As if I didn’t spend enough time facepalming at people sharing unfunny attempts at satire on social media (or accidentally misunderstanding satire and getting indignant), April 1st has grown to fill that completely unwarranted void. “Oh haha, the Guardian said Jeremy Clarkson is suddenly interested in climate change, how whimsically unlikely,” Oh please stop, it’s not that funny, it’s low-hanging fruit. “Hahaha, CERN discovered the Force,” Yes very good, it’s not like the Onion doesn’t do this stuff every single day, but a hundred times better. It’s not automatically funny just because a real newspaper does it. You’ve heard of the Onion, right?
The compulsory terrible fake news aspect aside, April Fools’ is ostensibly a day to celebrate pranks and mischief, but it’s never worked for me. I’ve never pulled a prank that actually went down well (though I’ve done plenty that just seemed to piss people off), and I’ve never been pranked well myself either. My dad once unplugged the TV for April Fools’ when I was 5, which might have been funny had I not had an obsessive Power Rangers fanaticism at the time and thrown an almighty tantrum. I’m sure proper pranks must happen somewhere – there must be funny people somewhere in the world, right? I feel like I’m missing out – am I really this out of touch? People do pranks today, right, it’s not just the newspapers? Is everyone just scared of pranking me in case I fly into a maddened rage? Do I just have the wrong friends?
Anyway, midday curfew’s passed now, everyone can get back to boring reality where I don’t have to worry about this stuff and you can prank people any time anyway, and it will be funny because you’ll be able to pitch it right without people expecting it. Back to normality where we don’t have to put up with the news media printing deliberate lies OH WAIT THEY STILL DO HAHA SATIRE (PROBABLY).