I hate April Fool's Day. April Fool's Day jokes are, with few exceptions, boring, unoriginal, predictable, and most importantly
not funny. Today is the one day each year that all the least funny people in the world pull stupid, bullshit "pranks" to try to get
a cheap laugh even though they're completely incapabale of making anyone laught the other 355 days a year.
You may be thinking, "Jeebus, you must hate today cause you have a bad sense of humour", though when you thought it it was probably
spelled "humor". But no, I have today because I have a good sense of humour. I appreciate actually jokes and humourous situations, but
that's not what today is about. Today is mostly about shock value, which is rarely funny.
My biggest problem is that all my favourite sites have annual April Fool's Day jokes, so this is the one day each year when all the
sites I go to become completely unreadable. If you have sites you check regularly, chances are you are familiar with the following:
The site has gone down forever: This is a really bad one, because if anyone falls for it then you've lost their viewership, but the
announcements are normally very half-assed.
The site has been sold: I've barely been awake for an hour and I've already seen this one TWICE today. On the "Attention Whore"-ometer, this
ranks even higher than posting a thread in a forum saying that you're leaving; it's basically a webmaster saying "This is all going away,
so please suck my dick and tell me how awesome I am".
The site has been replaced: I go to my favourite website, but OOPS! Now it's gone and has been replaced, without fail, by something
that is so bright and harassing that I can't figure out if it's trying to make my eyes bleed or cause a seizure.
The site has been redone: This was the first one I saw this morning when I went to my Magic forum. Once again, there's nothing funny
about this. Not only is it not funny, but the colour scheme they chose is both harassing and borderline unreadable. That's especially bad
because it's currently rumour season for a few upcoming magic releases and there's all sorts of new spoilers up, but the site is so
ugly it makes me want to punch my fucking monitor.
The site is advertising fake products: You may not be familiar with this one as it will only occur on websites that normally advertise
products, but still have a sense of humour sometimes. This can be funny, except if a company is going to do this once, they will do
it every year, and every year it will become more and more ridiculous, making it even more obvious that it's fake and normally less funny.
There's also the problem that, as happened this year with Wizards of the Coast, you advertise a fake product that people want MORE than
your real product! (For anyone who cares, their fake From the Vault: Vaults is far more appealing than their From the Vault: Exiled).
If you own a website, do everyone a favour and never do another stupid April Fool's Day joke again. If you don't own a website, don't do them
anyway. They're normally more mean spirited than funny anyway.
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© 2009 by Dr. Jeebus