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Prank On!
It seems like each year it gets harder to not only come up with a good April Fools’ joke, but to also execute it without suspicion. As soon as you wake up on April 1st, you are bombarded with messages reminding you to be on high alert, which inevitably makes you and everyone else less easy to dupe.
Depending on your feelings regarding pranks, you might like the reminder to be on guard, but most of us see it as a challenge to overcome. Some social media sites took the challenge and ran with it this year, causing a pseudo rebirth for April Fools’ Day by creating innovative ways to help us “get” our loved ones. Hallelujah (one might think)!
Since social media sites permeate our daily lives, we invite them in without suspicion, so when a website comes along that can compromise that trust, like TweetForger.com, we are whole-heartedly shocked, or fooled, if you will. TweetForger allows you to “enter someone’s Twitter handle into [a form on their website], create a crazy tweet, send your victim a link to the resulting page, and watch the hilarity ensue.” (Mashable). The tweet may look real, but it isn’t. TweetForger simply copies the Twitter background from your victim’s Twitter handle and recreates it with your chosen text. On a normal day, this might be kind of scary, but on April Fools’, it’s all in good fun (though Sarah Palin might not think so):
Even companies that you wouldn’t expect accepted the challenge of creating believable pranks for the big day. Shock Top Beer came up with the idea of a free iPhone and Android app called “Virtual Sip” that allows the user to send a friend a virtual Shock Top beer. Well, where’s the rub? The app promises that the user will be able to not only see the beer but also taste and smell it through advanced technologies. Shock Top made this feat surprisingly believable through a short video from the creators of the application – 4/One Technologies – explaining how they utilized sensor technologies to deliver a lifelike beer to the user’s smartphone (never underestimate the power of attention to detail). The user then is asked if they want to taste or smell the beer.
When I used it, I chose to taste, as I am sure most people would have. When the beer was finished pouring, the app told me to stick my tongue near the phone (without licking it) so I could enjoy my beer. I soon found myself staring at my phone as the words “APRIL FOOL’S!” popped up with my tongue hanging out like a fool! What can I say? I just wanted to taste some beer! Alas, I am ashamed to say it worked on me, as I am sure it will work on many of your friends. Get the app by clicking here.
April Fools’ Day may have passed, but we all know it is a lot easier and just as much fun to pull pranks the other 364 days of the year, so with the help of social media, PRANK ON!
