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Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

As an (almost) 40 year old, it has recently occurred to me that younger people may not be aware that the Internet absolutely ruined April Fool's Day. There was a time not so long ago when you could pull a real-life prank on someone on April Fool's Day and actually have them fall for it because they hadn't been inundated by dozens of lame-ass corporate April Fool's Day jokes online the night before. No more!

On balance, the Internet has done far more good than bad, but IMO there's no doubt that it ruined April Fool's Day.

(As someone who lived through the 1999-2001 bubble as a developer I also remember a time when people were seriously pushing digital-smell technology as a real "coming soon" thing, to be a huge hit on the web and in games and such).

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Somehow I knew the first comment would be a whine. You can still pull pranks on your friends even today. The internet did not ruin that. Perhaps just not good at pranks?

I do not find the linked article funny. I do appreciate the attempt. I do not appreciate the hand-wringing over every tiny thing that seems so common on HN.

Going back to April Fools memories, does anyone remember when Blizzard would release new neutral heroes for WC3 . . . but they actually turned out to be real and rolled out in the next patch? One such: http://classic.battle.net/war3/neutral/goblintinker.shtml Good times.

Personally, I like to pull my April's fools pranks on January fourth. When people ask why, I tell them it's how we celebrate April fools' outside the US.

> I do not appreciate the hand-wringing over every tiny thing that seems so common on HN.

This is so true, so much pedantry now to get cute little karma points. Hopefully someone does a joke involving Yahoo or PHP 5.8 to really get everyone going tomorrow.

On the subject of the bubble and April Fools, I have a great example of the Internet enabling great April Fools pranks.

At a .bomb startup in the late 90s, our own company ran a stock ticker website. On April fools, someone got together with IT and MITM'd the stock site, showing our share price plummeting.

This could have been particularly evil, but the joke was disclosed early on.

That's a prank, rather than this marketing drivel where companies announce clearly ridiculous features and products.

I pull pranks every April Fools day and, if imagined and executed properly, they always work.

I LOVE corporate April Fools day stunts and I hope they continue. I also hope every Hacker News thread doesn't continue to have to have at least one really, REALLY negative comment somewhere near the top of the comments section.

I feel like timezones have also done a number on April Fools' Day, because on this side of the IDL, it begins late on March 31.

I think we need a spoiler policy for the Internet. Perhaps we should limit April Fools jokes to 14:00-15:00 UTC. This will put all the densely inhabited locations between 7:00 and 24:00 local time.

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