T w e n t y S i d e d
April Fools day kind of has two faces: There’s the “prank lies” face and there’s the “do something silly” face. The prank lies are the things where a news site will falsely announce that Half-Life 3 is released, Obama is going to be in the next Call of Duty, or that id Software is working on a licensed Dirty Dancing videogame. The “something silly” idea is where people metaphorically put on a silly hat for the day.
I do not like the prank lies. Either the lie is just a little too plausible and thus confusing or annoying, or it’s not plausible enough and it’s just dumb and pointless. All too often the punchline seems to be laughing at all the “dumb” people who fell for it: As if trusting usually reliable sites is some kind of character flaw. If they don’t have April Fools day in your country, or if you lose track of the date, then you become the butt of the joke. This is just no fun.
But I do kind of enjoy the obviously silly stuff. For those of you reading this in the archives or via RSS: As of this writing the site is decorated with a huge “My Little Pony” backdrop. (For posterity, I’ve used a smaller version of the image as the header of this post.)
Although, now that I’ve seen it: I do like the idea of having a large fixed image in the background. I mean, not this one, obviously. But something might be nice. I feel like I’m getting tired of these dice. Or maybe having an image that changes weekly or monthly might be worthwhile.
Anyway, this post is just your friendly reminder to be careful out there today. Beware the fools and mountebanks.
