April Fool’s Day humor and other hoaxes

People often enjoy harmless pranks that are funny. But some jokes that start out funny end up being dangerous and not funny at all.

When I first read that Burger King ran a full-page ad in USA Today in 1998 announcing that they had created a Whopper for nearly 32 million left-handed Americans, I thought it was funny.

They said the new Whopper had all the same ingredients, but the seasonings were “rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers.”

According to the company, people requested the old “right-handed” version (abcnews.go.com). They must have laughed a lot about that.

Another example of this is the businessman who announced in 1978 that he had managed to tow an iceberg from Antarctica to Sydney, Australia. He tied up the iceberg and began selling ice cubes to the masses for ten cents each.

The prank worked until it started to rain, revealing the iceberg to be none other than fire fighting foam and shaving cream. The businessman said that he only does these things for fun to eliminate the boredom of daily work.

And then, in 1977, “the British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement dedicated to the hitherto unknown (and invented) San Serriffe Islands. Apparently intended to appeal to the grammatically inclined, the islands were in the semicolon shape and details about the island alluded to the printer’s terminology. The paper was inundated with calls from readers wanting more information about this unique vacation spot.”

But the funniest of all is the video of spaghetti trees being harvested by a Swiss family.

“The Spaghetti Tree Hoax is a famous 3-minute fake report broadcast on April Fool’s Day in 1957 on the BBC’s Panorama current affairs programme.

“It told the story of a family in southern Switzerland collecting spaghetti from the fictional spaghetti tree, handed down at a time when this Italian dish was not widely eaten in the UK and some Brits were unaware that spaghetti is a pasta made of wheat flour and water.

“Hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC, either to say the story wasn’t true or to wonder about it, with some even asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast “the biggest hoax.” larger than any reputable news establishment “ever thrown away”.

The video was hilarious. It showed a Swiss family harvesting these spaghetti trees. You could see women reaching out and pulling down these uniform strings of spaghetti, setting them out in the sun to dry, and then a man and woman sitting at an outdoor table in a restaurant and their waiter serving them their dinner. of cooked spaghetti. and the man and the woman, eating it and raising their glasses in a congratulatory toast.

Hundreds of people called the corporation after the broadcast asking where they could get a spaghetti bush so they could grow their own crop.

And many viewers, including BBC staff, who had been taken in by the April Fools’ Panorama hoax criticized the use of a show based on serious fact to make an elaborate joke. But the broadcast has gone down as one of the best April Fools pranks of all time.

With my quirky sense of humor, these jokes are very engaging, but sometimes a joke just goes too far. Last weekend was a good example.

A scheme using guns and masks to “kidnap” a couple for a friend’s surprise birthday party reportedly sparked a manhunt in New York City this weekend.

The New York Post reports that the joke was inspired by the kidnapping scene in the movie “Old School,” starring Will Ferrell.

The prank, however, took a serious turn when alarmed bystanders called 911 after witnessing the couple’s abduction and the screams of the woman as they were led away by the “kidnappers”, who turned out to be just friends of the couple.

Police officers then deployed helicopters and emergency services officers throughout Washington Heights, costing the city thousands of dollars and hundreds of officer hours.

The NYPD sent police officers all over upper Manhattan, put a helicopter in the air and seized part of a nearby building housing Columbia University dental students to use as a base.

Police also released surveillance video showing the kidnapping with the minivan’s tinted windows speeding away with the victims. The video was picked up by local and national media.

To carry out this deception, the man’s friends had rented a black 2010 Town and Country minivan and a house for the weekend. After shoving the alleged victims into the back of the minivan, they placed a pillow over the man’s head and sped off.

This whole scheme started as a result of the man finding out about his surprise birthday party and his friends wanting to find a way to give him a different kind of surprise party.

The birthday boy and his friends went out partying for the weekend, unaware of the chaos they had created. When they returned and found out that the video was all over the news, they called the police and confessed to what they had done.

When Washington Heights residents found out it was a hoax, they were outraged. One man was enraged because he was utterly reckless, not just police overtime, but concern spreading through a neighborhood creating fear and apprehension.

I can understand wanting to create a diversion when the party boy sabotages your plans to throw him a surprise birthday party, but hey, these guys were thirty years old and should have looked at the potential consequences of their actions and come up with an alternate plan.

Personally, I like the spaghetti tree video better and the Burger King ad in second place. Both scams were hilarious and neither caused any damage, emotional, physical, or financial.