April Fool's Day

Today is, in the words of the Washington Post, "the worst day of the entire year for anyone trying to cover news on the Internet."

I must be getting old. Haven't celebrated April Fool's Day much in recent years. Somehow, when it comes around, I'm just not in the mood. It's hard enough to separate dependable fact from deliberate misinformation. 

Yesterday, trying gamely to prepare, I spent several hours writing a cynical review of American politics. Things like, "America has the least corrupt government in the world. April Fool's!" And then a bit of drill-down on that depressing topic. Followed by another, and another.

But after a little while doing that, I realized it was not funny at all, and...it was scaring me. It's April Fool's Day, not Halloween.

Then I was going to do an "Around the Web on a Friday" post. But of course the danger there is that items of news that are perfectly true will be received skeptically. For instance, the news that our friend Peter Turnley was given an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by Ohio Wesleyan University, which the university calls its highest honor, and he can now legitimately be addressed as "Dr. Turnley." On any other day that would be taken at face value. But today, some people might doubt my veracity, thinking perhaps that I'm having a little fun because Dr. Turnley is a friend. Not so; it's absolutely true. But you see the problem. (And by the way, congratulations, Peter.) 

The BBC has a nice feature about things that appear to be pranks but aren't. My favorite (I'm an editor, after all) is #10, which concerns a Missouri legislator who introduced a resolution to try to get politicians in the Missouri House of Representatives to stop saying "physical review" and "physical notes" when they mean "fiscal review" and "fiscal notes." Apparently there is some confusion in the Missouri legislature between the two similar words. (In the Missouri legislature they call words like that "homophobes." Kidding, kidding—we like those good people, they are countrymen of ours.)

That one's true too. (It probably hasn't escaped you that Americans have played entirely too much football.)

Vice President Joe Biden says he wakes up on this day thinking "What the hell is Jill going to do this time?" His wife Jill, an inventive practical joker, once hid in an overhead compartment on Air Force Two to give him a scare.

John Oliver, the British-born comedian, hates April Fool's Day's "low bar for comedy." "April Fool! That’s not true at all! I made it up. Isn’t betrayal fun? That felt bad, didn’t it?!" He's got a point. Clearly, it's not hard at all for April Fool's Day's low humor to turn plain mean.

I think a guy named Sean Thomason summed it all up in a Tweet commenting on a fake report that Trader Joe's was closing and discontinuing all its products. "The 'Trader Joe's closing' thing made me gasp before I realized it's a prank. I hate pranks and I hate learning how dumb my priorities are."

Which, at least, made me laugh.

Let's all try to make it through to April 2 unscathed.

Mike
(Thanks to Eric Erickson)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Olympus Pen F is back in stock in black

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bill Tyler: "Raymond Smullyan, a logician, has a great story about an April Fool's prank played on him by his brother. You can find it here."

Mike replies: That's wonderful, thanks. I got that little brain teaser about the portrait, I'm happy to say, but I had to spend three minutes thinking of ways I might be wrong.

Jim Hughes: "An Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University! Peter Turnley has come a long way since I first published his and his brother David's long essay on McClellan Street (done in 1972–73, while they were still in high school, as I recall) in 35mm Photography magazine in 1975! The University quotes Peter as stating, 'I have employed the camera as a voice with which I can shout out about injustice while affirming what is beautiful and good.' For those who missed it, Huffington Post recently did an excellent two-part interview with Peter. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 here. My Fond Regards to Peter."

Roger: "How about Lightroom's new feature that makes any photo look like an Ansel Adams?"

Bob Schellhammer: "Does that mean it's not true that Sony is starting a Camera-Of-The-Month Club?"

Bill Tyler: "Raymond Smullyan, a logician, has a great story about an April Fool's prank played on him by his brother. You can find it here."

Mike replies: I like that. Thanks. By the way I got the brain teaser about the portrait right away, but then I had to think about it for five minutes trying to see how I might be wrong.

Comments

[Zack S]

Big Fuji news today!

http://fujiaddict.com/2016/04/01/special-limited-edition-x-pro-2-announcement/

[Zack S]

Interesting new Sony product. Sure it can find ghosts but how good is the bokeh?

