April Fool's Day and Humor
I don't consider myself a practical joker, but I do enjoy a good prank when the situation warrants. For me, April 1st provides enough cover for me to do something grand for a couple of reasons. First, people whose sensibilities would be offended at other times would take offense at the prank. Secondly, it's a holiday I don't mind getting into the spirit of since it costs virtually nothing to celebrate.
In order to play a believable prank, especially on April Fool's Day, there has to be an element of plausibility in the prankster's ruse. I decided to use my recent excursion on Jeopardy! to supply the ethos for my prank. Since most everyone I know, directly and indirectly, congratulated me on my Jeopardy! experience, I needed a vehicle to produce the biggest impact possible. I decided to use the popular networking website Facebook to my advantage by making this pronouncement, "Shawn St.Clair received a call asking him to audition for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" hosted by Meredith Viera", knowing that some of the people in my networking circle would respond positively. Needless to say I was not disappointed.
When I returned home, I found several people responded with well wishes and greetings of good luck. The last person to respond to my phony announcement asked, "And your response was...?", to which I replied, "April Fool."
When I revealed my prank, the feedback was, to say the least, mixed. Some applauded my efforts while others vented their good-natured spleens at me for tricking them. They have good senses of humor and will probably return the favor. My sense of humor is developed enough to take a jab here and there since I am more than willing to dish it out.
Case in point, I received this recently from a friend of mine acknowledging my efforts on Jeopardy!:
Front
Back
I want to thank "Prinicpal" for the tee shirt; it gave me a laugh and a good amount of luck so far.
In order to play a believable prank, especially on April Fool's Day, there has to be an element of plausibility in the prankster's ruse. I decided to use my recent excursion on Jeopardy! to supply the ethos for my prank. Since most everyone I know, directly and indirectly, congratulated me on my Jeopardy! experience, I needed a vehicle to produce the biggest impact possible. I decided to use the popular networking website Facebook to my advantage by making this pronouncement, "Shawn St.Clair received a call asking him to audition for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" hosted by Meredith Viera", knowing that some of the people in my networking circle would respond positively. Needless to say I was not disappointed.
When I returned home, I found several people responded with well wishes and greetings of good luck. The last person to respond to my phony announcement asked, "And your response was...?", to which I replied, "April Fool."
When I revealed my prank, the feedback was, to say the least, mixed. Some applauded my efforts while others vented their good-natured spleens at me for tricking them. They have good senses of humor and will probably return the favor. My sense of humor is developed enough to take a jab here and there since I am more than willing to dish it out.
Case in point, I received this recently from a friend of mine acknowledging my efforts on Jeopardy!:
Front
BackI want to thank "Prinicpal" for the tee shirt; it gave me a laugh and a good amount of luck so far.
Comments
As for the April Fool's prank, it makes me wonder if they would actually tape that show on April Fool's day, since I could imagine the contestant calling someone and the friend thinking it was a joke.