Megathread: April Fools' Day 2026 on the internet
Over the next day or so, the internet will be filled with jokes, pranks, fake "announcements" from companies, fun interactive activities, games, and so on. A lot of these can be quite clever and interesting so I think posting about them in general is fine, but in the interest of preventing them from completely taking over Tildes, let's try to keep as many of them restricted to this thread as possible. Ideally, a separate top-level comment for each individual item would be good.
If something particularly discussion-worthy comes up (like an ARG or activity that a lot of people want to talk about), a separate thread is reasonable, but please make sure it has the "april fools day" tag. That way, if anyone wants to avoid seeing the April Fools' Day threads, they can use the topic tag filters and filter that tag out.
I'm going to use the "official" styling for this topic (that's usually only for ~tildes.official topics) to make it stand out more to try to encourage people to notice it. If you notice people making individual topics for April Fools' Day things that don't really warrant their own topic, please (nicely) encourage them to delete and post in here instead.
Luna- my space sim
Been looking forward to today :D I had the idea for some April's fools jokes already.
You have to select "fun" at the start, since I didn't want to change the experience for people that want to use the tool to learn something
I did change the easter... egg... away from a flat world to a more eggy world, since I realized some people didn't get the joke and thought I was being serious with all the flat objects lol
This is excellent, and the Artemis II launch has me all in a space mood, so now I'm playing around with your site in a genuine, honest, non-April Fool's way (though the April Fool's stuff is fun too!).
I’m happy you like it. I am also looking if there’s any way I can add some info about Artemis into the tool.
One of my favorite things is just looking at the atmosphere of different planets. And also: look at Jupiter from io.
Yeah that is hilarious, thanks for sharing!
Ngl I expected all other planets to be round
I had that initially but I figured unless people zoom in on earth they wouldn’t even notice it.
And the flat sun looks so funnily stupid.
I’ve even thought about adding more absurd flat earth physics, like hard coding the sun to rotate the earth, but it was such a mess, getting the absurd theories right lol.
Maybe next year
obligatory lol
that is so cool
This was super funny - thank you for the laugh!
CERN now uses superconducting karts to travel around the accelerator tunnel!
I recommend zooming on the article picture ;)
Scryfall, a website to search Magic the Gathering cards, always does something. This year they made their website look like it's from the early internet days.
Love that the "THIS SITE IS GAY" banner links to Bearscape (as all such links should).
XKCD has released the annual April Fool's comic. This one has a lot of small details to hunt for as you go.
At first I thought
Modem ModesaidModern Mode. When I selected it , the page froze and I got an error "This page is slowing down Firefox". Tried it on Chrome and it had the intended behaviour.What is the intended behavior? It didn't work for me either.
It will very slowly load the image one line of pixels at a time in a way that's very nostalgic for anyone who started browsing the internet and wanted to look at images while modems were still a thing.
(It also makes a horrible electronic hiss)
I was a little disappointed that it smoothly draws one line at a time instead of in bursts as each packet was processed in the dial-up days.
JPEG was a good idea.
Space Opera got me, that is hilarious.
The grayscale/greyscale mode got me good.
Dorian Grayscale
That's the only one I'm not understanding -- am I supposed to wait for it to age or something?
Oh, nvm, I did have to wait.
Oh that’s great thank you for sharing
Curious how many others on Tildes will get this joke, but AO3 has put out a Spotlight on Omegas at AO3 and changed the "beta" in their header to say "omega" in a show of solidarity.
Begging for someone else on Tildes to try and explain this in the replies to someone else who doesn't know what this is about. I think it would be entertaining
So for someone who has never been on those spaces in the internet - AO3, aka Archive of Our Own, is a fan fiction repository created after some issues that other fan-fic spaces had w/ people writing horny works (not necessarily explicit, just horny).
One of the most popular fan spaces on the internet at large back in the early 2010s, but especially tumblr and fan-fic spaces, was Supernatural - including a lot of people being rabidly horny for the lead actors & the characters they played on the show. One of the fictions written was about the two lead actions where one of them was characterized as an Alpha (someone who is dominant, a leader, and considered in charge), and the other as what would soon be termed an Omega (submissive, needs someone to lead, etc). There was a very strong sexual element to both the initial fiction and the figurative cambrian explosion of fictions that followed, so an Alpha being described as displaying dominance/leading/commanding also carried sexual overtones to the adjectives.
Skipping over a lot of drama and history, the term "Omegaverse" was formed to describe a shorthand indicating that a fiction would be re-using a lot of the shared rules & history of the other works in the same space - where there are Alphas, Betas (they are neither Alpha nor Omega, but will often have characteristics pulling them in either direction, or some unusual quirk that makes them unique in the society), and Omegas, common sexual tropes (such as mpreg, where men can and will get pregnant, or things carried over from werewolf/canine fiction tropes such as penises with knots, scent marking, etc).
To wrap it all into a bow - AO3, the de-facto horny fan fic site, has changed their header to indicate their website is in Beta (still in a trial phase) to say it is now in Omega (sexually submissive in one of the biggest fan-fic literary genres out there)
bless you for this
I will happily explain weird internet culture as I have had to explain WikiFeet to my boss before.
And it's so nice that the omegas are getting their day
With attacks on Omegas ramping up worldwide, it's more important than ever to have days like today where we take the time to acknowledge the incredible contributions Omegas have provided to society: in politics, in science, in tech -- after all, many great Alphas couldn't have achieved their major world-changing breakthroughs without the support of their mates. And of course it's important to acknowledge how all Omegas, even unbonded ones, are precious, and should be treasured and protected.
On a personal note I always feel warm and fuzzy when a big site like Ao3 -- one of the best sources for historical accounts -- takes time to mention the contributions of people like me.
I love you for this.
TechSpot just put out an article claiming AMD will buy Intel and it took me the whole article to realize what day it is today.
And then I got stickbugged by a friend.
I'll go make a fort of pillows and stay there until the day is over.
AMD buying Intel would be a quite poetic end to the tale of Intel. I like this.
but also would create a monopoly and in the end be significantly worse for the consumer than Intel continuing to exist.
Dropout TV has announced a follow-up to their hit series "Dimension 20: On a Bus!" The one and only Dragon Master and all her people will return once more to Los Angeles, and see who among them can roll a 6.
https://youtu.be/O4jzxm3BpBo
Ok but that's no joke. This is serious.
Episode is out now:
https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/d20-on-a-bus-season-2
Re-subbed to watch. Worth every penny.
blah blah blah
I tend to only subscribe for a month or two at a time because I end up binging the shows I'm interested in.
I'm not into D&D or Dimension 20 or anything but I still found this absolutely hysterical. Katie's finest work.
YouTube link for paid "channel members" over there
It's almost an hour! This is legit. I'm so excited.
The memes about the On a Bus "season 1" were pretty hilarious because if nothing else fans can commit to the bit.
Adventuring Party:
https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/here-s-come-the-water
I thought going in that what worked in a six minute burst would not play well over an hour. But Katie made it work in that she was relentless, and gave up enough control so that when she took it back it was always hilarious. 10/10, I see now why her name comes up whenever someone tries to pitch Dropout Taskmaster.
Getting Into My Wife’s Furry Fanny
Ah, LockPickingLawyer. The author of such great April Fools classics as Getting In My Ex-Girlfriend's Back Door, My 36 Inch King Dick Wrecks Locks and Manipulating My Tiny Coq.
In the Americas fanny refers to the backside, elsewhere, fanny refers to the frontside.
I know LPL is from the USA, but this makes so much more sense if he were using the UK use of the word.
It isn't as though Americans are completely ignorant of the UK usage though, especially when said American is as fond of suggestive wordplay as is LPL.
I am intimately familiar with American enthocentrism. I don't know how he knew. But he knew.
After watching the video it certainly seems like he's using it ambiguously.
Shinkansen is coming to one little town in Czech Republic! Tha plan is to have first train arrive in 2080, it will be Japanese Shinkansen that will be put out of service in 2050. The train ride from major city will come down from 40 minutes to just 9 minutes and 3 seconds precisely, no delays (as we are used to with trains of today here). There was an AI montage with Shinkansen standing on the platform at said station.
Czech capital Prague proudly announced revolution in public transport - they will be using double-decker trams!
EDIT RegioJet just announced triple-decker buses!
EDIT2: Czech air force announced they will be getting C-390 Millenium equipped with the newest feature - chemtrails ability.
Local firefighters in small town had managed, due to high fuel prices, to make their tanker/cistern run on electricity. After 10 hours of charging, they can travel whole 20 kilometers (14 miles). They had to leave their fire station and live in a caravan parked next to electric charging station (and their tanker/cistern).
I love this 😁 It's like a joke, except it's a joke we should unironically be doing world-wide.
RetroDECK announces LibreOffice integration
Spoiler
I cannot tell you how disappointed I am that Epic Office Races (1995) isn’t real. 😭
The Kagi search page has a fun retro look to it. My favorite is the viewer count at the bottom!
I want this to be my permanant Kagi style, if any Kagi staffers are watching.
When the web was weird and fun because the technology was new, marketting departments didn't muck in it much, and everybody was just in a better mood in the 90s because there wasn't any major bad guy looming over the culture with the threat of nuclear war.
Newt Gingrich really was the sneaky little weasel that gnawed away at the good times.
They've included a query parameter for those who would like to disable it, so maybe they'll leave that in for those who would like to keep it around after today... Maybe try kagi.com?fun=yes tomorrow!
I also loved that images load very slow, as they were accessed from a dial-up connection.
This is awesome, but like actually a better design. Good use of space. Maybe throw in Kagi News headlines and featured sites from Small Web. I'd definitely default to this view if given the choice.
You know this is literally what Yahoo.com looked like thirty years ago?
Yahoo Japan still kinda does look like this haha
That is... amazing!
Warhammer as you’ve never heard it before
I've been over Warhammer for quite awhile now, but I can't help but laugh at this. This is pretty damned good.
I love this, I would 100% go see it!
Squaredle | April Fools Puzzle
There's a bonus word they told me I wasn't supposed to find!
Edit: I haven't played this before, but the amount of bonus words I'm pulling makes sense given the number of comments I get on my vocabulary.
Oh the regular game is great! I actually subscribe to it. But yeah big vocab is very helpful for the bonus words
I'm definitely adding this one to my regular games. Thanks!
Absolutely! There's an "express" and standard each day, a free weekly every Monday and a members weekly. The whole archive. And then occasional themed special puzzles! I'm a big fan.
Even if today's was really hard (◠‿◕)
...ugh!..banging my head against the last 7 of 77 words, trying to finish without using any clues...
...finally broke down and enabled alphabetical clues for the final six words: ohmigosh, that makes it so much easier!..finished in just a couple minutes afterward...
It really does help you learn! I just enjoy them without needing to be perfect at them.
World of Warcraft has introduced a Hardcore mode for Player Housing!
Still nothing compared to the historical hardcore Final Fantasy XIV housing. You get a shortage of houses that whole servers compete for, ballooning costs of tens of millions of gil, camping out to spam-click the purchase button the second the sale starts...
Oh, and if you don't log in for a couple of months, the house gets bulldozed and the lot goes up on the market again. (The only thing in the game that pressures you to log in. They have a strong culture of maintaining a "you can play as much or as little as you want" environment.)
They more recently switched to lottery system and added more housing plots, to alleviate some of it, but it's still very much a tiny model of real world housing.
This is hilarious because this was actually how housing worked in Archeage. You had to pay weekly taxes to keep your house/farm and if you were in a player faction zone, the castle lord (aka usually the most egotistical asshole in gaming) could set the taxes to whatever they liked, though they usually set them fairly low. Oh and in the spirit of it being hardcore, there was also pvp in most housing zones. So you couldn't even sleep in your house without fear of getting ganked by some dipshit summoning a meteor on top of you.
In fairness though, these were open world housing while WoW is instanced, so that makes it funnier there lol
Amazon picked a woman to play James Bond. Happy April Fool's Day.
Got a link or is this a weird "see it's a joke because it's ridiculous for a woman" thing?
Ah this is a Euronews joke, because it's ridiculous for a woman
I saw it the MSN news feed, don't remember the original source.
Yeah, it came off like you were finding the idea a joke not the article to be the joke, at least to me.
Either way I personally dislike the "it's obviously a joke because it's a woman, as Bond!" thing
In fairness, they are playing off that interpretation as part of the gag:
Also, as a longtime fan of both Bond and Austin Powers, the name "Fitty McCrotch" got a good silly giggle out of me.
Yeah but that sort of joke isn't funny to me anymore. Never mind that the previous poster did not seem in on it.
Hence not being a fan of the genre.
Sharpening Supplies, who sell…well, sharpening supplies released an announcement video for their “latest product”.
https://offby.io/ had an April Fools' question
Oh that’s a fun site, thanks for sharing!
Guild Wars 2 has added googly eyes to all the versions of it's launcher with characters on it. The eyes follow your cursor. It is very entertaining.
I saw that Reddit is doing another /r/place style thing over on /r/tyles starting on April Fools. I'm interested to see how it will play out.
CD Projekt Red announced the official trailer for Project R.O.A.C.H., the next major DLC for The Witcher 3
Christopher Bingham, one of my favorite filmmaking videoessayists, just released The Lost Medieval Fantasy Version of Jaws, an "AI-generated" masterpiece about the forgotten origins of the classic movie.
MiHoYo, the company that made Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail, released a cover of Never Gonna Give You Up with some of their characters. Solid reference to the 2008 Astley Apocalypse on YouTube...
Simone Giertz talking about renaming her company
The Highest Level of Restoration Ever Done in the History of the Universe
My favorite, unhinged youtuber figured out how to make an April Fools restoration video.
Purpur has announced a bold new pricing scheme.
(Mallow's Art Tricks) How To Draw Eyes
(compare with a non-April fools' day video on feathers to understand the format)
r/askhistorians has some fun threads today. I've enjoyed one re Leonidas and one re King George III and one about an explorer in Australia
Is OP seriously named “unknown user?”
Are you using a third party application? Over on the website I see OP listed as being Tildes itself without a userpage link, so I would assume the true author is Deimos using an admin tool.
It does show as "unknown user" in Three Cheers after opening the topic, but does show as Tildes on the main page.
On the website it's consistent as Tildes on both pages.
Maybe one for @talklittle to have a look at when he has time?
Yep. I’m using Three Cheers by @TalkLittle.
This is correct. I saw this thread shortly after it was created and initially it did show Deimos as the user that posted it. Interestingly enough, it did have a userpage link for his name, and I eventually clicked on his name from this post and noticed the post did not exist on his user page, which confused me. Then I came back to the post and refreshed and it changed from his name to Tildes.