April Fool’s Posting – How Far Should You Take It?
It has become something of a tradition for many blogs and web sites to play some kind of April Fool’s Day prank. I’ve never been a huge fan of April Fool’s Day on or off line. This is mainly because I am a huge lover of a good practical joke, but think April Fool’s Day brings out the amateurs in similar fashion to all the inexperienced and annoying bar hoppers who show up on St Patrick’s Day. It is also because I think that April Fool’s Day jokes shouldn’t become actual blog entries (unless you are The Onion or similar).
Why is this joke loving good time gal so against April Fool’s Day online? Partially because of credibility. What you out on the internet stays on the internet forever (Thanks, Wayback Machine!). This means that what is funny today on April Fool’s will continue to circulate 365 days a year until… These circulating practical joke articles eventually leave the context in which they were written and could come back to haunt the writer.
Not only that, some posts on April Fool’s Day have been known to cause real, serious issues online. The web works on instant gratification, and a rampant rumor based on a joke post can be hard to stop. Remember the hacker post that had so many people thinking they were in danger of having been hacked? I do – that caused issues across the Internet for weeks.
Another point is credibility. Only now are blogs and web sites gaining credibility as true sources of news and information. We are finally exiting the phase where online writing is seen as nothing more than a diary entry, with serious writers being taken seriously. I feel that April Fool’s Day posts go a long way toward undermining all the hard work it took to get there.
I’m interested to hear your theories on joke posts for April Fool’s Day. Vote in the poll below, then expand your reasons in the comments:
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