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[tylik]

I've noticed that once again there are an awful lot of posts talking about how awful April Fool's jokes are, and how they are cruel and bad, etc. etc. I've been seeing these posts cropping up, usually starting a couple of days before April 1st for the last several years. And I've seen a few instances - especially a decade or so ago when there was a

Comments

[randomdreams]

I like the idea. I think for some people it's a betrayal of trust, and I can see that -- much like I feel about clowns. You're allowed to behave in a way that violates social norms, for completely arbitrary reasons.
But I still like it.

[eub]

Yeah, the basic unhappiness I hear is that the foolers are trying to get people to believe an untrue thing they're saying; it may not be lying exactly but it's at least close. Some people find that to be an emotionally unpleasant interaction to experience, in itself, whatever the motivation is behind it.

[randomdreams]

There's a big awkward valley between things that are sufficiently obviously satire, and things that are true. If I was all "I believe the world is flat" everyone would be ha ha! whereas if I was all "I believe white people are superior" everyone goes "uh oh."
So there's a huge problem when people say things on the latter side of the valley, especially when it is both unclear what they actually believe and when it is wholly reasonable to assume that at least some people do actually believe crappy things and may be taking advantage of the occasion to spew them out.
There's a strong temptation to use such an occasion to engage in some reinforcement of existing prejudices, when there is much less scope for opponents to respond.

[tylik]

I think it's useful to have a conversation about what kind of jokes are cruel - which is context dependent, so recognizing context it part of them* - and which aren't. And why. And how to do it right. What really bugs me is that what started out some years ago as some people posting thoughtful reflections on their own experiences and how things didn't work for them has turned into a lot of people posting much more generic "I don't like April Fools pranks because they are cruel and bad and immature people do them," which... is really a lot less useful. Not to mentioned the holier than thou and shaming stuff, which is just bullshit

[cynic51]

I did a successful prank (on FB) for the first time in years. It wasn't cruel at all.

[yarrowkat]

i was finding the whole thing tedious, which is about my usual speed on it, until a bunch of pagan friends started posting brief introspective meditations on the Fool's Journey in their own lives (ohhey that's actually interesting!) and my buddy who just moved to the PNW posted about 30 photographs of the area, organized so that the one-line captions made a story of a Fool's Journey... every single one of which was a pun on the image. i thought, both, "that's brililant," and "you really do have too much time on your hands" (okay, actually, my *first* thought was "get a job, hippie!" but our relationship is like that.)

[vvalkyri]

A friend of mine announced her pregnancy, but cropped her name and the date off the ultrasound. The next day she clarified that the April fool was that no, they hadn't picked a name :)

[gement]

The only April 1 things I saw were PacMap and some lovely reddit community content swapping, which wasn't even a _trick_ in the sense of a lie, it was just a prank like turning all the signs in the office upside down.

Obvious, non destructive, a chance for some really brilliant silly creative writing.