April Fools

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I never much understood April Fools (which existed in Portugal too) in the sense of actually fooling someone.

Look, it’s not even that a lot of them are strictly aimed at a group where it’s a great joke, where everyone else is left wondering if it’s true or if they’re stupid; it’s that some of these are so accepted that they get cited, and people then think that it’s the absolute truth and base other stuff on it, and it pollutes the entire system.

My favorite April first joke is one that you consciously know isn’t true, or one that de-hoaxes itself at the end.

Take for instance the theory of phantom time (Actually this youtube channel does a lot of “ooh, big scary thing” that turns out to not be real, as they explain in the end.): According to a German historian, the year is actually 1724. He says our calendar is a lie and a big chunk of the Middle Ages never happened.

Then there’s completely out there stuff that frankly has mostly turned into a conspiracy to sell t-shirts, like the idea that Birds aren’t real.

My absolute favorite right now is the Tartarian conspiracy.

Frankly, I think there needs to be a lot more you tube videos talking about this extensive empire from the nineteenth century that everyone has forgotten, the memory of it washed away presumably in mud floods.

Also, in light of the recent mumbles about stuff under the pyramids, I think everyone should watch this video.

Of course, we’re finding out a lot of the crazier conspiracies like the idea the US government was funding ESP research…. just happen to be the pure truth.

Of course, none of these compare to the idea that communism has never been tried and that we should break a few million more eggs, in case the utopian omelet finally appears!

114 thoughts on “April Fools”

  1. I rather like the DHMO conspiracy.

    OTOH, the flat earth hypothesis just leaves me shaking my head. We’ve known the earth was round for millennia, as well as it’s approximate size. And since they are using a polar projection, that means the world is bigger around at Antarctica than the equator. Granted, I haven’t circumnavigated the globe at either place, but it isn’t. Not to mention the moon being a globe. Or at least half of one.

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      1. Australia is ancient Atlantis. It sank into the Atlantic Ocean, passed through the center of the Earth, and reemerged on the other side of the globe.

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            1. Note from this image that it is only possible to “dig a hole straight through top China” in Chile and Argentina.

              So much for what my Mom said I was doing as a child in the backyard.

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              1. Yes, this. Once I pointed out to Mom (on the globe I got for my 7th birthday) that digging straight through the Earth would actually have me popping up in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she stopped using that one on me.

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          2. “That ‘utopian omelet’ is hateful right-wing disinformation! We never wanted an omelet! What we always wanted was to roast the oppressive capitalist goose that laid the golden eggs! Because eggs are bad, and golden eggs are even worse! Omelets are unhealthy and environmentally harmful! Especially when they have cheese in them! EAT YOUR BUGS AND BE GRATEFUL, PEASANTS!!!”

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        1. The best method I’ve found is to put in the link directly, without using the link icon on the task bar. You’ll see the “Javascript busy” wheel in the editor, but once it gets to the page the image usually shows up. It may or may not show in e-mail tracking comments.

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          1. If I use the link function, OR paste a complete link, all I get is the ‘busy spinner’ and no link. I’ve left it grinding for half an hour and still no link. So I have to break the link string at the colon-slash-slash and paste it as text in 2 parts just to get it into the box. Make a separate paragraph containing only the link.

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  3. I rather liked the automobile* reviews that Road and Track did for the April issue. One had a limousine doing wheelies and such.

    ((*)) They included a locomotive for one. “It handles like it’s on rails!”

    I doubt it was for April 1, but one of the techs promoted a going away party for a rather unpopular engineer. (Who wasn’t leaving…) “After getting chewed out, we figured it was almost worthwhile.” OTOH, when he did leave, it was a good party. /snerk

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    1. Back when the BBC was capable of humor:

      On April Fools’ Day, 1957, the BBC offered for viewers of the current affairs program “Panorama” the infamous spaghetti harvest report hoax.

      By sheer coincidence (?), one definition of “noodle” is “fool.”

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    2. Over the years, I have attended several gone away parties.

