Don't move my food dish!!
I hate April Fools day.
Yes, I know I'm Trickster's child and as such this should be like, my high holy day, but in reality not so much. Let me 'splain, the tricks I play are usually silly and playful. They are done with a light touch and done in such a way that more often than not, I am the butt of my own jokes. Or at least one of the butts. I am very much in league with the teasing I'm doing to someone else. It's all very lighthearted or at least that's what I strive for.
I hate April Fools day for the same reason my Irish family hates St. Patrick's day - because it's amateur hour. Suddenly everybody wants to take their turn at being Tricksy for a day, with varying degrees of finesse. See, the thing is, if someone's running towards the battle of wits unarmed, they drop everyone else to their level. So if their idea of highly funny "tricks" is tripping people, that's where they'll go, regardless of the fact that other people kinda want to stab them in the face when they get tripped.
I find it especially annoying that every ham handed tecchie at "Insert Name Brand Corporation Here" thinks their company should play a joke on users. "Let's manipulate the user's data so they think their account has been hacked!" Only if a user's account in the past has been hacked? That joke is really un-funny. Especially if they use that account for professional purposes and they have a double bill weekend coming up with a big con and a big industry event and they've spent the last week manicuring their virtual lawn because they have a virtual open house coming up. Not so funny to walk out and find a big bag of flaming dog poo on that lawn - even "just as a joke."
Ditto for all variants of "let's play games with the interface" and "let's delete their accounts" and "let's give them a phony error message." All NOT funny, especially for someone whose professional presence on the web is the umbilical cord through which they - y'know - find work, survive, make money.
You can do what you like in the name of humor, but my canine heart will hate you forever if you think moving my food dish is highly humorous.
Can you guess how I've spent my morning, by the way? Yeah. Chasing my moving food dish a couple of times because I have a big convention and an industry specific show coming up at which I am attempting to pass out my contact info and site links. Not so much funny to have those sites go all wonky because it's April 1st and some tecchie on staff got the big pants for playing an "April Fools" joke on their user base.
That shit just ain't funny, Hal.
And for reference's sake, here's a few other things that aren't funny to do to anybody on April Fool's Day:
Fake bugs or virus alerts
Fake "news" items that are deliberately anxiety/panic inducing
Fake obituaries
Fake illness announcements ( "I have cancer" or even "It's gonorrhea." Just...don't.)
Fake "I'm mad as hell and I'm leaving" storm offs
Fake break ups
Fake account deletions on social networking sites
Fake pregnancies or pregnancy losses
Fake pet deaths/lost pets
Fake firings
Fake suicide threats
Faked tragedies of any sort, really
If I have to sit at my desk with my heart in my throat because of something someone else thought was "funny" to do on April Fool's Day...again, that shit is just not funny. It's mean.
I don't wanna rain on anybody's parade and I'm not usually the one to espouse anybody else toning the tricksy side of life down - ask around - but for me the line is always "Is this mean?"
I don't DO mean. Not on purpose. I'm not perfect, sometimes I stumble into the outlying fields of Mean by accident, but when I find out that's where I am I beat a hasty retreat and I apologize for it.
Mean is not ok with me.
You wanna fake me out by telling me you won the lottery to see my reaction? Cool. Not mean. You wanna fake me out by telling me I won the lottery, when I didn't? Mean.
You want to fall in a mud puddle for humor's sake? Great. Could be funny. Go for it.
You wanna push ME into the mud for humor's sake? Mean. You'd better run like hell afterwards too. And stay gone for a few months too, until I forget why there's a red circle around your name. PS - I won't.
There's a clear difference between laughing with someone and laughing while pointing at someone.
The professional tricksters know where this line is and we know that humor is always a delicate balancing act. There's often a fine line between funny and mean, but there's definitely a LINE there and you just don't cross it lest you wander into "jerk" territory. Err on the side of skipping the funny if you think it might be mean. Chances are good that if you're having to ask that question, it probably wasn't even that funny in the first place.
