Why You Can't Trust The Internet on April Fool's Day

Here's the deal, as everybody knows, today is April Fool's Day. The day where you're suppose to pull jokes on everybody. With everybody knowing that, you'd think nobody would fall for any of them, but oh they do. Just right now, my brother told me how my sister called him at work and said his computer and TVs were missing. My brother started to second guess himself about locking the door. That's when he remembered what day it was. So you see, even thought you know it's coming, you can still be victim of an April Fool's Day joke. Except, this blog isn't about jokes you pull on each other, it's about jokes that the Internets pull on all of us. April Fool's Day is that one day of the year you really can't trust anything you read online. This really sucks cause some things you read might sound really cool, but you know it's never gonna happen. Other times, some of the things you read are so stupid, you really hope it's a joke. Well let's take a look at some of this years jokes.

Google is usually good at at April Fool's Day jokes, but one of this year's jokes kind of sucked. Google's home page provided a link to "Virgle," a collaboration on an "open-source" Mars expedition between them and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. According to this site, starting in 2014, "Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars." The site looks somewhat real, you can even apply to be a Virgle Pioneer. Even with all that, who would actually fall for this? I'm sure Google put a lot of thought into this, but in the end, it just doesn't compare with previous years. One the other hand, Google also showed of the Gmail Custom Time feature, which is said to let users send e-mails into the past, sort of. The way it works is, you send an email today, but the recipient would get it with yesterday's date, making it so you don't miss an important deadline. The new feature utilizes an "e-flux capacitor" to resolve issues of causality. This would give students extra time to do that homework assignment, if it were true.

That was just one of the many jokes going around today. This is an email I got from Xbox today. It talks about some new products they're rolling out. These include a Xbox Live! board game and a Vintage Xbox 360 with wood faceplate and controllers. I wonder what some of these items would sell for an ebay lol.

Of course, sites like Digg like to get in on the fun, but their pranks are just more like shenanigans. Whenever you digg a story today, you'll get a unique symbol instead of the number of diggs. Nothing big, but still cool.

On this day, not even podcasts are safe. While watching Loaded today, I found myself "shocked" to hear the last story. Ms. Natali Del Conte has decided to leave Cnet to be the managing editor at Teen Life Magazine. Apparently she wants to pursue her dream in teen fashion. She of course followed this up by saying April Fools!

On another podcast, Tekzilla, I was surprised to see that the entire video had been mirrored.

After checking out some more videos, I found out that all the videos on the Revision3 website are now mirrored. It was pretty cool, but I'm sure it's just for today. So check it out if you get the chance.

Last but not least, while watching Mahalo Daily, I was expecting to see an interview with Steve Jobs. Instead I found out that I had been Rick Roll'd. If you don't know what being Rick Roll'd is, I suggest you watch the video.


Well that does it for me. I'm a go see if I can find any more jokes. Let me know if you see any cool ones. You know I always like a good joke, but a word of advice. If you happen to see a story saying that Sega is making a new game console, you've prolly just been April Fooled.