Culture

The Most Cringeworthy April Fools’ Moments From This Terrible, Terrible Day

Ha ha, everyone is the worst, the world is a lie.

by Meg Watson  1 April 2015

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Weirdly, there’s no international holiday when we all get to be Formula 1 drivers. There’s no special day in the calendar when we can all try our hand at being a heart surgeon. No matter what the celebration is, there’s never gonna be a time where I think it’s okay to re-wire my house’s main switchboard.

And yet, on April 1, we all gleefully declare ourselves a comedian.

The origins of April Fools Day are pretty unclear — and frankly, today is not the right time to trust any research of it — but a popular theory suggests it dates back to the beginning of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century. The New Year was moved from April 1 to January 1 and when people accidentally celebrated otherwise, they were deemed an April Fool.

Today, this somehow means everyone has a temporary license to be a total dick and spam your day with lies. Of course, some people do this very well.

Google have turned your neighbourhood into a giant game of Pac-man. Sydney Uni have throughly disappointed everyone after the promise of blasting Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’ on campus. The Australian Sex Party announced they were merging with the Shooters and Fishers Party to create “The Sex Pistols”. The NT News have given up caps lock and taken a pledge to be “a serious media organisation that reports on important issues like Syria, etc”.

But, predictably, there are many others who are desperate to get in on the frantic lols. And, like when your dad finally understands and overuses one of your favourite movie references, the joke is now suffering a slow and painful death.

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Bill Shorten Finally Played The Onion Card

Leader of the Opposition and sentient pile of business socks Bill Shorten was the first unlikely jokester for the day, taking a dig at Tony Abbott on his Facebook page. It should have been easy. Our gurn-faced, onion-munching PM has single-handedly resurrected Australian satire. He could have literally posted a picture of an onion with no comment and won over most of the population.

Instead, he chose this:

“Multi-layered”. Ugh. “Allium Ambassadors”. What.

Because sometimes it’s best to just ignore your granddad when he makes a bad joke and hope the conversation moves on, Shorten’s not getting the reception he hoped for. Many are instead choosing to question the Labor leader on why his party just sided with the government’s controversial metadata legislation, and the second-most popular comment kinda says it all: “This April Fools is legitimately the most detailed policy statement you’ve ever put forward.”

Soz, Bill.

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The Herald Sun Actually Made A Good Joke, But No One Noticed

Did you spot the madcap antics The Herald Sun were pulling today? No? It was just above the story about a grandmother and her four-year-old grandson getting stabbed.

Putting placement issues aside for the moment, the story — made in collaboration with Lord Mayor Robert Doyle — suggested that the City of Melbourne were planning to introduce mandatory name tags to improve friendliness.

“I’m wearing one now,” said Cr Doyle. “They can be fun — mine is made of Lego — but I think it’s very important that people understand who they are talking to.”

It’s all very familiar.

While this is actually pretty excellent, the awkward thing is that no one really cared or noticed.

They posted the article on Facebook with another sneaky Seinfeld reference to nudge everyone in the right direction, but only five people engaged with it. A couple of readers asked Twitter if it was a fake. Others jokingly speculated that their April Fools gag was another report about the AFL or their paywall. Presumably, everyone else just flipped through the paper, shrugged in a sad defeated way that said ‘sure, that may as well happen’, and continued on with their day.

Turns out niche references to cult ’90s sitcoms don’t go over that well in a tabloid best known for its proclivity to enormous, cartoon dicks. Who’da thunk it?

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Sportsbet Had All Your Sexist Lols Covered

In mid-February, Sportsbet wilfully insulted the transgender community with bets and insensitive comments about Bruce Jenner. In late-Feb they inexplicably made a Fifty Shades Of Grey parody about a woman having sex with a dog. And today, they made a whacky fake ad for “Ladybet”: the totally hilarious betting app for women.

“After years of badgering, sportsbet.com.au has finally dropped the knee and committed to releasing the latest in online bookmaking technology – LadyBet,” their announcement reads.

Something something, babes. Something something, Bachelor. Something something, kill me.

Because this is absolutely a thing you could see them releasing for real, Sportsbet also awkwardly ended their announcement with a disclaimer: “Accept obviously we’re not releasing an app for women, because we’ve already released an app for women, it’s called the Sportsbet app. This, in case you hadn’t guessed, was an April Fool’s joke [sic].”

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Every PR Pro Was Completely Drunk With Power

“To celebrate the sharing an acronym, Oaktree’s Live Below the Line (LBL) campaign is giving away Live Below the Line’s Light Bladder Leakage Liners,” boasted the Oaktree Foundation.

“A world first in wearable technology, a hair clip that monitors hair and provides real-time feedback on the health of the your hair,” VO5 declared.

“The game changer: clip-On Man-Buns, coming soon,” said ASOS.

“Would you like to fly to London for $199* return in our brand new Cargo Class?” Flight Centre offered.

“Owning a Nissan GT-R is an aspiration, we’re helping make this dream a reality by creating the world’s first real-life D.I.Y 3D printed GT-R kit,” wrote Nissan.

“Introducing the all-new Emoji Phone!” Vodafone persisted.

“SuperDry with wifi enabled bottle caps!” Hahn verbally bludgeoned us with.

“The Kia Optima concept car features Smile-to-Start technology. It enables keyless start through the power of a smile,” Kia crammed into our newsfeed.

Just. No. Just. Please. Stop.

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Worse Than That, Some People Bought It

According to The Lithgow Mercury, newly-elected Premier Mike Baird is selling all playgrounds in NSW. “Kids don’t play in playgrounds anymore anyway,” he definitely did not ever say.

Though they’ve since wised up, 9News, Spook and Pedestrian told us there was going to be a Kraft museum in the shape of a giant jar of Vegemite. Woah!

Ha ha, everyone is the worst, the world is a lie.