At the time of our show, there was only about an hour and a half left for you to keep your guard up against anything in your Twitter and Facebook feeds. Hopefully everyone is now safe. When April Fools’ Day is finally over, the multitude of maddening mendacity that pranksters love to pull will go along with it. But in the meantime, the Internet has made the whole affair easier than ever. And more dangerous.
A Virginia woman found out the hard way: jokes can go too far. Angela Timmons texted her daughter saying she was hiding in the bathroom of Virginia College while someone was shooting on campus. Her daughter called the cops, who swarmed the school before finding out it was a joke. Joke’s on mom: she’s under arrest.
And some people find pregnancy gags equally unfunny on April First. There were plenty of people asking others to skip this one, since so many couples struggle to start a family. But the tweets and posts still went out today.
At the same time, gags have become publicity stunts for the brands out there that take part. Fueled even further by the wild success of people like Jimmy Kimmel. He’s kind of ruined the believability anything you see. But you remember his name, and other businesses known they can capitalize on a good gag.
Somebody here at WCCB even tried it with a phony story about our station going to Mars. Although it doesn’t look like it actually fooled anybody. But at least it gave us a good hook for our topic tonight…
Has the Internet ruined April Fools’ Day? Our Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, can’t be fooled… can he?
