April Fooled

Egad, another April Fool's Day. I'm going to go into Old Man Mode here, so prepare yourselves. I hate April Fool's Day. Always have, always will. Even as a kid I hated it, especially after twenty seven people came up to me and told me my shoe was untied.

Also, shouldn't such antics be performed when, oh I don't know, the subject's not expecting it? Setting aside an entire day to play pranks on one another kind of sucks the element of surprise out of it, and makes no damned sense.

And in an effort to vex me even further, April Fool's has transcended the physical world and now plagues the virtual landscape of the internet. Today's a good day to just turn off your computer and go for a walk outside, even if it's still snowing in your area. All day today the internet will be full of "too good to be true" stories that you'll want to believe, but which are ultimately false. Blogs will be filled with news of new Star Wars movies directed by Peter Jackson, cell phones you tattoo on your arm, or cars that run on dishwater.

I would think that serious bloggers would be concerned with credibility. Walter Cronkite (ask your grandparents, kids) worked long and hard to become the most trusted name in journalism; most bloggers would kill to have 1/100th of his credibility. So then what do they do as soon as they begin to be trusted by their readers? They piss away any and all credibility they may have by running stories that Sony just replaced Blue Ray discs with far superior Green Ray.

Although these types of stories are meant to amuse, they just end up infuriating the readers when they find out they've been had. Not the best way to keep your readers, bloggers.

So until this obnoxious fad dies a well deserved death, don't believe anything you read today. Except this.