Miss Cellania
Great Moments in April Fool’s Day Online
by Miss Cellania - March 31, 2011 - 9:59 AM
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The internet makes April Fool’s Day shenanigans accessible to millions of people, many of them quite gullible, as any spammer can attest. Here are some of the biggest and best internet pranks from the past few years.

2004: the iShave

A German website launched a new product called the iShave, It was supposedly a gadget you plugged into your iPod that turned it into an electric razor. The idea resurfaced in June of 2007 as a long-handled razor for shaving one’s back. It came with a press release and a product website (which is no longer maintained). Today, the idea exists only as a 99 cent app to make your iPhone look and sound like an electric shaver in order to prank your friends.

2005: Water on Mars

The Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA is always a treat, but on April first of 2005 it was a tasty treat -an announcement of the discovery of water on Mars! It was only three years later that the joke became a reality, although many folks were understandably skeptical at first. Image by Ellen Roper.

2006: The Cure for Information Overload

This was the year everyone wanted to get in on the act. It’s impossible to know who first linked to the cure for information overload, but it became the big link of the day. I recall trying to count how many websites were involved and then finding that I was going in circles. Unfortunately, five years later some of the links are dead, so there are probably broken arcs of this prank existing in isolated pockets all over the internet.

2007: Gmail Paper

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have all your email printed and delivered to your home on paper, so you could read it anywhere? That was the idea behind Gmail Paper, launched by Google on April first, 2007, complete with testimonials. I don’t think anyone signed up for the service, even though it is “free.”

2008: Flying Penguins

Late on March 31st, 2008, the BBC uploaded a video to YouTube featuring a documentary clip about a very special colony of Adélie penguins found on King George Island. These penguins can fly! The footage was narrated by Terry Jones, who was billed as “Film maker and writer,” and is actually best known as a member of Monty Python. He did his very best Sir David Attenborough impression in the video. The Telegraph and other newspapers posted a preview of the documentary to be aired on British TV on April 1st. On April second, the BBC uploaded a video that explained how the stunt was created. Jones was nowhere near the Antarctic, and the footage was remixed to make the penguins appear to fly. The prank was created to promote the BBC’s iPlayer, which was just going live around April Fool’s Day.

2009: Crashing a Funeral

Improv Everwhere has done some nice things, like throwing a surprise wedding reception for a couple who got married at city hall. On April first of 2009, they posted a mission called The Best Funeral Ever in which they crashed a graveside service. The stated goal was to make the funeral for someone with few relatives and fewer friends into a glorious sendoff. Many who first encountered this took it as a kind gesture. Then when we watched the video, it became clear that the mourners did not appreciate the interference of strangers. Many readers cried foul and said that Improv had finally crossed the line. It was easy to believe because it was along the lines of things they would do. However, as scorn was heaped upon the group, they had to point out the date and explain that even the mourners in this video were actors. The real target of the prank was the entire internet audience.

2010: Canned Unicorn Meat

Think Geek has a history of great prank products they post every April Fool’s Day. Some proved to be so popular that the site had to shift gears and find a way to turn the joke into a real product, like the Personal Soundtrack Shirt and the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. Then in 2010, everyone was talking about one they couldn’t produce for real: Canned Unicorn Meat, touted as “the new white meat.” The product, or at least the picture, was reposted everywhere, but the real joke emerged in June. That’s when Think Geek received a cease and desist letter from the National Pork Board, which considered the tagline to be an infringement of their slogan “the other white meat”. That reaction turned into a bigger story than the original joke.

What will April Fool’s Day 2011 bring? It will have to be big if it’s going to top all these! For more great April Fool’s Day pranks from history, check out the big list from The Museum of Hoaxes.

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Comments (20)

  1. Love the flying penguins! Leave it to the BBC, who also uncovered the famous spaghetti trees of Switzerland, to continue their ground breaking investigative journalism. :)

    Tomorrow is also my first born’s birthday. Really, no kidding, his friends don’t believe him either. Gabe was born in a raging snow flurry, and we came home two days later in sunshine and 70s. I still call him my little April Fool – 15 years and counting.

    posted by Laurel on 3-31-2011 at 10:54 am

  2. I remember a few years ago AOL announced that they had the first trailer for the upcoming Harry Potter movie but in the end AOL was just rickrolling all of us saps who excitedly clicked on the link.