      Having the kind of prickly personality that gives no sufferance to fools, I’m sure that I was the absentee guest of dishonor for at least two or three of them, too.

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      1. Oh, “K” was prickly, though many folks thought the “ly” was superfluous. Prone to giving undesired, unsolicited personal advice, among other non-endearing characteristics.

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  4. In the late 70’s and early ’80s the Boston Rock Radio station WBCN ran the Fools Day Parade. No actual Parade was involved but there were descriptions of a parade wending it’s way across Boston and Cambridge with fantastical floats and musical acts interspersed with music (including occasionally stuff the FCC did not permit in the ’80s without massive editing (Sex Pistols, Frank Zappa etc). Highly variable in quality although would from time to time get young college types out on the route either enjoying the spoof or getting played by locals used to the April 1st tomfoolery.

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    1. When I was stationed at Hill AFB, a local STL/Provo/Ogden radio station did the same gag – describing an elaborate and lavish parade through the town of Scipio, which was a hiccup on the IH-15. I think this was also the same station which broadcast an announcement that April 1 was the day that everyone should put their house telephone into a sealed plastic trash bag, because the telephone company was going to blow all the dust out of their telephone lines, and of course customers wouldn’t want all that dust to wind up in their house … and yes, apparently there were listeners who fell for it…

      I think the funniest that I ever heard of was the BBC’s documentary about the spaghetti harvest…

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  7. In Holland we also had April Fools, but apart from that the day has a bit of special significance: it was when the first significant military action of the 80 year war — the war of Dutch independence, 1568 to 1648 — happened. That was the capture of Brielle by Dutch waterborne rebels.

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    1. Wait wait wait wait… You have a town called Brielle?

      That’s super-exciting! It means girls named Brielle actually have some roots to their name!

      Also it means that, once again, I have had to help Google with additional search terms, in order to get an actual factual answer that I had every right to expect! Man, it stinks so hard!

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      1. There’s a Brielle, New Jersey, just south of Asbury Park and in the general vicinity of Belmar.

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      2. I know the town as “Den Briel” but apparently both that and Brielle are proper Dutch names for it. Presumably the NJ town is named after it, just like so many other towns in that region are named after Dutch towns. Sometimes modified a bit, like Brooklyn (from Breukelen).

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brielle is rather short but it mentions the capture. The Dutch version of the article https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brielle says that many Dutch people think that event is the origin of April Fools but that tradition is actually older.

        It’s interesting to read about towns going back 1000 years, and the odd origins of some of the names. My youngest sister lives in a small village that first appears in the historic record back in 1309 (due to “disobedience” to the bishop — apparently that disobedience took the form of besieging his castle. :-) ).

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  8. April 1st, 2025

    FOX NEWS REPORT:

    Donald Trump signs Executive Order ceding American sovereignty to the United Nations. Appoints Alexandrio Ocasio-Cortez as Ambassador. This aligns with his late-night firing of Elon Musk as head of DOGE and replacing him with Hillary Clinton. Trump mentioned that he is “SERIOUSLY” considering endorsing Hillary for the combined 2028 Democrat-Republican Party nomination.

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  9. If you click on the ‘Birds aren’t real’ link it goes to a Wikipedia page. The first image shows a big billboard with BIRDS AREN’T REAL printed on it — and about a dozen pigeons perched along the top. :-P

    Hey, if birds aren’t real, what keeps shitting on the statues?

    Liked by 1 person

        3. “Yes this is evolution. We’re alive and abundant, while you’re a bunch of dead and fossilized bones. Besides, even with our chicken-brains, we’re still smarter than you.”

          Liked by 1 person

  10. …the idea that communism has never been tried and that we should break a few million more eggs, in case the utopian omelet finally appears!

    Some things are Funny Never.

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      1. No, he’s a NWS severe weather spotter. (“I didn’t go to shelter because I wanted to see if you were right.” Well, the fed had asked, and got an honest answer, and laughed along with the rest of us. Weather feds tend to be a little more mellow than some other feds.)

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        1. On occasion, the weather discussion on the weather dot gov site can be extremely entertaining. It doesn’t “hurt” that weather has been interesting lately.

