Metatalktail Hour: Fool around and/or find out

April 1, 2023 2:51 AM

Happy April 1, friends. In honor of the day, maybe you'd like to share some of the best and worst pranks (April Fool's or otherwise) that you have experienced or perpetrated, and while we're at it, we can also keep track of what shenanigans people are finding online or out in the world today.

Or you can just let us know what you've been up to this week, what's on your mind, what's happening with you (but no politics, please).

posted by taz (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 2:51 AM (37 comments total)

My brother and I, still in grade school, naive of the date, groggy at our cereal bowls and unwilling to face the school day, listen in delight as my mother announced:
School was canceled today for teacher conferences.

Happily planning our bonus day, getting more and more excited about the fun we were about to have, we were not amused when the next announcement was:
April Fool’s!

It may be apparent, I still harbor a grudge.
posted by hilaryjade at 4:26 AM on April 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

My daughter burst into tears yesterday when I gave her younger brother an explanation of what April Fools Day was. I used as an example that if he sat down to what he thought was a bowl of cereal and milk, but it was actually whipped cream instead, I could say, "April Fools!" and that would be a prank. My daughter is mad because now she thinks that none of the pranks she wants to try today will have any effect.

I'm terrified.

She's 10.
posted by Night_owl at 4:52 AM on April 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Remember the April first when Metafilter sloooowly changed color? That was a very good prank.
posted by Hobgoblin at 5:22 AM on April 1, 2023 [23 favorites]

My old standby prank doesn't work well with new-fangled faucets, but if your kitchen sink has a separate sprayer on the side, aim it toward where the person would be standing and put a rubber band around the lever.
posted by msbrauer at 6:16 AM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was young and curious so I tested the "put a bouillon cube in the shower head" on my brother.
Worked great.
posted by alchemist at 6:43 AM on April 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

With the proper incantations one could change the "Ready" text on HP printers to practically any text you want. One April Fools back when I did tech support I set the display to read "Low Coolant" on a machine serving a couple hundred users and then left the office letting my colleague deal with an endless stream of students reporting an impossible error message.
posted by Mitheral at 7:01 AM on April 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

No pranking for me! It's my anniversary. 23 years.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:33 AM on April 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Sometimes, the best prank is to live long and well.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:37 AM on April 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Or, as the old saying goes, “the greatest prank the Devil ever pulled was convincing Michael and Gabriel to put that bucket of glitter on top of the door God was going to walk through.” How everyone laughed.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:41 AM on April 1, 2023 [19 favorites]

Today's New York Times crossword puzzle has an April Fool's Day theme. People aren't finding it very funny, it seems.
posted by chavenet at 9:31 AM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Or, as the old saying goes, “the greatest prank the Devil ever pulled was convincing Michael and Gabriel to put that bucket of glitter on top of the door God was going to walk through.” How everyone laughed.
Angels are notoriously gullible. Keep in mind that in order for the prank to work, the Devil first had to convince Michael and Gabriel that there was a God. Some say they are still waiting outside that door, turning to each other every few hundred years and snickering excitedly.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:56 AM on April 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

Having young children on April 1st can be a trip. I was woken up this morning by my wife informing me that my three year old, who had crawled into bed with us during the the night, had peed on my side of the bed, where I was still quite peacefully asleep. After briefly being hopeful that this was an April Fools by my wife, a quick inventory of my physical sensations confirmed that I was, indeed, wet on one side of my body. After groggily taking the bed linens off the bed and to the laundry basket, and groggily stepping into the shower, I noted that I had just stepped on something soft. I looked down, saw something that looked for all the world like a piece of human excrement, but this time my hope this was an April Fools turned out to be true, as my son had bought a fake turd to prank his parents. Never been quite so happy to see plastic poop.
posted by Kattullus at 10:01 AM on April 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

Oh, and while on the subject of April Fools, I found this effort from Iceland, about a grocery chain announcing a line of Easter eggs filled with vegetables, to be pretty charming. The Google Translate version is pretty good.
posted by Kattullus at 10:04 AM on April 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

I used to work at a branch office of a stuffy law firm and on April Fool's Day (mid-1990s) I went into work wearing a magnetic nose stud, a blue sparkly one that was very noticeable. The receptionist was gossipy beyond belief and within minutes she was on the phone to her counterpart at the main office, saying how trashy it was, what would clients think, I wouldn't be able to appear in court with it, yada yada yada... and soon the news spread around the firm that I'd "had my nose pierced". She acted in front of me as if nothing was amiss. I let my boss in on the joke, he thought it was hilarious and stirred things up even more. Apparently it was the only thing anyone was talking about in both offices all morning.