Sony develops the world’s first ghost catching device – The Proton Pack™

http://photorumors.com/2016/04/01/sony-develops-the-worlds-first-ghost-catching-device-the-proton-pack/

http://www.proton-pack.com/

[JG]

Jazz lover that you are, perhaps you'll appreciate this April Fool's effort: https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/blue-note-missing-over-fifty-years-discovered/

[atmtx]

I'm not much of a prankster but I did my first April Fool's prank post on my blog this year. Photography and gear oriented, of course.
I’m getting rid of my 40+ cameras and moving to the EOS M

[Richard Parkin]

In my childhood (England) it was the tradition that if you played the April Fool trick after noon then the Fool was on you so I feel that the Newspaper or Web jokers are on shaky ground. We also had something called "pinch and a punch, first of the month" which was more fun, could be employed more often and I would advocate would be worth visiting upon these modern jokers.

[Rick]

I thought - "Donald Trump leads race for Republican nomination" was up there....

Absurdity and reality have become bosom friends

[Stephen Gilbert]

"Hilariously cruel?" Talk about punching down.

[Hugh Smith]

Mike
Ya gotta love this one and it is true!
Had a customer come into our camera shop back in the day, and ask for a "dark bulb" which Pop' Photo "advertised" in their April Fool's issue.
When I told her it didn't exist, she left in a huff.
It's why I hate April Fool's cuz sometimes there is just no explaining.
Mi dos pesos.

[Dave Levingston]

A lot of folks will probably post this here...but here goes anyway:

http://resourcemagonline.com/2016/03/adobe-shows-you-how-to-make-any-photo-look-like-an-ansel-adams-photo/64843/

[Anthony Collins]

I bet the ones who say "physical" also say "aperature"

[Stephen S. Mack]

Don't forget the new pitcher for the Cubs with a 140mph fastball...;

With best regards,

Stephen

[Romano Giannetti]

Well, on a photographic-oriented April's fool prank, I have been bitten today with this...

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.darktable.user/9504

You had (*) to finish one screen of Space Invaders to start editing photos....

(*) really you can skip it. But it was too fun not to.

[John Krill]

Several years back a Minnesota photographer posted on April 1 that he had received funding from some government agency to travel to Antarctica. But it didn't stop there. He continued the story for 3 or 4 more days. He finally had to tell everyone it was an April Fools prank when the local TV news outlet wanted to interview him.

I fell for the darn thing because, really, who in their right mind would continue an April Fools joke for that long.

And you're supposed to say 'April Fool' at the end of the story and he didn't for 4 days.

I stopped following the fellow after that. I think that was around the time I started following 'The Online Photographer.'

Go figure.

[Robert Roaldi]

I wish that thing about "physical" vs "fiscal" really was a prank.

[Dave Levingston]

Always loved the dark bulb story. I think I remember seeing it in the old much-lamented Camera 35 magazine in a satirical top-ten new products review. Another favorite from that story was a motor drive for an 8x10 view camera, accompanied by a photograph of a small factory building.

[Alan Carmody]

The older I get, the more I think that the best comment on April Fool's Day is one borrowed from another season.

Bah! Humbug!

Dickens was a genius.

[Earl Dunbar]

I had my semi-annual dental cleaning on April 1 this year (true!) and when I checked out I was told the bill was $214.00USD. I (seriously) asked "Is that after the insurance?"

Net to me (after insurance) was actually $15.00. She got me.

[Tim Medley]

Better late than never, and it may help you save money recoding TOP - "WonderPaw - World’s First App That Teaches Dogs To Code":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AIhx-NcAUo

[robert e]

Yes, April Fool's Day becomes less and less interesting and more and more annoying, doesn't it?

Maybe it is aging, but I can't help wondering if it has something to do with the times--the way we're all plugged in to the network these days. Perhaps it's the scale of it, or the depersonalization of it, or the ease with which we can debunk an idea, or all of the above?

Or perhaps it's much simpler. What with 90% of the web dedicated to churning out foolishness 24/7, isn't an April Fool's Day quaintly redundant?

[Steve Smith]

The only day when people don't believe what they read on the internet/Facebook/etc.