We have a hard and fast rule here at DailyTech: when April 1 rolls around the person who posts an April fool’s joke gets castrated. Well, maybe not castrated but at least a stern talking to. Each year Kris sends around a reminder to not fall prey to any of the myriad of jokes that companies seem to get such a sick thrill out of offering up to writers and customers alike.
Of course Kris (and Slashdot) was the first to get punked, Tom soon after. Brandon spent a lot longer than usual finding leads and I think Marcus just took the day off. But I managed just fine -- clear sailing all day.
The odd thing to me about April fool’s jokes that are pulled on journalists is that if not done correctly, jokes are basically lies. If you are wondering what done correctly is in my book, consider ThinkGeek. They trick lots of people both customers and my fellow writers around the web each year with products that are just a bit outside of plausibility.
ThinkGeek won’t say in the description that the product is a joke, but any geek worth their salt is going to click through to see the price and will be greeted by a gotcha screen saying it’s a joke. April fool’s day jokes gone wrong on the other hand are not so easy to spot and AbleComm pulled a bad one this year.
The first thing that was patently bad about this April fool’s joke: it wasn’t April fool’s day. Yeah that’s right; the joke was pulled on April 3. The second thing that made this joke bad was that a well respected and widely used press release service was used to pull the caper.
To me as a working writer who relies on services like PR Newswire to get breaking stories and announcements that are paramount to my work day, using the service to pull a joke is simply pathetic. You waste my time and you manipulate me into lying to the people most important to my publication — the reader.
To PR Newswire: If I fail to catch a link on your website that says the post is a joke, on April fool’s day, then no harm no foul. If you actively seek me out via a service that has no business being used to pull a prank and then give not one tongue in cheek hint that what you are sending to writers everywhere is a prank, that is no longer a joke.
Yesterday AbleComm sent out a press release that was all very believable talking about how Panasonic was going to be using small plasma displays in a mobile phone designed to be used on the new AT&T Mobile TV service launching in May.
The release was professional, interesting and all very plausible replete with quotes form Panasonic and all. It didn’t take long before the story was all around the internet with posts on Engadget, Slashphone and more. As a freelance guy I posted the story myself at some other publications.
Did AbleComm come out and admit that the release was a joke? No AbleComm didn’t, it simply had PR Newswire issue a Kill on the release and replaced it with a simple paragraph:
We are advised by AbleComm, Inc. that journalists and other readers should disregard the news release, Panasonic To Put Plasma Video Displays in Cell Phones, issued earlier today over PR Newswire, as the entire news release is completely false.
Come again? False? Why so? Does it say anything, even ha-ha gotcha? Nope. No admission that it was a joke, no sorry, no this went way further than we intended, no nothing.
Maybe next year, on April 3, I’ll come down to AbleComm’s store, spend an hour with them placing orders, let them get the paper work done, charge my credit card and then dispute the charge and stick them with nothing for all the work. It’s basically what they have done.
One thing that’s come out of this, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I write about AbleComm again.