April Fool’s Day Round-Up

Gone are the days of Whoopee Cushions and short-sheeted beds. These days, April Fools-ing is all about seeing which big brands can surprise, delight, and shock the Internet in the most creative and viral ways. If you missed out on yesterday’s highlights, or if you were just unwilling to play ball with April Fool’s Day after Gmail’s MicDrop feature ruined your chances at landing that big job – here are the best, worst, and downright ugliest pranks this year.

Netflix & John Stamos

We all knew that Netflix was missing something, and for one shining, brief moment, it was finally complete. John Stamos took over. Netflix broke word of a John Stamos documentary with a pitch-perfect announcement video (above). They also modified the site to include personal recommendations from the man & legend himself. Netflix took the gag a step further and apologized to John Stamos for not taking his documentary idea seriously in this “heartfelt” video statement from Netflix’s Chief Content Officer. If only all pranks were this handsome.

Tumblr’s Decision 2016

Tumblr’s entire dashboard was consumed with election fever. The candidates – a couple of genderless lizards. Tumblr users were given the ability to cast their votes for the lizard that spoke to their consciences. Would it be Rick, the Trump-esque moneybag? Would it be Deborah, the Hillary-esque business tycoon? Would it be Wretched Tooth, the Bernie-esque revolutionary? Or would it be Mop? Yes, Mop. The campaign was accompanied by some hilarious election coverage on Tumblr’s behalf. A little annoying, but overall a successful gag.

YouTube’s SnoopaVision

YouTube announced that they’d partnered with Snoop Dogg to launch SnoopaVision – “a cutting-edge 360 experience that combines two undeniable trends: 1) 360 is the future 2) Snoop Dogg.” Check out the video above, and then see this incredible playlist demonstrating the innovative capabilities of SnoopaVision. (It’s a bunch of videos of Snoop Dogg…watching videos. Groundbreaking stuff.)

Trader Joe’s Shutting Down

My dad posted an article from Yahoo! News to my Facebook announcing that Trader Joe’s would be closing all locations in 2017. The panic was immediate. Even Chrissy Teigen took to twitter to lament (er, kind of) the magical supermarket’s demise.

My first reaction? There is only one thing that every city-dwelling Millennial can agree on, and that’s Trader Joe’s wine. My second reaction – have Millennials stopped drinking cheap wine? Impossible. My third reaction – Dad, you done got April Fool’d.

Gmail’s MicDrop

Gmail had a really, really bad idea this year. They announced a brand new feature that allows users to “MicDrop” a conversation and then placed that button right next to the regular “send” button. What MicDrop DID was send and archive a message simultaneously (with the help of…Minions, apparently). What MicDrop REALLY did was cause people to panic when they started archiving important emails. In gmail’s defense….actually, no. They don’t get anything here. It was a dumb idea, Minions are horrible, and Google was totally right to profusely apologize and pull the feature halfway through the day. Yikes.

Ted Cruz Rickroll’d Donald Trump

Ted Cruz rickroll’d his supporters and pulled a fast one on Donald Trump by announcing that Trump was finally (finally!) goign to accept his invitation to a one-on-one debate. The problem with this joke is that America is the butt of it. Sure, I loved Rick Rolling in 2007, too. And I would totally be laughing if I weren’t mortally terrified for the future of this country. Mazel tov!

Our host Anna Lore has more: