Megathread: April Fools' Day 2021 on the internet
(Is it really that time again already?)
It's already started a little, but 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.
It occurred to me last night, as I'm curled up in bed feeling feverish, shivering, with body aches and some mild nausea, that I have successfully pulled an early April Fool's prank on my own immune system.
Thanks, feeling much better this evening, now I'm mostly tired.
StackOverflow: Today marks a new beginning for programmers around the world. Stack Overflow is proud to unveil our first venture into hardware, The Key™.
I hope getting that will unlock more copy pastes! I already maxed out the limit. https://twitter.com/ptkaster/status/1377427814052335618
I think that’s a really funny idea and I could see it as a fun gift to computer scientists
The copy/paste popup was the only thing to actually fool me today. Because I could see them actually trying this.
Australia’s Federal government is a joke, it has been revealed.
“YoU cAn’T jOkE aBoUt AnYtHiNg ThEsE dAyS!”
In all seriousness, Google is straight up stealing my go-to prank! Every year, when my students bring up April Fools’, I get very serious and tell them “you didn’t hear? April Fools’ is cancelled this year. It’s not happening.” I really commit to this, and spruce it up with lots of “I know you probably don’t believe me, but it’s true!” and “this isn’t an April Fools’ joke — if I were going to prank you it would involve a lot more homework” and picking the one student that I know will play along and asking them if they heard about the cancellation as well (which they always confirm).
I’m able to sell this strongly enough that, every year, some of my students are legitimately unsure as to whether or not it’s been actually cancelled, which makes it all the more fun to spring the truth on them.
I will qualify, in case anyone reading this is judging me right now, that this is the ONLY time I think it’s morally acceptable to gaslight my students.
The mobile game Looney Tunes Mayhem, which is a round-based battler featuring famous characters from said cartoons, is adding BIG CHUNGUS as a character. His max level is 69.
I don't know how serious they are and if he's staying.
LockPickingLawyer posted another damn funny video this year full of wonderful innuendo:
My 18-Inch Long Johnson
Previous years' videos:
Getting In My Ex-Girlfriend’s Back Door
Getting Into My Wife’s Beaver
Manipulating My Tiny Coq
These are marvelous.
Well, the whole Voltswagon thing counts, I guess.
Haha.
Well shit. The name change was honestly too believable (despite not sounding very good), so I'm not surprised people took it seriously. I mean, it took me a bit to be convinced that this NPR article wasn't the actual April Fools joke. But nope, Volkswagen really was pulling a fast one.
This RTX 4090 video is pretty great. The guy seems to have put some impressive time into it.
That's super impressive actually.
Razer releases Chroma hair dye
I hate April Fools pranks, but this one was good, in that with the slightest thought about it, you realize it's simply impossible, barring a sudden leap toward cyberpunk.
I'm guessing in about 10 years this will be possible somehow.
I like these kinds of April fools as well. No one is harmed, no group is really made fun of, just good fun.
You know if you get fiber-optic threads woven into your hair you could probably do something like it. It wouldn't look like the video but you could have it dynamically add tints of color.
It would be really expensive though. You'd be better off just getting a full on wig.
As is tradition on the arXiv, people have been started posting joke papers. They get more and more creative every year - here is one notable one this year.
Edit: Ok, my new favorite one is this. Title:
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute have spent "many years" on a groundbreaking new weather-service. You can now pick your own weather. Just change the forecast from whatever it currently is to the weather you want. https://twitter.com/Meteorologene/status/1377497201706958850
It's weird how understandable the words are in the advert to an English speaker. I guess it's the classic cheesy advertising phrases.
Theres a thread for renaming the Godot engine to Godette engine
I think I'll remove it, here is a good place for discussion about it.
Edit: link in case the thread can't be seen anymore (forgot how it works on Tildes)
Godot has been renamed to Godette Engine.
It is me, the broader public. Godot really got me with that cute ass mascot. Genuinely, she's so precious and adorable, I can't handle it! Her wearing the lil robot as a hat kills me. I love this.
Reddit's offering appears to be called Second. A guessing game where you try to guess the second place item in a group of 3.
Requires new reddit.Edit: Apparently you can go to the API directly to bypass new reddit: https://second-api.reddit.com/embed?fullscreen=1This is pretty cool. Really interesting idea. I like the rules, I can see how it makes a cool meta game. I wish more people were playing though, at the time that I'm writing this, there are only ~5k votes per round. With 100k+ it would be pretty insane.
That's actually hilarious.
A German news publication announced that the recently-freed cargo ship, the "Ever Given", had became stuck again - within the Berlin Government District. Picture included.
Berlin and Germany as a whole are largely landlocked.
Paddington Bear has an announcement to make
tweet is not available for me :(
Click to view the hidden tweet
Paddington: I don't like marmalade anymore.Silicon Valley Startup Invents Groundbreaking New Technology That Could Change the Way We Travel
I remember Greater Greater Washington from when I was still in the DC area. Still check it from time to time, too.
Tumblr has introduced some kind of NFT pet called a "Tumblrcryptid". Various shapes with randomized accessories, colours, and descriptions. Each has a name, a like a dislike, and refers to a tag you've used on your blog. Here is my favourite I've generated so far, his name is Flesh and he loves [rat emoticon].
Gentoo Linux is doing... something: https://twitter.com/gentoo, https://fosstodon.org/@gentoo, https://www.gentoo.org/
EEVblog 1384 - Halve Your Processor Power Consumption!
In this episode Dave explains the phenomenon of Diffusion Capacitance, and how you can use pulse-width modulation to power your chips at half duty!
I must admit it took me a while to catch on. I watched this yesterday, without the thought of April Fools in my mind at all. I forgot that Australia gets almost a whole day head start.
Geography now has a video on the nation of Sovonthak
Leaked scene of gaster destroying Betty in Glitchtale's last season 2 episode, Animosity
Discord: Announcing our partnership with Microsoft
The YouTube account associated with that video has been terminated
It wasn't much, just a Rick Roll from a convincing account with a convincing thumbnail.
I saw it first as a preview from a Discord voice chat (which shows you just the name of the video playing) which made it much more convincing, but I figured I'd post it here regardless since this April Fool's has been slow.
at first I thought it was just the normal meme... But then it got better.