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Google Cancels Its Infamous April Fools' Jokes This Year (theverge.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the no-laughing-matter dept.
Google won't be participating in April Fools' Day this year due to the serious threat of the coronavirus that continues to impact the entire world. The Verge reports: According to an internal email obtained by Business Insider, Google will "take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let's save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one."

"We've already stopped any centralized April Fool's efforts but realize there may be smaller projects within teams that we don't know about," the email from Google's head of marketing Lorraine Twohill continues. "Please suss out those efforts and make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned -- internally or externally." Hopefully other companies will take note of Google's lead here and adjust their own April Fools' plans accordingly. There's a time and a place for a good joke -- but this probably isn't it.
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Google Cancels Its Infamous April Fools' Jokes This Year More

Google Cancels Its Infamous April Fools' Jokes This Year

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  • With everything else of Google/Alphabet's that's failed?

  • One good thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by khchung ( 462899 ) on Friday March 27, 2020 @09:10PM (#59880506) Journal

    It would be one good thing from covid-19 if it stopped the annual stupidity in April.

    Every year there is this one day that I try to completely skip reading /.

    Some years I forgot and looked at the front page. It was not funny. At all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sebby ( 238625 )

      Every year there is this one day that I try to completely skip reading /.

      ... or the entire web.

      Some years I forgot and looked at the front page. It was not funny. At all.

      I've yet to find a "funny" April fools' yet.

    • In a different kind of early April Foolâ(TM)s joke: Apple Developer Relations âsensitivelyâ(TM) recognized the âsituationâ(TM) today in an email message sent to registered developers that they now have until June 30 to update their apps to iOS 13, including all the new features iPad hardware features like the M@gic Keyboard etc. COVID-19 was not explicitly mentioned (perhaps not to distract from Appleâ(TM)s bragging rights over todayâ(TM)s lite virus/health info App relea

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rednip ( 186217 )

      I think the last one which gave me a little chuckle was Slashdot's 'my little pony' rebranding and even then not much of a laugh. April fools internet jokes jumped the shark more than a decade ago and even before were only sometimes even funny. While I'd really enjoy a truly good 'joke', there should be a penalty for a corporate entity's attempt falling flat.

      Since it's not going away, we need a 'razzie' for April fools fails. The April Failz

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      You don't need April 1st. The Onion [theonion.com], Babylon Bee [babylonbee.com], etc. are funny almost daily!

    • This.

      And not only /. I mean, in a normal year one can _mostly_ spot the attempts at "jokes" across the net, though I have found it easier just to skip one day of the news cycle. Some friend pranking you one time during the day would be fun. Being spammed with a hundred stupid jokes on the net not so much.

      With the rise of "fake news" when it is getting hard enough to spot the good stuff on a regular day. As far as I am concerned, we could skip April Fools in media and just be done with it. Let's go back to s

    • Re:One good thing (Score:4, Funny)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday March 28, 2020 @06:30AM (#59881424)

      Some years I forgot and looked at the front page. It was not funny. At all.

      Statistically speaking we can't all have a sense of humour.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        Some years I forgot and looked at the front page. It was not funny. At all.

        Statistically speaking we can't all have a sense of humour.

        Stick in the mud won out this year. I guess if we want to see something funny we need to pull up some Rodney Dangerfield.

  • Darn (Score:2)

    by maorb ( 2578043 )

    I was honestly looking forward to it too help break the monotony.

    In my eyes this is the hardest time to make someone laugh, but a great time for a cheap distraction.

  • Time and place? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anonym-feig ( 6156562 ) on Friday March 27, 2020 @09:21PM (#59880540)

    I would have thought this was the perfect time for a bit of levity and humour. Why else are all the COVID self-isolation cat memes, people singing from their balconies, and god knows what other weird shit's going on on Twitch right now? Because a good laugh helps reduce stress.

    Having said that, Google's April fool "jokes" have always been terrible, so it's probably for the best.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by E-Rock ( 84950 )

      I think something funny is in order. Tech jokes for 4/1 were rarely funny.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They require time and effort to organize. Art assets, web sites, legal checks, ops team on the day. They could probably use those resources better elsewhere right now, with a lot of their staff being unavailable or at reduced capability.

    • And then, when no one expects it, they will roll out the greatest April Fool's joke. Smart move.

  • Less fun? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Friday March 27, 2020 @09:21PM (#59880542)

    I'm not reading the article! I need more fun, not less and I'm not going to changing my mind. Is less fun really something people ask for themselves or is this an overreaching concern for "others"?

  • It would be so appreciated, please, and thank you.

    • But will slashdot do the same?
      It would be so appreciated, please, and thank you.

      Let me second that, emphatically!

      Slashdot's April Fool's Day stuff would be fine if it were just one item. Unfortunately, it's normally all of them - or enough that the rest can't be trusted. So effectively Slashdot is gone for a day. Any real developments in the nerd news universe have to be hunted up elsewhere, or wait until they're another day old.

      (Back during the cold war I often thought that, if Russia wanted to do a fir

      • Slashdot gone for a day. Yeah, that's a tragedy.

        • Slashdot gone for a day. Yeah, that's a tragedy.

          Yes, it is.

