April Fools' Day: Forcing Bloggers to Fact-Check

Would an evil company do this?

​It's April Fools' Day, also known as the day Bloggers Live in Fear of Blogging a Fake Story Seriously. Google is already up to its hilarious tricks (Seriously guys, we are not evil, just look at our affinity for whimsy!) and the St. Stupid's Day Parade kicked off at noon at the foot of Market Street today.

San Franciscans love whimsy just as much as the next non-evil search engine behemoth, and thus April Fools' stunts are inevitable.

On April Fools' Day in 2006, a big orange billboard emblazoned with the legend "Trade Barry!" cropped up outside AT&T park. Baseball fans naturally assumed the sign was a dig at Giants' player Barry Bonds. Unfortunately, the sign was not paid for by rapid Bonds haters or Dodger's fans, it was the brainchild of baseball card manufacturer Topps.

Buh bye!

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In 2004 the Chronicle proposed dumping the comic Zippy the Pinhead and a vocal group of Zippy lovers (Yes, they exist!) fuh-reaked out. This wasn't the first time the Chron tried to drop Zippy. They briefly stopped publishing it in 2002, but changed their mind after an outpouring of support for the comic. At this point, Zippy was basically the boyfriend the Chron kept trying to dump and couldn't. On April Fools' Day of 2004, Zippy supporters staged a protest outside the Chron. It didn't work: Dumpsville, population Zippy.

Ha!

​The internets totally love April Fools' Day (TechCrunch has the proof) and Craigslist is no exception. In 2002 it announced that they would start selling banner ads on their ad-free site, and the Internet exploded in rage. The announcement was just a joke, of course. Craigslist's longest-running prank has no end in sight: The death of print media!