    posted by Samantha on 3-31-2011 at 11:05 am

  3. Unicorn meat seems like something Dwight Shrute would be interested in.

    posted by Shash on 3-31-2011 at 11:12 am

  4. Is that Karl Pilkington in the crashing the funeral pic?

    posted by Eugenie on 3-31-2011 at 11:21 am

  5. you can actually order the unicorn meat from think geek (link is under my name)

    posted by Suz on 3-31-2011 at 11:36 am

  6. I got a kick out of the Mac software company Ambrosia Software. A few years back, they had a big release of a product called “Screen Cleaner Pro” that said it would revitalize your old screens… But instead simple darkened it gradually over the course of 10-15 minutes as it was “calibrating”. Then a towel would appear and wipe away the darkening… Revealing a shockingly bright screen! the trouble was that everyone believed it and it was distributed. A handful of Universities and Governmental agencies across the globe were sending in purchase orders for 1000s of copies (mind you it was a free product). It was so popular that the company decided to never do something like that again because of the added work load that lasted many many years after the april first release.

    posted by John on 3-31-2011 at 11:37 am

  7. Here in Chicago, 93.1 FM WXRT has a beloved tradition of pranking its fans- I always eagerly await the jokes. One year, they announced that their popular Saturday Morning Flashback program was going to be replaced by kid’s soccer reporting- oh, the phone calls they got!

    posted by Megan on 3-31-2011 at 11:54 am

  8. I can’t believe you guys didn’t include the year google released a statement about launching the first colony on mars! They had an application to be a part of the colony and the last step was to upload a 30 second video explaining why you should go. Tons of people fell for it!

    posted by Mary on 3-31-2011 at 11:56 am

  9. IGN did a stellar fake “Legend of Zelda” movie trailer a few years ago.

    The prankster in me got a huge kick out of the joke.
    Then the nerd in me secretly hoped it was real.

    posted by Tyler on 3-31-2011 at 12:05 pm

  10. Laurel, my first born is also celebrating her 6th b-day tomorrow. Why do people find it odd that a birthday can also fall on April 1st?

    posted by Bill on 3-31-2011 at 12:22 pm

  11. I think that you meant Sir David Attenborough (BBC nature documentarian extraordinae) not Sir Richard Attenborough (dinosaur reincarnator extraordinare).

    posted by Jeff on 3-31-2011 at 12:30 pm

  12. You forgot last year’s Starbucks introducing the “Plenta” size coffee, which was the size of a popcorn bucket. This partially became reality as they introduced the “Trenta” 30oz size for cold drinks recently.

    posted by D on 3-31-2011 at 12:50 pm

  13. Blizzard has a good sense of humor about many things. When I was still into WoW, they announced, on April 1st, that the second hero class would be The Bard, who carried a lute and would serenade his enemies to their deaths.

    posted by Ben on 3-31-2011 at 12:51 pm

  14. A couple years ago one of the radio stations started running ads for Baby Plastic Surgery for the parents who wanted their ugly child to have a better life. They even had a website. When you clicked on the website it came up April Fools. It turns out the “testimonials” of parents who had done it, were people who had listened to the show in the early morning hours and helped set the whole thing up.

    posted by Corey on 3-31-2011 at 1:40 pm

  15. “Excellent source of sparkles” – ha!

    Every year I tell myself not to be gullible, and every year I fall for something.

    posted by Jenn on 3-31-2011 at 1:50 pm

  16. Last year, Cute Overload ran a series of April 1st posts featuring the circle of life: pictures of animals eating other animals (nothing too graphic). A lot of people who didn’t check their calendars left nasty comments about how they were unsubscribing immediately. Heh.

    posted by Jaclyn on 3-31-2011 at 1:53 pm

  17. @Eugenie
    It sure looks like him, but I can’t find any reference to Karl being associated with Improv Anywhere.

    posted by hockeyzombie on 3-31-2011 at 3:26 pm

  18. The 2004 iShave really wouldn’t surprise me.

    posted by Bakedpotatoes on 3-31-2011 at 7:05 pm

  19. @hockeyzombie

    I just watched the video on YouTube and it’s the craziest thing- this guy has practically the same exact profile as Karl but when you see him straight on it looks nothing like him. It’s hysterical.

    posted by Eugenie on 3-31-2011 at 8:55 pm

  20. These are all really funny, check out this prank press release from an alarm company in MA today- http://bit.ly/hF0DCa

    posted by Julia on 4-1-2011 at 3:01 pm

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