I revealed at lunchtime that it was a fake nose stud, and the receptionist was livid, as the joke was on her. Served her right, but she never forgave me for it and acted as shittily as she could to me for the next year or so until I moved to another firm. Still, it was worth it.
posted by essexjan at 10:40 AM on April 1, 2023 [20 favorites]

I've been playing Outer Worlds (first time) and am currently working my way through the expansion "Murder on Eridanos". I'm randomly navigating the hotel basement, and in someone's room I found a note that says (and I am absolutely not making this up):

"I have eaten the purpleberries that were in the refrigerator
and which you were probably saving for breakfast.

They were awful"

Thanks to MetaFilter, I laughed and laughed.
posted by Gorgik at 11:38 AM on April 1, 2023 [14 favorites]

Mother Nature played a pretty solid April Fools prank on the Twin Cities today with 10” of wet, heavy snow. I love winter here but in a few days it will be 6 straight months of snow cover and I am tired.

My favorite prank was removing the labels from every can in the pantry when I was around 10 years old. Dozens of cans of unknown something. My mom was NOT pleased. My dad thought it was funny. I thought ahead enough to put little patterns on the bottom of each can and the same pattern on the labels which I hid. Once I told my mom that I knew what was in each can she turned from angry at me for doing it to begging me to try to use my powers for good instead. She still wasn’t very happy but she was glad I planned ahead.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:41 AM on April 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

My 6-year-old granddaughter apparently gave me a cold. I am on day 3, the day with a deep productive cough that makes me worry I won't have any lung tissue left if this keeps up. Being sick is no fun but I have been sleeping a lot and that part feels good. I have never been good at April Fool's Day. I try to just stay out of the way. When it comes to snow, I feel you Clinging to the Wreckage. We don't have 10 inches of snow but we still have snow. Most recently from Wednesday. I am so so so tired of winter. If I could hibernate through it like an animal, I totally would.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:36 PM on April 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Forgot to ask. What happens if you "put a bouillon cube in the shower head." Like, weird-ass brown water that tastes like beef?
posted by Bella Donna at 12:38 PM on April 1, 2023

Has anyone seen any good April Fools' Day website changes around the 'net? I don't see anything except Photopea is now Photopickle, which... meh.
posted by tzikeh at 1:54 PM on April 1, 2023

"The Pea and Pickle" sounds like a quaint little teahouse.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:03 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

r/ffxiv swapped themes with r/wow, and many other crossover jokes ensued.
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:06 PM on April 1, 2023

Today's New York Times crossword puzzle has an April Fool's Day theme. People aren't finding it very funny, it seems.

I liked it, it was at least worth a little chuckle and an eye-roll once I caught on to the trick.

My favorite MeFi April Fool's was the time that all the AskMe questions were from literary characters ("Help! I gave my bosom friend what I thought was raspberry cordial but it turned out to be currant wine, and now her mother won't let her talk to me anymore! I'm in the depths of despair, what can I do?")
posted by Daily Alice at 2:30 PM on April 1, 2023 [19 favorites]

The crowd I ran with in college included Ian, a dude with shoulder-length hair (which he was somewhat vain about) and Kim and Melissa, a pair of roommates who were on Ian's floor and who hung out with him so much the three of them were pretty much siblings. I was in a different floor but frequently went up to hang out with them all.

One night, when Ian had stepped out of the room, Kim and Melissa took me into confidence - they had come up with an excellent idea for a prank. They would break into Ian's room somehow in the middle of the night (both Kim and I had hooked up with him, so it was known he was a sound sleeper) and they were going to cornrow his hair. The only thing they had to figure out was how to get into his room to do it.

