2009's Best April Fool's Day Internet Pranks
The first of April is an interesting phenomenon. It's as if everyone- including the biggest news outlets, corporations, and entertainers in the world- gets a free ticket to do and say whatever they want, all in the name of comedy. Not that the holiday isn't appreciated, especially at a time when everyone could use a laugh. Here are a few of our favorite pranks from the first half of April Fool's Day, 2009.
The funny folks at Google have outdone themselves today by duping the Internet with no less than 10 separate gags, including brand-new Google technology that:
- ..conquers the world of friendly, sentient AI with Google's new "global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster," CADIE (check out its blog for more hilarity)
- ..allows users to use Google Brain Search to search their "thoughts and memories" to find out "why you started dating this woman in the first place"
- ..uses Google Docs and the all-new Autopilot, drawing from the omniscient and omnipotent clustermind of CADIE, to automatically do your homework, conduct your presentations, and reply to your emails
- ..view the internet in 3D with the latest version of Google Chrome
PLUS: Google also announced their brand new
GPS and AI-infused Australian football, their innovative new mapping technology for China (it uses
31,415,926 pigeons), and a
funny poem generator for Japanese users. I think that one may have been lost in translation, actually.
YouTube's
new viewing experience is definitely unique. Here's hoping at least one person breaks their monitor trying to turn it upside-down.. and then posts an
upside-down video about it!
Expedia is offering, for the first time ever, fast and affordable business class
flights to Mars. Activities for terrestrial toursists include
dust surfing, climbing Olympus Mons, and
Super Low-G Martian Arts. Be sure to bring your sun screen.
The Guardian, a UK paper which has been pathetically clinging to the dying medium of print newspaper for the last 188 years, is apparently finally ready to
embrace the new media age. That's right, the paper will now be available exclusively through
Twitter; after all, "Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters."
Cartoon Newtork's
Adult Swim, a program infamous for its hilarious and often innapropriate April Fool's pranks, this year at midnight aired
The Room, a crappy movie that apparently has a cult following in LA or something. Some viewers found the movie hilarious, most found it obnoxious, and all of them likened it to a low budget softcore porno (the sexy bits were blocked out with large black bars).
Kid Rock sent out a press release early this morning informing dozens of news outlets, including The Phoenix, that he has acquired the naming rights to the home of the
Detroit Tigers, and that Comerica Park will henceforth be known as "
Kid Rock Field." In addition, Kid Rock's new line of beer will be the official beer of the team. This makes me wonder, does Kid Rock really have his own beer?
I'm not even sure if this is a joke or not, but I've been hearing a lot about this
Conficker C virus lately, and it's supposed to wreak havoc on all our internet lives this very day by deleting our files or selling us spamware, according to
CNN. The thing is, that picture looks awfully fake, and they keep referring to "
infected" computers as
zombies, which sounds silly as hell. I think what they're getting at is that when the virus is activated later today by the "
master computer," our pc's will rise up as the undead and begin the zombie apocalypse, which makes me even happier to be a Mac user.
