

April Fools Day explained for tech journalists - anigbrowl

Has it occurred to you that reporting all the pranks you can find beginning on March 31 robs a great many people of the fun in the first place? This isn't actual news, so your reputation and that of your publication is not actually going to suffer if you are not the first to debunk the story.<p>Indeed, you might be better advised to play along or simply refrain from comment until April 2. While April Fool jokes are at best a momentary diversion, this year I've already had several of them explained away by tech headlines on my news page before I've even had a chance to be surprised and amused. This is a bit sad considering April Fool's Day hasn't even started yet in the US.<p>I invite you to consider the fact that good comedians will compete among themselves to hire a skillful straight man. Nobody wants to hire the loud guy in the front row that insists on explaining the joke before the performers have even made it to the punchline. Now, I appreciate that this year a lot of businesses are trying to leverage the whole thing for marketing purposes, but there will be plenty of time for you to dissect this crass commercialism with your usual laser-sharp focus.<p>On Tuesday.
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unimpressive
I doubt that this post will stop tech journalists from reporting these non-
stories. So instead I advocate flagging them.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470859>

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anigbrowl
That works too.

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kaens
This smacks a tad too soundly of meta-prank.

If not, the nature of the internet _is_ the straightman. The fact that your
web prank is prepared and launched privately means that your prank, if crafted
well, will fool people -- and often they won't speak up so much about it, but
might ask people if they saw it.

You don't see this happening so much because there's so much slapstick
bullshit that it's no fun at all. It just means you have a whole day of groan-
style attempts at comedy.

I don't want a day of having to figure out how to get around everyone's new
prank frontpage. I totally don't mind something that actually fools me. Hell,
I'll take it if it fools more than 35% of the people that see it.

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anigbrowl
No, I was just feeling grumpy :)