....As far as I know, they never figured that part out and that KILLS me because that would have been EXCELLENT.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:37 PM on April 1, 2023

We had a sudden shower of chickpea sized hail
posted by The otter lady at 7:03 PM on April 1, 2023

It's my birthday. Kinda appropriate I suppose. As a kid, my parents would tell me that the present was too big to wrap and it was in the garage where it belonged. Inevitably, it was something like a matchbox car, not a real one. My brothers would make up crap too about my birthday like, "Actually no one knows your real birthday. April 1st is the day mom and dad found you in a basket outside the firehouse down the street." Sometimes, in school, a friend would announce to the teacher it was my birthday and they were bringing in cake and candy. For some reason the teachers never believed them until the cake showed up and they looked it up.

When I told my kids the stories, and there are many more, they insisted we celebrate on March 31st so no one could prank me. It was very cute. I think it also gave them the chance to prank the parents without guilt on April 1st.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:01 PM on April 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

Last year some of my castmates and I did Cat Facts (Google it, there is now even an app for it) on some other castmates. It was a delight and a joy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:26 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sarah Polley's kid wins April Fools 2023 with fake Oscar return demand
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:32 PM on April 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

A few years back I did the "toilet is smoking and there's water all over the floor" prank. That was fun.

At my old job, we had a boss who was overly fussy about what people were wearing in the office, so one April Fools Day a whole group of us wore stuff that definitely wouldn't fly (printed leggings as pants, hoodies, sports jerseys, hats, graphic t-shirts) and called her into our "meeting" to ask her a question. She gets a few sentences in and is like, what are you all wearing?!?!? And I said, well, it's a special day. And she said, and what's that!?!?! APRIL FOOLS! Ahhhhh we all had a good laugh. And she also stopped being so fussy about clothes so win-win all around.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:04 AM on April 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

Smoking Toilet Inspiration
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:06 AM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Smoking Toilet Inspiration

I like how the dad muttered "I shoulda had boys" at the end, as if boys would be any less pranky.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:36 PM on April 3, 2023

Michael Che's on SNL was kind of funny, though the laugh track ruined it for the TV audience. I guess you "had to be there"
posted by chavenet at 12:38 PM on April 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I woke my kid up on April Fool's this year by blaring the Purge siren and announcement at their door. They though it was pretty hilarious.

Laster, they went to make themselves some hot tea, so I asked if they could grab me some lemon from the fridge. Inside the refrigerator was a silicone lemon with a disturbingly realistic eyeball in it. That one was also fun.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:41 PM on April 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

1. One year I made a fake grad school acceptance letter. This was about a week after my husband had accepted an offer at a different grad school. It was pretty convincing looking and I pretended to cry a little because I wouldn't get to go.

2. Another year I called my husband pretending I was stranded by the side of the highway somewhere, and waited for him by his car in the apartment building parking lot to jump out and say "April Fool"

3. I made big paper eyeballs and put tape on the backs. Then I kissed my husband and grabbed his butt and stuck the fake eyes to his butt. It took him a while to notice.

4. I announced on Facebook that I was pregnant. I was, in fact, actually pregnant, but my friends (knowing me) were deeply unconvinced and so there was a lively debate.

5. In 2018 (I think?) it snowed six inches here, on April Fool's Day, which was also Easter Sunday. I had nothing to do with that one, but props to God for being all "Gotcha! It's really Christmas!"
posted by daisystomper at 8:34 PM on April 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

daisystomper: 4. I announced on Facebook that I was pregnant. I was, in fact, actually pregnant, but my friends (knowing me) were deeply unconvinced and so there was a lively debate.

That reminds me that way back when it was considered fun to tell outrageous whoppers on blogs. The idea was that the post would be so over the top that almost no one would believe it. To my consternation, I found that I wasn’t good at thinking up truly unbelievable stories, and that way too many of my friends believed me until I told them otherwise.

The nadir was when I wrote a post on April 1st, claiming that my leg had been amputated overnight, and lots of people reached out with words of comfort.

On the plus side, I learned a lot about how ready people are to believe what they read, even when the events being described are highly improbable.
posted by Kattullus at 3:06 AM on April 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Can't let this year's April Fool's pass without noting this excellent effort by the British kids' comic The Phoenix.
posted by rory at 5:15 AM on April 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

SPOON!
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:34 AM on April 7, 2023

"Mah spoon is too big!"
posted by coppertop at 6:46 PM on April 7, 2023 [1 favorite]