          What the Pacific NW gets, we share with the rest of the country. What the Gulf Coast moisture contributes is not our fault. [Narrator voice: Blame Al Gore]

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  14. Well, you remember all those “Doom’s Day” stories?

    The Truth of the matter is that all of them were True

    The world has been destroyed several times, but we’re too stupid to know that we’re Dead. [Very Big Crazy Grin]

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  16. I went to read up on Tartaria, for reasons… and followed that to Hyperboreans, because why not, which in turn led to …. I may or may not have passed through Ancient Aliens on my way down the rabbit hole.

    I blame Sarah.

    Liked by 1 person

      2. I used to have a t-shirt that read: I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was going to blame you.

        However, if I wind up writing a story where the Hyperboreans are the offspring of ancient aliens and founded the long lost civilization of Tartaria, it’ll be all your fault.

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  17. I want to write a short, or maybe a comic, about the “Birds Aren’t Real” schtick: premise being one (or three or four) spy drone birds running a sapient AI that’s convinced of this conspiracy-theory absolutely, and spends all his time trying either to pass state secrets to the pigeons in the park or to collect the same from them. And because he’s the only UNREAL bird present, things go as one expects.

    It might be best as a comic strip. Multiple bird-bots would be used if a gag needed one sort of avian rather than another, but I would have to ensure that no two ever actually make contact as spies.

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  19. I just had the quietest, most shy and sweet 7th grade girl actually get me today.

    She handed me a book to check in and said, ” Page 59 is missing. ” So I took it and grabbed a sticky note and wrote 59 missing on it and scanned it in and set it to the side.

    “It’s a joke.” she said.

    I was confused.

    “It’s April Fool’s Day. It’s a joke the book is okay.”

    I laughed and told her she got me good.

    It made her day and she left with her arms raised in triumph.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. The best April Fools Day prank I’ve been involved with happened in college. All my roommates were AF ROTC, and there was an apartment of male AF ROTC guys four doors down from us. We put an ad in the Independent Alligator advertising the, “First Annual Cin City (area of our apartment complex) Unicorn Hunt,” and gave the guys’ address as point of contact. The ad stated all applicants had to prove their ability to ride unicorns. And oh, yes, we did include their phone number.

    We heard they got some pretty interesting calls. Including one from a guy….

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  22. Breaking News: That Time When I Did the Thing, But Not The Other Thing, In Another World, In Part of That World Which is Like if Republican Rome, Silla Korea, the Iroquois Confederacy, and Anglo-Saxon England had Grandbabies, and the Grandbabies Hated Each Other, or Oblinorimer, the webnovel turned best selling Japanese Light Novel, is getting an adaptation. Expected to be released on AnimeLab streaming in Spring of 2028, Triangle Staff and Studio Fantasia have started work with Osamu Tezuka as the Director. Kazuki Takahashi is the lead character designer. Wildly praised by fans as ‘trippy’, ‘strictly follows its own mad internal logic’, and ‘like if Grave of the Fireflies and Records of the Heike were spliced into Shelby Foote’s The American Civil War with the technology of Gundam and Lensmen‘, Oblinorimer has been funded for six cours of one and a quarter hour episodes. It has been reported that this will probably cover the first eight volumes of the seventy three.

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  23. Here’s a good one I found recently:

    https://is.gd/8w3t4p

    I guess he thought the ‘crust displacement’ theory used as the excuse for the CGI kablooie in the 2012 movie wasn’t exciting enough.

    (search for “short video illustrating the concept” to find the cliff notes)

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    1. What movie?

      What video? What concept?

      Was this all one long shaggy-dog April joke? Because a search using that string got NOTHING except a whole bunch of how-to-make-a-video sites.

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      1. The “2012 movie” was the one released in 2009 and *titled* 2012, from the supposed end of the world from the Mayan (?) calendar.

        I should have said “find” instead of search, and specified you need to do so when you’re on the very chatty linked (is.gd shortened) URL, as that will take you to the video depicting the author’s proposed mega-disaster.

