As Chaim Gartenberg explained in 2021, there are only really four options for brands on April Fools’ Day:
- Don’t do an April Fools’ joke. Put the time and energy into doing something productive that will materially benefit the world (or, less idealistically, your business) instead. Or just don’t do anything. Abstaining entirely would still be a net positive over the drain of resources and mental energy.
- Do an April Fools’ “joke” but actually follow through on your stunt. This is arguably not a prank, since you’ve actually created a video game skin or a real product that people can buy — but it doesn’t really hurt anyone.
- Do an April Fools’ joke but be extremely clear from the start that this is a dumb joke and you have no intention of doing the thing that you are “humorously” pretending to do. Does this defeat the purpose of doing an April Fools’ joke because you’re not “fooling” anyone anymore? Absolutely. (Please see my first two points.)
- Lie to your customers, successfully tricking them into believing you are making some product, rebranding, or service you are not. By doing so, you will almost certainly annoy everyone once your deceit is made plain for the extremely small gain of pointless PR. The aphorism goes that there is no such thing as bad publicity; the seemingly endless line of companies willing to make fools out of themselves has proven this false time and time again.
So, after a quieter couple of April Fools’ years during the pandemic (with the notable exception of VW’s incredibly ill-conceived Voltswagen stunt), many corporate behemoths have decided to make another attempt at convincing us they’re really funny. How’s that working out so far?
Sega chose option two and killed Sonic the Hedgehog. Games like Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty: Warzone leaned into option three, while Tesla’s Cybertruck “crash test” landed somewhere in between. But on the plus side, at least we haven’t seen many of them trying out AI-generated jokes (yet).
If you see anything that particularly sticks out for good, bad, or just unusual reasons, send it to us.
-
This portable PC gaming machine from Asus would be serious competition for the Steam Deck if the company actually puts it on sale.
Fresh off of releasing the Ear 2 earbuds and ahead of its second phone, Nothing claims its latest product is not a joke. On the company’s website, it says they’ve made a beer that’s due to be released in summer 2023 and ask people to sign up for updates.
Making beautiful tech is thirsty work.
So we created Beer (5.1%). A crisp, unfiltered rice lager. Brewed independently at Freetime Beer Co in Wales, UK.
If this were true, then a lot of bros would need to fill in some blanks on their dating profiles immediately.
Sure, maybe Elon Musk could take over FTX’s vacant office space in Miami, but the edit history on the mayor’s tweet exposes this one as a joke.
Another funny joke from Mayor Francis Suarez is the MiamiCoin cryptocurrency — when we checked in last year, it had lost 88 percent of its value and traded for $0.0044. Now things have gotten so bad that the OkCoin exchange has suspended trading there altogether.
Obsidian is following in the footsteps of other productivity tools like Notion and Google Docs by adding an “AI assistant.” It’s called “Gemmy, the Obsidian Unhelper,” and the developers promise it’ll be 100 percent unhelpful.
It is an actual, installable plugin, that asked me if this quickpost was the best I could do, and if I’d considered using comic sans.
9/10.
We’re dyed-in-the-wool April Fools’ Day haters around here, but hold on one second — Duolingo and Peacock might be on to something.
This show Love Language doesn’t exist, but its fake trailer is more interesting (and less cringe-inducing) than reality dating shows that actually are arriving on streaming services lately.
Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.
A bit obvious, and I’m surprised if they hadn’t done this one already.
The only gaming mouse with both Chroma RGB and 360 fps (follicles per second), etc.
From Razer’s FAQ:
The performance buff of the Razer Razer will gradually fade as your hair regrows. However, if you’d like to immediately perform worse, we recommend temporarily switching to non-Razer products.
