STOP ENCOURAGING IT.
Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more.... More by Lindy West
It’s a Fucking National Holiday Dedicated to Lying!!!
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P.S. A lie is not a “prank.”
Someone needs a Snickers break.
Hear, hear!
Actually, April Fool’s Day was sanctioned as an official holiday in 1934 as a way to help the country out of the Depression, and you cannot be sued for anything you say or do on April Fool’s Day as a result – it is part of the Federal Statutes.
Just think of it as a Day Long Pro-Tunnel Press Conference.
my boss sent out 2 serious, non-joke company policy emails. i pointed out the date.
It’s the cycle of abuse, Lindy, and you can’t stop it. It’s eternal.
It starts when that guy – you know the guy, everybody knows one – pranks you on the morning of April 1. It’s still early, and maybe you haven’t had coffee yet, and you fire off a shocked response to his audacious Facebook status update about his grandmother and the upcoming wedding/funeral.
You realize your mistake, but too late. You know better than to delete your reply, lest you look humorless to the people who’ve undoubtedly already seen it, so you add another message where you obviously, “jokingly” play along. But it’s too late. Your face is burning and shame churns in your gut. You’ve been had.
The only thing you can think to do, the only thing you can do, is to make someone else suffer worse than you did. If you prank someone else, that makes you, not a chump, not a victim, but a participant. See, it’s all a big fucking prank party, isn’t it, as long as we keep smiling and swallowing the hate? So you go to work, and you post your own lying status, and you tape your neighbor’s mouse sensor, and you change your boss’s Google settings to “Klingon,” and you call your mom and tell her you’re eloping this weekend, and it makes you feel a little bit better, a little more… powerful. The vicious sense of triumph helps you ignore the pain. Helps you forget.
And so you prank. And your victims? Well…
They prank too.
We all prank as we ourselves were once pranked, and we all dance merrily down to hell together.
@4 – That’s “Here! Here!”
I still feel guilty about the time my sister and I thought it would be hi-larious to stage a fight and pretend she fell out the 2nd story bedroom window. Needless to say, it wasn’t hilarious. My mom took to her bed for a few days just to recover.
@4 – The immunity also extends to criminal prosecution. I’ve gotten away with more than one fatal prank on my enemies on April 1 in years past.
stay in bed if ya dont like it
The Steve Martin movie Housesitter taught me that lying is not only OK, but good.
It’s hard to decide which is a worse premise for a holiday – this one about stupid lies, or the one that’s all about white people being drunk in public.
April Fool’s is for people who aren’t funny the other 364 days a year.
@14: YES.
Yes, we should have only rational national holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas .
@17: glad I’m not a Jewish Native-American
Also, movie theaters are just full of stuff which isn’t remotely true, year round. Are there really giant blue aliens? I think not.
This deviation from lockstep, fact-based reality must be stamped out. Also, someone needs to get those damn kids off Lindy’s lawn.
@14 you appear to be among the crowd, well done, at least you admit it
speaking of squirrels, have you seen today’s Washington Post, @19?
An unknown coworker stuck a Post-It to the underside of my optical mouse. I was completely flummoxed for almost four whole seconds. THAT SHIT IS HILARIOUS.
“Sorry, but your wife and kids just died in a horrifyingly bloody multi-car accident on the Alaskan Way Viaduct.”
Ha ha, April Fool’s!
Wow, why so serious? If people suck at pranks, they suck at pranks. It’s not the holiday’s problem.
@21 just use g-motion instead.
@19 Uh, is it April 2nd or something? Since I clearly said THE OTHER 364 DAYS. Fucking moron.
@24, fuck you.
@25 ah, i gotcha, so you must fit in the venn diagram category of people who overlap the “unfunny on April 1st” sphere & “unfunny for remaining 364 days” sphere
I have never thought of it that way. Hmmm. You might have a point. lol.
This was really the wrong day to tell my friends about my pregnancy.
I hate April Moron’s Day too, Lindy.
@7 Nice try, but I don’t play along once people start pulling that shit with me. It’s not funny, it’s not a game, and it ceases to be harmless when you tell people your feelings about it and they do it anyway.
Jesus Christ, you whiny fucktards. Lighten the fuck up.