Main

What?

Why?

Nouns

Old Stuff

Mail

I feel like such a fucking grouch for writing this, but it's been on my nerves all morning, so I'm gonna spew it out.

April Fool's Day just isn't funny on the Internet. It just isn't. It may have been funny, once, but today has been the least funny days on the Internet in recent memory.

And it's not because I've fallen victim to some well-laid prank. Nope. It's not funny because a) every site playing a prank is incredibly obvious, and b) every site is playing a joke. User Friendly, and SegFault are both "shut down" over legal issues, Slashdot is packed full of stories that either indicate we've hit a new level of technology (cold fusion, etc.), or some ning-nong thinks they're funny. Personally, after surfing to my "daily" sites and hitting the bad jokes one after another, I'm sick of it.

Part of the problem is, I think, that a lot of the people who have these web pages were all the class clowns for their class. Sort of the super-hyper extroverts that think they might cease existing if they stopped talking for half a minute. So they all used to be the one in the class who would on April 1, set the clock ahead, or let the hamsters out of the cage, or whatever. And it was kind of funny, because there just one funny guy. Now imagine 15 people in the class all deciding to cut up. It's about as funny as a kick to the head.

KT wrote a piece yesterday/last week on originality that sort of gets at what's bugging me about this. Everyone is (seemingly) desperately trying to get noticed, but since there's so many people all pulling similar jokes, the end result is rather flat. Stale. It's got all the originality of a Vanilla Ice song.

So, in short, stop the madness. If you've got an April Fool up on your web page, or if you were thinking about it, take it down. Don't do it. It just ain't funny.