April Fools' Day: A day when you should just assume every text you receive is a lie, hope that no one is you know actually got pregnant or engaged and, even if they are, just wait 24 hours to respond to any big announcements. Just to be safe.
But the day of deception has now extended beyond simply your friends and family. You can't trust anything or anyone, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.
Case in point? GQ's "special edition" Ryan Gosling edition, which boasts articles such as "How to Break Up Street Fights" and "Ryan's Guide to Disneyland." Gotcha! It's not real. What a cruel, cruel world we live in.
Kid President:
The White House uploaded this video of a pint-size jokester wishing everyone an awesome day from behind the POTUS' podium. Not so much a prank, per se, but what is President Obama supposed to do? "I'm waging war on Russia...not!"
Rebecca Minkoff to Real Housewives:
Surely the most convincing fool: Fashion designer Minkoff gave an interview to Glamour announcing she'd be joining the New York edition of the Bravo series and planned to release a dance single called "Money Can Buy You Bags."
The Saturdays Become The Fridays:
The stars of E!'s own Chasing The Saturdays announced the name change to Cosmopolitan UK, explaining that they'd nominally be a day sooner throughout Rochelle's maternity leave.
Google Nose:
One of the silliest pranks by a corporation, Google pulled out all the stops—a functioning Web page, a YouTube video with that signature monotone Google voiceover—to debut the "new scentsation in search."
Google also announced Treasure Map Mode on Google Maps, which many fingered as a prank as regular Google Maps doesn't even find stuff that well, let alone buried treasure. Treasure Mode told you where the lost city of Atlantis is? Well, this is an Arby's.
YouTube:
YouTube released a video on (where else?) YouTube this morning claiming that the site has just been an elaborate contest to find the best video ever and it would be shutting down now that they were determining a winner. Fingers crossed that it's "Charlie Bit Me"!
Twitter:
Trd th nw Twttr yt? Mr tm fr mr twts! blog.twitter.com/2013/03/annncn? #nvwls discover.twitter.com/twttr/
? Twitter (@twitter) April 1, 2013
Or should we say Twttr. The site revealed a new business model: getting rid of vowels. Unless you want to pay $5/month for that privilege. And here we thought all this time that certain people couldn't spell, when really they were just getting a jump-start on being fiscally efficient.
More pranks to be aware of:
• Virgin announceless glass-bottomed planes. (Impressive in theory, terrifying in theory.)
• Gmail went blue.
• American Eagle's skinniest jean ever is just spray paint. (Hipsters would still buy this.)
• Scope is releasing a bacon-flavor mouthwash. (All men would still buy this.)
• Hulu is advertising shows such as The Rural Juror and Inspector Spacetime.
• Sony is releasing a line of headphones for animals. (Which will be real eventually...)
• Vimeo has become Vimeow, home for cat videos. (As if it weren't already.)