April Fools

It's April, international occasion for joking. If you'd ask me, all of us could use a day like this after all the drama taking place recently. The more people you can pull one on, the better. Of course the internet, and especially social networks are great media to get the biggest possible audience to spread your best joke ever!

In the past, quite a few have used the above possibility. I went searching for some jokes, and came up with these!

1. 1957, UK: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

2. 2007, The Netherlands: A regional news paper headed that the skeleton of a dinasour had been found during construction work. The name of the species of the dinosaur must have been the Parglirpa. It was the first skeleton that had been found in the area, and it was supposed to be a great finding. Many archeologists and other interested people came to see the site, which had been opened for visitors on the first of April. The day after, the news paper revealed it to be a joke, and Parglirpa is the word Aprilgrap reversed, which is Dutch for April fools.

3. 2010, The Netherlands: Free travelling with concrete glue. Dutch people were messaged that you could travel for free! The only thing you had to do was to put some glue on your public transport card, and you could check in and out without any credit being deducted. The message was widely spread in all possible media.

These examples illustrate the development of jokes in media. TV used to be a powerful medium, news papers generate a big public, but the last joke reached the majority of the target public because it was able to spread via all sorts of new media which made it go national!

So next time you try to pull one on your friends (or the country), be sure to use your social media ;)


Used sources:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
http://hoax.blog.nl/nieuws/2010/03/30/1-april-gratis-reizen-met-betonlijm