Foolish Day
Apr. 1st, 2011 09:53 pmApril Fool's tends to drive me a bit battier than I normally am, at least when people around decide to actually celebrate the holiday. I've ignored it successfully for years, but occasionally I am dragged into the holiday. I do usually find my sense of humor and laugh when I look back at the sheer ridiculousness of the day.
Why do I prefer to ignore this holiday? I can be very literal minded at times, particularly when I am focused on other worries (like say the end of the semester and finals) and haven't given over enough processing power to the "let's look for hidden meanings and plays on words" part of my brain. It's not so bad when there is a glaring obvious sign pointing to the fact that this is a joke. But sometimes what others may think is glaring obvious isn't so obvious. There can be just enough truth to the email that it seems plausible if unlikely. It can be made to seem even more realistic when backed up by other, normally credible sources. Such a series of emails about parking issues and building a parking garage at school sparked massive debate and outrage (and some pretty funny comments). My school is a very environmentally minded institution, which additionally prides itself on campus aesthetics, so the talk of a three-story garage was odd. It wasn't until well into this afternoon (the emails started yesterday) that I started to wonder if it was a hoax. Even then there was just enough plausibility to make me wonder if it was real. What annoyed me at the time was that this silliness took up a large part of my inbox. Sure I could hit the delete button (and I did) but our student email is not terribly well designed and it can be hard to delete multiple things at once. It is often easier to open the darn things and delete them as you go...really poorly designed system.
Once someone finally acknowledged it was a hoax, I was really annoyed for a while. I got over it and finally had a good laugh at how easy it can be to rile up a group of passionate students (some people, who were not in on the hoax, got *really* up in arms about the whole thing). I was annoyed by the fact that my time was wasted by this email debate, and to be honest that I got taken in by the hoax. Now, that I've had some time to relax and play a bit with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jjhunter creating haikai, I can admit that it was well played.
Why do I prefer to ignore this holiday? I can be very literal minded at times, particularly when I am focused on other worries (like say the end of the semester and finals) and haven't given over enough processing power to the "let's look for hidden meanings and plays on words" part of my brain. It's not so bad when there is a glaring obvious sign pointing to the fact that this is a joke. But sometimes what others may think is glaring obvious isn't so obvious. There can be just enough truth to the email that it seems plausible if unlikely. It can be made to seem even more realistic when backed up by other, normally credible sources. Such a series of emails about parking issues and building a parking garage at school sparked massive debate and outrage (and some pretty funny comments). My school is a very environmentally minded institution, which additionally prides itself on campus aesthetics, so the talk of a three-story garage was odd. It wasn't until well into this afternoon (the emails started yesterday) that I started to wonder if it was a hoax. Even then there was just enough plausibility to make me wonder if it was real. What annoyed me at the time was that this silliness took up a large part of my inbox. Sure I could hit the delete button (and I did) but our student email is not terribly well designed and it can be hard to delete multiple things at once. It is often easier to open the darn things and delete them as you go...really poorly designed system.
Once someone finally acknowledged it was a hoax, I was really annoyed for a while. I got over it and finally had a good laugh at how easy it can be to rile up a group of passionate students (some people, who were not in on the hoax, got *really* up in arms about the whole thing). I was annoyed by the fact that my time was wasted by this email debate, and to be honest that I got taken in by the hoax. Now, that I've had some time to relax and play a bit with
jjhunter creating haikai, I can admit that it was well played.
