I’ve noticed a few of my FB friends still participate in Liars Day. >:(
I hate April Fool’s Day. I’m fairly trusting and I take people at their face. I consider it a better way to live and structure society. Plus, I can’t really help it, I feel like a damn puppy sometimes. Today is a day that celebrates mocking that way of life/neural architecture. It says “Haha, high-trust culture is for suckers, look at those cooperating idiots over there. What rubes. Defecting FTW!”
I guess everyone needs a day off, where they revel in turning the social order on it’s head. Mardi Gras, or Halloween, or whatever. It’s a good release valve. Or maybe today can be used to caution everyone, once a year, how horrible a world it would be if everything was low-trust. Or to remind us that almost all news on the internet is just a year-round Liar’s Day.
Whatever. I still hate the day. I’m going to go be grumpy in a corner.
I agree that a lot of April Fool’s pranks are bad, but I don’t agree that’s the point of the day. My yardstick for measuring it by is “suppose I saw this on some random day of the year not in late March or early April. How long would it take to notice something was up?”. If the answer is very small, then it’s clear from the start it’s a joke anyway. In that case, I think the joke is probably fine.
For example, not even the most credulous person would believe that, for the past several years at least, Ozy has been replaced by somebody from another world in early April (especially when the post begins with an OOC note). In that case, it’s a reason to explore uncommon worldbuilding or society-building ideas; it would be just as clearly fiction if posted in June.
As another example, Amazon Publishing says it will literally deliver authors to your door and shows a video of an author getting a text message and travelling to somebody’s house. There is no way you would believe that no matter what day you saw it. It’s not tricking you into thinking anything false. You might think it’s an unfunny joke, but you’d think that if you saw it in October too, and I like that it gives employees of large corporations an excuse to joke like this on behalf of those corporations.
On the other hand, I agree that anything that seems plausible shouldn’t be done. Especially on platforms where somebody might not notice the date when they see an old post. I have more than once been fooled by April Fool’s Day videos which YouTube recommended to me on some other day of the year.
Pranks can be fun, for both sides. Harry’s first day of school was what convinced most people that I told about it that started to read HPMOR to actually continue reading it. And having a day where it’s okay to prank someone is, in my opinion, not bad. :-)