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  27. My favorite conspiracy theory is that all the really crazy, far-out and ridiculous conspiracy theories are manufactured to draw attention away from the real conspiracy theories and make them easier to dismiss.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. In John Ringo’s Superhero Series (the first one is scheduled with Baen), the Evil “Society” often leaks enough of the truth with enough falsehood so it can be “Shown As False” so that anything about them can be discounted as “Just A Crazy Conspiracy Story”. [Twisted Grin]

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      1. H. Beam Piper had the Paratime Police hypnotize random locals to tell crazy stories to reporters in our Fourth Level timeline, in order to discredit accounts of real screwups like the sighting by that 1947 pilot in “his little airscrew craft” of First Level spacecraft flying around where they weren’t supposed to.

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    3. There are also those that take something real, paint it pink, then point and laugh.

      Take The Great Replacement Theory. Where the obvious is obvious, democrats have been bragging about it for over three decades, but it somehow becomes a conspiracy theory by somehow dragging in the Jews.

      Or Black Helicopters. I actually got a front row seat for this one There were suddenly a lot of military choppers buzzing around North Idaho, for no obvious reason. Which made people curious, and they started asking the FAA, Governor, National Guard, etc. about them. The various officials either denied knowledge, or dodged the question. So our Representative took the floor of Congress, and said “my constituents would like to know what is going on with all these helicopters”.

      And overnight, the media absolutely exploded with “Those dumb hicks think the New World Order is invading them with Black Helicopters to enforce One World Government!”

      I still have no idea what heck was going on, but I know for a fact that the government didn’t want us to find out.

      Sarah, who BUT the government would spend significant amounts of money researching ESP?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Sounds like the time that an OV-10 Bronco was doing low and slow orbits in the general area of $TINY_TOWN. We’re close enough to California that one of their aircraft could have strayed (assuming the pilot had partaken sufficient quantity of Humbolt High), but the plane wasn’t in CDF/CalFire livery.

        On researching, seems the State Department had one or three that they used for drug surveillance. Knowing what the place was like then and there, I think they lent it to DEA.

        Never did find out* what the Chinook helicopter was doing overhead a couple years before that. That’s no firefighting chopper…

        ((*)) Yes, I had my guesses.

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        1. During my Summer of Fighting Forest Fires, I spent some time on the Hat Point fire in the Hell’s Canyon NRA. Columbia Helicopters had a couple of Chinook-type birds based at the fire camp (actually a BV109 & a BV234). We called them Big Windy and Little Windy; those bugger could haul, and drop, a LOT of water even in those hot/high conditions.

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      3. Some Army helicopters are painted a very dark green which can look black under the right atmospheric conditions.

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  28. In the life’s little ironies dept, Senator Cory Booker has been filibustering for 23 hours. Today. Apparently for real.

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    2. …Watch his eyes. They are brown because he is full of (male bovine excrement way up past them). When they turn blue, he is a quart or two low.

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  29. Well, I have realized that all of this ‘more US states’ thing may simply purely be miss aimed trolling.

    Trump is eighty ish. Alaska and Hawaii may have been during his life time.

    He may be well enough educated that this, like the third term thing, is something he clearly understands to be unconstitutional and laughble.

    If the trolling target is communists and also foreigners, then they would be expected not to have the background knowledge to know better.

    The issue is, I did not recall that I knew the legal requiremetns for incorporation into statehood, and I did not hypothesize that he would only pursue such a course by legal and constitutional means.

    I’m not clear how many people my age or younger, have the background to think over the legality and constitutionality of the question. Confounding factor, I’ve been on purpose not thinking very hard about politics recently.

    Of course, maybe it is possible that the peoples of Canada, Wales, Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugaul, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Hungary, Romania, and Austria, have actually voted to accept the law of the Constitution, and if possible be incorporated as States, and that some They do not wnat us to know about it.

    Frankly, I had forgotten about all the votes necessary for going forward, and also about why the Legislature could be reluctant to go forward with it.