Yes, I know I'm Trickster's child and as such this should be like, my high holy day, but in reality not so much. Let me 'splain, the tricks I play are usually silly and playful. They are done with a light touch and done in such a way that more often than not, I am the butt of my own jokes. Or at least one of the butts. I am very much in league with the teasing I'm doing to someone else. It's all very lighthearted or at least that's what I strive for.
I hate April Fools day for the same reason my Irish family hates St. Patrick's day - because it's amateur hour. Suddenly everybody wants to take their turn at being Tricksy for a day, with varying degrees of finesse. See, the thing is, if someone's running towards the battle of wits unarmed, they drop everyone else to their level. So if their idea of highly funny "tricks" is tripping people, that's where they'll go, regardless of the fact that other people kinda want to stab them in the face when they get tripped.
I find it especially annoying that every ham handed tecchie at "Insert Name Brand Corporation Here" thinks their company should play a joke on users. "Let's manipulate the user's data so they think their account has been hacked!" Only if a user's account in the past has been hacked? That joke is really un-funny. Especially if they use that account for professional purposes and they have a double bill weekend coming up with a big con and a big industry event and they've spent the last week manicuring their virtual lawn because they have a virtual open house coming up. Not so funny to walk out and find a big bag of flaming dog poo on that lawn - even "just as a joke."
Ditto for all variants of "let's play games with the interface" and "let's delete their accounts" and "let's give them a phony error message." All NOT funny, especially for someone whose professional presence on the web is the umbilical cord through which they - y'know - find work, survive, make money.
You can do what you like in the name of humor, but my canine heart will hate you forever if you think moving my food dish is highly humorous.
Can you guess how I've spent my morning, by the way? Yeah. Chasing my moving food dish a couple of times because I have a big convention and an industry specific show coming up at which I am attempting to pass out my contact info and site links. Not so much funny to have those sites go all wonky because it's April 1st and some tecchie on staff got the big pants for playing an "April Fools" joke on their user base.
That shit just ain't funny, Hal.
And for reference's sake, here's a few other things that aren't funny to do to anybody on April Fool's Day:
Fake bugs or virus alerts
Fake "news" items that are deliberately anxiety/panic inducing
Fake obituaries
Fake illness announcements ( "I have cancer" or even "It's gonorrhea." Just...don't.)
Fake "I'm mad as hell and I'm leaving" storm offs
Fake break ups
Fake account deletions on social networking sites
Fake pregnancies or pregnancy losses
Fake pet deaths/lost pets
Fake firings
Fake suicide threats
Faked tragedies of any sort, really
If I have to sit at my desk with my heart in my throat because of something someone else thought was "funny" to do on April Fool's Day...again, that shit is just not funny. It's mean.
I don't wanna rain on anybody's parade and I'm not usually the one to espouse anybody else toning the tricksy side of life down - ask around - but for me the line is always "Is this mean?"
I don't DO mean. Not on purpose. I'm not perfect, sometimes I stumble into the outlying fields of Mean by accident, but when I find out that's where I am I beat a hasty retreat and I apologize for it.
Mean is not ok with me.
You wanna fake me out by telling me you won the lottery to see my reaction? Cool. Not mean. You wanna fake me out by telling me I won the lottery, when I didn't? Mean.
You want to fall in a mud puddle for humor's sake? Great. Could be funny. Go for it.
You wanna push ME into the mud for humor's sake? Mean. You'd better run like hell afterwards too. And stay gone for a few months too, until I forget why there's a red circle around your name. PS - I won't.
There's a clear difference between laughing with someone and laughing while pointing at someone.
The professional tricksters know where this line is and we know that humor is always a delicate balancing act. There's often a fine line between funny and mean, but there's definitely a LINE there and you just don't cross it lest you wander into "jerk" territory. Err on the side of skipping the funny if you think it might be mean. Chances are good that if you're having to ask that question, it probably wasn't even that funny in the first place.