Are there any good April Fools jokes today? For example, a few years ago Google announced a sewage based ISP (i.e. flush some fiber optic cable down the toilet and they would fish it out and connect it).
The only one I have come across is IGN article about the Nintendo Virtual Boy Pro.
For an IRL example… I explained April Fools Day to my 4 year old kid this morning for the first time. His first instinct was to wrap a piece of Lego in foil and have me write CHOC on it, then leave it outside the bedroom door for my wife (who was having a lie in). I think he gets it!
He’s been holding on to that prank for 4 years
I find it nuts when people do an april fool’s joke that could actually be a thing. Like turning the Switch into a Google Cardboard style VR device.
Didn’t they already do that for real with Nintendo Labo?
Did they? I know it let you make weird machines; I don’t remember a VR one though. But I also totally forgot Labo was a thing until you mentioned it so 🤷🏻♂️
VirtualBoy was also a terrible Nintendo product from the 90s, which adds to the joke even more.
There used to be a fun store called Think Geek that would announce a bunch of new products on April 1st. Some were clearly impossible, some they were actually planning to launch (usually more mundane stuff like shirts), some were things that were more “this is a joke but if enough people like it/express interest we’ll see if we can actually manufacture it/license the IP.” I liked the site and realized only a few months ago that I hadn’t seen anything from them in a long time. They were independent, then bought by the parent company of Slashdot but kept operating largely as normal, then were eventually sold to Hot Topic and I think that’s when it kind of went away. Looks like their site now redirects to GameStop.
I was familiar. I even have some stuff still; shirts and desk toys. At one point they sold an external PC bay drive made by Thermaltake that was a literal cupholder/ashtray with a car style cigarette lighter that, supposedly, was functional. I never actually plugged it in though (put it in my PC, but didn’t plug the lighter into the molex connector).
GameStop bought them a couple of years ago. That was the deathknell.
It’s a shame; they had fun, often unique stuff. Since GameStop didn’t seem to keep that stuff I’m not sure what buying Think Geek got them that they couldn’t’ve just done on their own.
The annual chance to soft announce the stupid ideas that may be crazy enough to work with plausible deniability.
Now I Know?
At the time spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many British people were unaware that it is made from wheat flour and water.
Spaghetti was unknown in the UK in 1957? My spaghetti history is woefully inadequate. The American school system failed me.
The real prank was the American education system all along 🥲
Last year, the Flying subreddit (a subredit for pilots, both hobbyists and professional ones) had a mod post about changing focus to the more numerous group: The passengers, giving the impression that they pivoted to travel blogging. Due to timezones, the april fools aspect wasn’t immediately clear, so the outrage was enormous.
I think The Lockpicking Lawyer (YouTuber)has consistently put out good April’s fools videos. I do have a sophomoric sense of humor though, and they are all based on innuendo.
Some absolute lunatic on Sysadmin made a joke about Broadcom purchasing Veeam.
No one should ever joke about being purchased by Broadcom after what they are doing to VMware.
I switched jobs partly to avoid that BS. How much worse has it gotten since last year?
I don’t deal with it directly. But brocade removing the free ESXi version and doing a 40-60% price increase will hurt a lot of places.
Yeah, last I heard, the place I worked at was going to be priced out of their products, from ESXi hosts to Horizon to WorkSapce1. ALL the eggs were in that basket.
They’ll have to transition and retool for everything.
I work for a F500 org that does billions in sales a month and Brocade couldn’t tell us if we were going to be invited to the new partner program. It was an absolute shitshow.
Makes me glad I only have to deal with Cisco and FortiNet.
Definitely a shitshow. I have some contacts internally over there that have led me to believe that it’s as bad as it appears to be from the outside.
A few Lemmy communities had at least an April Fool’s Day joke or two from the mods. Unpopular Opinions is “Popular Opinions” today lol.
I do remember getting annoyed when Slashdot posted everything in ROT-13 on AFD several years back lol.
Google Japan always pulls a joke about how they’ve developed a new better Google Japanese Keyboard.
So far there’s been a spoon you bend to different angles to select characters, and a giant keyboard key you wear as a hat and use by reaching up and spinning it to point in the cardinal direction of a given character, and then enter it by pressing the single giant key-hat thing.
It’s especially funny with Google being such a massive monolithic company, and there’s the Japanese branch just doing their own thing.
I also participate in the Titanfall modding scene, and each year for April fools the Northstar master server displays everything in uwu language.
Thank you for sharing!! All of those Gboard videos are absolute gold lmfao
Yes, I’ve been known to partake in some. Was sitting in the front seat of a bus, and the buses have a rule where, at all the train tracks, they’re supposed to briefly stop and open the bus doors to see if they hear any train coming before closing the door and driving onward again. The bus had stopped to do just that, and at that very moment, I played a train sound effect I had ready on my phone. The bus driver looks around and is weirded out by the “seeming invisible train”.
Nothing online I’ve found is interesting. But I bought a pack of “Student Driver” magnets, and put it on my car enthusiast friends Porsche. Haven’t heard anything yet, so im hoping its still on. Might throw a new one on whenever I notice its gone.
If left on, those things can scratch the paint. Dirt from the road works its way in. I had a friend who destroyed the paint job on his car with one. He had it on a pretty long time tho.
Satisfactory’s developer Coffee Stain Studio made a Satisfactory Direct video
It’s under two minutes so it has a pretty good joke/time ratio
My son (5 y/o) walked into my office and said “dad! I brought you something”. I assumed it was a piece of Easter candy because he had a hand behind his back. I asked him what did he have.
He turned around, let out a huge fart, and said “Fooled you!” Then he put on his cowboy hat and walked out of the room.
Yep, gottem.
Aha, Billy The Skid
Sadly I feel like this tradition is drying up more and more each year. I remember like 10-15 years ago tons of sites did really big things for the day. I honestly forgot today was April 1st until I saw this post. I miss it.
The folks over at !lightnovels@ani.social have been weighing books all day which has been fun :P
savagegeese (car youtube) put out an outstanding and genuinely hilarious video about a convertible Nissan SUV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6vprgDHFw0
20 minutes is way too long for a joke video.