    There’s a conspiracy theory that the hypothetical, where the English, Australians, and Canadians know US law very well, and are taking the piss when they pretend to throw a dummy about entering the US as states, is actually true.

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    1. I’m pretty sure Alberta would jump at the chance.
      But Ottawa and Quebec are headaches we don’t need.

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      1. I don’t know if there’s a majority in either province. But a good-sized chunk of Alberta and Saskatchewan would be interested in joining the US.

        My impression is that Trump sees something coming down the pipe, and wants to try and turn North America into a fully independent and self-supporting continent before that something arrives. Greenland is a forward bulwark against the east. And the Canal is needed for reasons that are obvious to anyone who spends ten seconds thinking about the difficulty in getting friendly shipping (including a navy) from one side of the Americas to the other.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. I’ve only heard specifically about Alberta (where US-joiners have apparently been a problem for Ottowa for a *long* time) and Saskatchewan. It wouldn’t surprise me if NS and the Territories feel the same, as I’ve gotten the distinct impression that Ontario treats much of the rest of the country (except Quebec, which is in a somewhat odd situation) as colonies to be plundered by the home province.

            In such a situation, getting access to the rights and privileges of a US state would be a huge improvement.

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            1. Saw a blub on news article that EU is going to impose retaliatory tariffs on digital companies: Meta, Google, X, etc.

              Blink. WTH? First – How? Second it is the EU population that will pay those tariffs! Not the companies providing the digital content.

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              1. I suspect they’re really protectionist. I believe the EU genuinely thinks it can launch it’s own social media platform as the US and China have done, which will give the EU its own tech giant. The tariffs are meant to give some local tech company cover to build up its own platform.

                That’s my suspicion.

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                1. They are also attempting to bludgeon them into doing the censorship for Brussels; just like Britain’s attempt this week.

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    2. To become a state in the United States, a territory must petition Congress for statehood, adopt a constitution in compliance with the U.S. Constitution, and then Congress must pass a joint resolution admitting the territory as a state, which the President then signs. 

      Here’s a more detailed explanation of the process:

      • Territory’s Request: A territory wishing to become a state must first hold a referendum to determine if the people desire statehood. If a majority votes in favor, the territory petitions the U.S. Congress for admission. 

      Constitution and Compliance:

      If the territory hasn’t already done so, it must adopt a form of government and a constitution that complies with the U.S. Constitution. 

      Capacity to Enter into Relations with Other States (Sovereignty):

      A state must be independent and have the ability to conduct international relations, including making treaties and engaging in diplomacy. 

      Congressional Action:

      The U.S. Congress, both the House and Senate, must pass a joint resolution, by a simple majority vote, accepting the territory as a state. 

      Presidential Approval:

      Once the joint resolution is passed by Congress, the President of the United States signs it, officially granting statehood. 

      Statehood Achieved:

      The territory is then acknowledged as a U.S. state. 

      Constitutional Authority:

      The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole authority to admit new states to the Union.

      –

      Does the “Sovereignty” prevent individual Canadian provenances from becoming US states? Unlike the US, there is no Canadian federal supremacy on laws (example: how different provenances are allowed to have their own ADA service animal handler laws. US in contrast, states can add to service animal handler rights, like including service dogs in training, which the ADA does not cover, or including cats as service animal which one state does, etc.) How that lack of federal supremacy allows provenances to take their territory and petition the US, I have no idea.

      BUT …

      What is clear from the list above (AI generated FWIW) is the territory, i.e. Alberta, etc., have to be the ones to petition the US to become a state. Short of that, the US has no authoritarian governmental body to wave a wand (legal trick) and say “this territory is now a US state”. Otherwise Puerto Rico, Quam, Northern Mariana Islands, Amerian Samoa, and US Virgin Islands, would be states. Puerto Rico has had multiple referendum votes on statehood and the referendums have failed.

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      1. FYI, Senator Booker beat Senator Strom Thurmond’s record from 1957 by one minute: 24 hours and 19 minutes of bringing the Senate to a halt.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. For Canada, can’t we just get some District Judge to rule that Article XI of the Articles of Confederation counts as an “Engagement” under Article VI of the Constitution so they’ve been pre-approved?

