Entries tagged “april fool's”

Having been blogging for a few years, I've developed a few annual traditions. This one's a favorite: Warning you off of lame April Fool's jokes on the web. Every year, I get called a curmudgeon, or lambasted for having no sense of humor. And every year, the jokes online get lamer and lamer.

I'd mentioned that Your April Fool's Day Joke Sucks two years ago, revisited the idea last year, and have been proud to have been joined in my assessment by luminaries such as Joshua Schachter and Andy Baio in taking a critical eye at this sort of thing.

The exception, of course, is if you're doing something truly hysterical or on a magnificent scale. But I fear we won't run into too many of those.

Because it's still relevant, and people enjoyed it so much last year, I call your attention to Your April Fool's Joke Sucks, from a year ago. Let's revisit:

I'm trying to help you raise the bar. Thus, a list of things which do not actually constitue a valid April Fools' Day joke:

• "I changed my stylesheet! To someone else's!" Why isn't that funny? Because I still knew it was your site.
• "Our tiny company bought/got bought by a giant company. Like Microsoft!" Wow, that's lame. Neither believable nor surprising enough to be amusing.
• "We are embracing this thing we've demonized forever!" So you're a pest removal service that's getting into the cockroach-raising business? Sigh.
• "We have a big announcement today!" No you don't. It's Saturday.
• "Our new product does the impossible." You mean like making an April Fool's joke on the web that's actually funny.

Hey, there! I'm your friend, so I didn't want to be the one to tell you. But someone had to: Your April Fool's Day joke sucks.

Really, it does. April Fool's works really well if you're either genuinely funny or if you make something that's plausible enough to actually trick someone for a while. "Just do something stupid" need not apply. And it's especially hard to be appropriately clever on the web.

Now, I know with my old-fashioned outdated ideas of humor I sound like one of those prescriptive grammarians gnashing their teeth over Alanis' use of the word "ironic". And, friend, let me tell you: Sometimes, I am the kind of curmudgeon that makes Andy Rooney look like Jessica Simpson. But that, today, is not my motivation.

No, it's that I'm trying to help you raise the bar. Thus, a list of things which do not actually constitue a valid April Fools' Day joke:

• "I changed my stylesheet! To someone else's!" Why isn't that funny? Because I still knew it was your site.
• "Our tiny company bought/got bought by a giant company. Like Microsoft!" Wow, that's lame. Neither believable nor surprising enough to be amusing.
• "We are embracing this thing we've demonized forever!" So you're a pest removal service that's getting into the cockroach-raising business? Sigh.
• "We have a big announcement today!" No you don't. It's Saturday.
• "Our new product does the impossible." You mean like making an April Fool's joke on the web that's actually funny.

Anyway, enough bitching. Let's see if we've helped scuttle any bad ideas that were about to be inflicted on us. Happy April Fool's!