An opinion about the best pranks of this year
Every year I wake up on April 1st with a smile on my face. I love April Fools’. I love it. Not because I am the biggest prankster—I’m not even that good at pulling pranks – I just love to whip out my phone and read about all the funny and drama-filled jokes occurring around the world.
Love it or hate it, April Fools’ is a global phenomenon. It is a “holiday” that people of different backgrounds and cultures partake in each year to make their friends laugh. Although this is sometimes done by means of public humiliation, the hope is always that people will laugh about it later.
This year, pranks ranged from Google accidentally pranking themselves to a bra made for dogs known as the “pawfect push-up,” and everything in between.
From personal to global, here is a list of my top five favourite pranks from this year:
Google’s mic drop
If you haven’t already heard about this mishap, you’ve probably been living under a social media rock. Google enjoys pranking the world every year, but this year their intentions backfired. When composing an email on your Gmail account on April 1, one could press a button—conveniently located near the send button—that immediately sent a GIF of a minion dropping a mic. I know, funny right? Until the public started complaining about accidentally sending it to employers, which caused more headaches than laughs. Google had already taken down their prank by the time April Fools’ arrived in Canada this year. Google issued a formal apology on Friday, stating that “we pranked ourselves this year.”
Friends fake elopement
This is a prank you won’t have heard of unless you know these two crazy kids from Vancouver. On Feb. 12th, photos of my friends Katie and Mike popped up on Facebook that appeared to show them getting married in Greece. Having been on a Euro-trip for a couple months together, I was [pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]…the hope is always that people will laugh about it later.[/pullquote]
quick to assume they had fallen in love somewhere along the way and that this elopement had to be real. I wanted it to be real. But alas, on April Fools’, a photo popped up again with them holding cards that said “Just Kidding” and “April Fools.” I included this as one of my favourites because they used it as an important social statement that guys and girls really can just be best friends.
“Hearing from numerous people before I left that I would come back eloped and pregnant struck a chord with me,” read Katie’s post about it on Facebook. Kudos Katie and Mike, point proven.
Expedia Ginge-Air
On April 1, Expedia launched an ad campaign introducing “the world’s first redhead-only airline.” The ad claims to offer exclusive services for gingers of all shades, whether they are travelling for business or pleasure. The ad continues on to say that if you were to fly with Ginge-Air and book a hotel at one of Expedia’s beach locations, you would also receive a bucket of sunscreen to sweeten the deal. Although this prank could be viewed as slightly offensive to the red-headed folks of this world, it is overall a pretty light-hearted joke. To find out more, you can visit www.gingeair.com to book your vacation now.
Official opposition Airbnb
Interim conservative party leader Rona Ambrose pulled a pretty entertaining stunt this year. “To help out the taxpayers of Canada, I’m going to be listing Stornoway on Airbnb to help pay off the deficit,” Ambrose said in a video posted to Twitter. Stornoway is the residence of the official opposition in Ottawa, and this prank expertly poked fun at the liberals’ budget which was recently released. On Ambrose’s Facebook page, the residence was listed for a mere $29.4 billion dollars a night. It’s a nice change to see the conservatives making a political statement in a humorous way.
The dog bra
As a lover of all things cute and furry, the dog bra was too adorable not to be on this list. The plunge pawfect bra was conceptualized by a bra and underwear company called Third Love. This is the kind of April Fools’ designed for animal lovers and pranksters alike. While it does not embarrass anyone, it is almost believable enough that in today’s society something like this would actually be invented. On their website, Third Love claimed that “a woman’s best friend deserves support too!” I mean, who couldn’t agree with a charming slogan like that?