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  30. A lot of American farmers emigrated to Alberta in the late 19th century. And wanted the province to become a state. So there’s a history of pro-American feeling there.

    OTOH, between that and the occasional invasion/threat of invasion from us bumptious Yankees, there’s also a reason some Canadians don’t trust us mich. <grin >.

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    1. You also had a major migration of Ukrainians fleeing the Holodomor and afterward. Worked a project there for roughly 4 months. First time I encountered restaurants advertising Ukrainian specific cuisine.

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  31. Frenz,
    The sovereignty thing, I’m not sure is in the constitution, but would make nations as territories into a fairly lump thing. No Alberta without Quebec, and no Baja California without Chihuahua. Except with military force shenanigans, and temporary pretend nations. Temporary pretend nations like maybe the empire of Moscow has been doing very publicly right in front of the face of the Euros.

    (There's always the joke about decolonizing Moscow imperialism to restore the territorial integrity of historic greater American Rus.)

    The precise details of the sovereignity of the colonies, and the Articles of Confederation followed by the Constitution is interesting, but not something I wanna go over at the moment. Texas split off from Mexico in one of the Mexican civil wars, was sovereign for a period, then came into the US, then disputed that decision. (And I have been warned recently about discussing later elements of this too much on this blog.)

    There's a potentially fun digression about the henwittedness of the academic ideology of what 'colonialism' means. Canada legitimately does need to shut the fuck up about their 'First Nations' stuff, and also stop aligning to hostile foreign regimes in the PRC and in the UK. The academic ideology does suggest that it would be legitimate for us to wage a war of extermination, 'decolonization', against many current inhabitants of Canada, because someone's great-great-grandfather once thought he was owed a claim, and we have paid no attention to who has been holding the territory now, these last few generations, and whether those generations had internal peace.

    There are two basic and fundamental problems.

    One, we have both long had a hatred of abuses by the federal government, and also now have a pressing reason to try to reprise and retaliate for recent serious state and federal abuses, to prevent repeats, of eg the covid masking lockdowns next year. We don't necessarily need to terrorize people into not repeating, but we absolutely need to address some of the mechanisms and leverage. Because we are twitchy as freak, and it would be nice to travel out of that by calming down.

    This has the implication, first basic problem, that a federal government that we cannot trust to operate USAID or FEMA is a federal government whose leverage over the governor of and government of a territory is not something that we can trust them to use. Trump is not entirely trustworthy, and Mike Johnson, for example, is not trustworthy. We need them to deliver on winding down the agencies, regulations, budget, and manpower that the federal government /cannot/ be trusted with, before it would be at all sane to seriously talk about allowing the feds access to more US territories, especially populated, spacious, or formerly wealthy chunks of land.

    Two, change in legislative votes is absolutely stuff we have gone to civil war over, or have been extremely touchy over, and we are again apparently firmly divided in the legislature.

    This circles back to point one.

    When you do the gedanken ('thought experiment') of functioning ot territorial government, a lot of our working set ups had Americans moving into relatively empty places, and bringing some of the mental habits. Texas is edge case one, Hawaii is edge case two, and you could argue Alaska as another. If you have a lot of population already in an area, and they do not already have acceptable practices, you have the crazy alternative of killing them, the questionable alternative of allowing the corrupt practices and non-competitive factions they would bring in with them, or the sane and preferred alternative of not bringing them in.

    Freedom of speech, arms and self defense, and voting are the customs that are kinda necessary for a state's population to function inside of the USA.

    The other nations as they are now are actually very bad. We woudl be stupidly insane to be talking about bringing Japan, South Korea, or Israel in as states. Those populations do not want that, we don't want that, and the logic of a functioning nation necessarily runs contrary to that. Japan, South Korea, and Israel meet more of the criteria than most nations, and still do not meet even near many of the strictly necessary requirements.

    We cannot trust the federal government, we do not want to be stuck trusting the people these populations might elect to federal legislatures, and the security problems of any of these places as a US territory would be interesting.

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