Study: April Fool's Day 37% Less Fooling
Fake News written by on April 1, 2008
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS -- A study released today by a prestigious think tank suggests that April Fool's Day fabrications are far less likely to fool the public. The culprit? FOX News.
"We're bombarded with fake news and propaganda 365 days a year. Err... make that 366. This is a leap year," explained Lirpa Sloof, chairwoman of the Boston University Laboratory for Learning Superior Holistic Investigative Techniques. "Thanks to FOX News, the White House, and various other mouthpieces, people don't believe anything they see on TV anymore."
It's hard to fool people jaded by years of "Mission Accomplished" and "Heckuva Job, Brownie." And this isn't just a Republican trend: Dan Rather's "Fake But Accurate" newscasts have made it nearly impossible for April Fool's Day to compete.
"April Fool's Day tastes great, but is less fooling," explained a media analyst with the Center for Researching Advanced Paradigms. "When everything is a lie, it doesn't make much sense to dedicate a whole day to lying. It just gets in the way. Now, if people were to tell the truth on April 1st... well, that could cause panic in the streets."
Could this all spell the end of April Fool's Day as we know it? The answer is a solid 'no' according to the analysts we just invented for this story.
Said Dr. Les Klue of the Denver University Nonpartisan Group for Helping to End All Problems, "April 1st might contain lots of fabrications, but we all know they're fake. It's a welcome change from the rest of the year, when we suspect everything is fake, but we can't be 100% certain. It's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: we can't accurately measure both the authenticity and truthiness of a piece of information at any given time."
If you don't understand that quote, don't worry. I don't either, and I just wrote it. A spokesman for the Federal Enterprise Center for Erudite Studies provided a more useful statement about A.F.D.
"Despite a growing lack of effectiveness, April Fool's Day is still an important holiday. It lets people see things in a different light, if only for a few microseconds before their skepticism sets in."
"For example," he continued, "this morning I saw a story about a revolutionary piece of software called 'Linn-ex' or something that's free and many times more reliable and robust than Microsoft Windows. I almost believed it for a split second before I came to my sense. I mean, the whole idea is ludicrous! Still, it's wonderful to dream about such things, even if they're only a figment of some prankster's imagination."
