My single favourite April Fools’ Day joke came about sometime in the first decade of this century. An online entertainment news source posted a story about how Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun tetralogy[1]Sort of. I guess it depends how you count Urth of the New Sun. had finally—finally—been picked up by Hollywood for an adaptation.
It was to be directed by one Michael Bay.
(If you know why this is funny, then you are—like me—a nerd.)
I just remembered a second great April Fools’ Day joke. Back in the day when X was still Twitter, and was only kind of terrible instead of being a full-on Nazi bar, there was a parody account called @stats_canada[2]They’re still there, but haven’t posted since 2021.. They would post ridiculous statistics—eg, “50% of looking smart while watching the Olympics is just muttering “poor form” every few minutes”.
One year, on April 1st, they posted nothing but accurate Canadian statistics.
Header image by Luke Jernejcic on Unsplash.