Best Of This Year's April Fools' Pranks
This year's April Fools' Day seemed funnier than ever with a bunch of IT companies having some fun along with their customers. Even though there were a few unsalted gags in which their perpetrators wanted to appear smarter than they actually were, there still were some really funny fake advertisements and jokes. Here are some of the gags which I enjoyed the most during yesterday's laughing spree.
Grouber Grupon was the first thing that caught my eye yesterday as it was a pretty elaborate prank with a video and even a great-looking webpage. Basically, it's a car service that sends you a ride to take you to the store where you can spend your coupons. The catch is that the drivers are cats. The ad said that you can download the app for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone and start using Grouber Grupon "right meow". Here is why you should choose this service: "Our drivers are spayed, neutered and have no reason to curl up in your lap and make it awkward. Trust us, these cats are cool. And every Grouber experience should be a paws-itive one."
Then, the weird stuff started to happen. First, I've seen an official press communicate from CERN which had made giant scientific breakthrough, discovering that the Force is real, so if you see some Jedi masters hiding from Stormtroopers, you shouldn't be too alarmed. Another funny thing I've encountered was the commercial for the new PlayStation Flow, a device which embeds project Morpheus to combine in-game aquatic environments with real-life swimming. According to the gag, PlayStation Flow also embedded revolutionary technology capable of drying its user out in just a few seconds.
T-mobile Pets Un-Leashed was the next thing that had me struggling not to laugh too hard at the office. This prank involved an advertisement which was trying to convince the viewers to purchase the perfect mobile Internet plans for their pets. The dog who gets reprimanded for staying online at the dinner table, the horse who gets caught watching a wild-life documentary about zebra reproduction or the cat who keeps scrolling through Tinder profiles (in search for new friends of course) will surely make you smile.
But from my perspective, Google was this year's king of April Fools: Google Maps allowed you to play Pacman right on the streets of the city, YouTube kept asking if you meant DaRude - Sandstorm whenever you searched for something and even allowed you to play fragments of the song during other videos, while the search engine would be displayed in reverse (mirrored) if you wrote com.google instead of the traditional address. Even funnier were the videos presenting the new and awesome Google projects: the SmartBox Inbox, the Keyless Keyboard and the Fiber Dial-up Mode from the Japanese branch of the organization.
