the jokes they pull because they are usually funny. Unfortunately, this year they blew it with their announcement of the Molten Core game for consoles – the last paragraph of the article says the game will be available for the Atari 2600 and uses tinted screen overlays. Without that, it might have grabbed some people, but they purposely pushed it over the top so no one would actually fall for it. As the idiots say, Epic Fail. For it to be a viable prank, it has to look real. You have to read it and ask yourself, okay, is this a joke? It sounds too cool to be real. No payoff at the end, no giveaway, no blatant smack in the head screaming “it’s a JOKE, FOOL!” There was an article over at Engadget that had them scratching their heads – is it a joke, and if it is, exactly what is the joke?
The other problem is that a lot of people expect it. Any company in their right mind wouldn’t dare issue a press release today – no one will take it seriously. If the Wii announcement was made on April 1st, we’d still be debating whether or not it was a real product. Technology can sometimes be wonderous and amazing, but don’t ever make an announcement on 4/1 – it’ll get buried quickly.