April Fools' Jokes - Are They Truly Ingenious?

April Fools’ Jokes – Are They Truly Ingenious?

By Kevin | Published: April 2, 2008

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Note: Just as a friendly advisory, this post does not contain any links to the un-ingenious “You’ve Been Rickrolled” deceiver/joke (song by Rick Astley).

Yesterday marked an event which once again undermined the respectability, credibility, and honesty of many popular (and seemingly professional) bloggers.

An Internet meme that captures your reader’s attention, making them spend a few minutes clicking through the countless pop-up dialog windows of the lyrics, is really funny. It not only led unsuspecting, new, or returning visitors to think about never returning to the site, but it also left the never leaving impression in their minds about the post that caused he or she to begin disliking their blog altogether.

In my personal opinion, it is never a good opinion to post PR stunts on April Fools’ Day for the following reasons:

It leads gullible readers to fall for your jokes – the main intention, but nevertheless evil.
Your credibility will go down the drain – either for covering a story that was ill-written as a joke.
Respectability will go down – people don’t want or need to spend their whole lives on the Internet. They want to visit their favorite blogs, and don’t have eternity to stay on one, so don’t go screwing with their screens.
Frequent visitors won’t find the joke amusing unless they are inclined to laughing along with you.

Another important part of this year’s jokes that was significantly different form others was the fact that most were simply repeats, with slight alterations between them. Where was the creativity? Where was the respect for the readers?

People following multiple blogs that are categorized the same niche may have fallen for the same joke – multiple times – losing time/work (money), and the elements already addressed.

I generally liked April Fools’ Day in the past. However, because of the few ignorant blog writers, at this point I either feel indifferent or feel some hatred towards the day. I fully understand that bloggers want to have fun too, but why not pull a joke that is somewhat believeable and cause visitors to respect you further for your personal sense of humor instead of your “I need to fit in, so I’ll do that, too!” mood.

I also respect the following bloggers for not fitting in with the crowd and coming up with their own pranks (more at Super Blogging TIps):

Daily Blog Tips – [Acquired for $168,000]
ShoeMoney – [Making $1,000 in One Hour - video intentionally blurred giving away the secret to making that much money]
Matt Cutts – [iPhone Can Connect to Anything, I'm Skipping April Fools This Year, and My Firefox Tattoo]
Super Affiliate Zac Johnson – [Blog Affiliate Program - pays you $0.75 per visitor sent via your site]
ProBlogger – [Pay Per Tweet Program and The Results / The Opportunity Cost of Not Participating in Web Events]
Read Write Web – [Google Dream Ads]

It is completely your decision as to whether you will serve your readers BS on April Fools’ Day or deliver them the same quality that you normally do.

April Fools’ Jokes – Are They Truly Ingenious?

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