          Especially this year, when, for some of the members, it might be the last day.

          • Not just this year, or this month, or this week. Or even within this nation, no matter which nation you are in at the moment.

            I'm reminded of this every day, when I fulfill my twice-daily ritual intended to prevent, so far as is possible, my seeing my last day, for as long as possible.

  • These were funny at first, but I dread how every tech company now tries one (and usually it isn't very funny).

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday March 27, 2020 @10:14PM (#59880668)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Yeah, overall I agree with this. One of the fundamental qualities of, at least, US culture is sarcasm and parody and humor in general. That's one of the problems these days is someone is offended by most anything anyone says. If you can't laugh at something, it has beaten you, may as well become a terrorist and blow something up (cause they certainly have no sense of humor).

      • Yup... not to mention gallows humor as a defense mechanism is something we've seemingly totally lost. I mean... I know for a fact that it's true because they showed me re-runs of it when I was a little kid... But it kind of blows my mind that, in my parents' day, there was a long-running popular sitcom about life in a nazi death camp, and the wacky hijinks that ensued. And the actors who played the camp commandant and the head guard were Jewish!

        But when I try to imagine Hogan's Heros... or even MASH... be

  • Well, besides ACTUAL medicine, I mean.

    Honestly, when things seems grim is often the best time for a few laughs. I think better advice would have been to avoid anything easily linked to COVID-19 as being in poor taste.
    *shrug*

  • This comes as no surprise. Everybody knows Nazis have no sense of humor.

  • In a coffee-table tome, an interview is transcribed and one of the team relates how surprised they all were to how much hate mail they received and how angry reactions could be to comedy. They didn't understand it. I'm parapharsing: Other genres aren't held to the same standard. Nobody threatens to kill an author of romance, or tragedy, or suspense when it's "bad".

    Google's decision shows an appreciation for public safety during an emergeny in the shadow of Orsen Welles' radio broadcast and to the meme {du
  • These are very stressful times. People need humor to get them through the stress and the fear. Humor is not inappropriate, it's a natural coping mechanism. This is why those in the military tend to have very dark humor, because it gets us through stuff our minds just don't want to process.

    Google needs to rethink this. /. should bring back the classic OMG Ponies or some thing similar.

    We need the humor, we need it badly.

    • Humor is natural, but pranks might be more a type of assault than a type of joke.

      If it involves a trick, most people won't actually be amused by it.

  • I do not think it means what you think it means.

    infamous [merriam-webster.com] adjective
    in-fa-mous | \ Ëin-fÉ(TM)-mÉ(TM)s \
    Definition of infamous
    1: having a reputation of the worst kind : notoriously evil
    an infamous traitor
    2: causing or bringing infamy : DISGRACEFUL
    an infamous crime
    3: convicted of an offense bringing infamy
  • Google has lost it's touch with reality. We need more fun now, not less. The lockdown has eliminated too much of it already.

  • They gonna get you proper this year, how best to set someone up for an April fools than to tell them all seriously that you're not going to do it this year.

    Next thing they'll be saying they're going to bring back the don't be evil motto... ON APRIL 1ST!

  • ...there are people that, in stress situations, welcome a small laugh (while making a man, with a blond hair and a tan) to relieve their tension.

  • At a time like this, the world actually needs more fun.

    Not to ignore the serious of COVID-19 but if we can't joke about other things, what's the point?

    Not everyone can be on the front line in this pandemic, some of us can just do the best we can by staying at home. Everyone sheltering at home also needs support.

  • This is the Google way...

    As soon as a Google product starts to get used they will pull it and drop all support?

    The only reason April 1st wasn't labelled Beta is that some may have thought it was a release date.

  • No (Score:2)

    by ruddk ( 5153113 )

    The world needs laughter

  • Best thing in years (Score:3)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Saturday March 28, 2020 @07:51AM (#59881562) Journal

    This is a hugely serious issue.

    The World may never be the same, April fools already sucks, this is genuinely classy and appreciated.

  • Google has become a standard US corporation.

    They dropped "do no evil", they are anti-rude/smut to the degree of insanity and now they are losing what remains of their humour.

    Staff will be expected to wear business suits when the lockdown is over...

    • "they are losing what remains of their humour."

        If you are talking about "April Fools" fake stories, I would say nothing of value was lost.

        It's nice to have a year which I don't have to deal with this crap, nor do I have to listen to people banter on all scared and shaken because they thought the fake April Fools story they read on the net was real.

  • In the most ridiculous Scottish accent I can muster.

    The PHB google fun police has come to say "We just don't think April Fool jokes are appropriate this year, *cough cough* the current global pandemic is nothing to sneeze at. There is a real risk that jokes at this time could make socially isolated people feel socially isolated during the social isolation period of our physical isolation.

    Please remember everybody, jokes on April Fools day are no laughing matter."

  • Hopefully news media (including Slashdot!) will follow their lead on this.

    I don't even like going to those sites on that day, because it's a lot of work to separate the legitimate stories from the April 1st bullshit.

    There are also people who don't get the joke and start regurgitating the fake stories to their friends and family, and all over the internet. Then the whole shit storm grows and spreads like wild fire.

    It's not funny, and has potential to cause damage.

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