April Fools’ pranks pale next to glut of disinformation

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This article was published 05/04/2022 (1636 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Of all the made-up holidays — which is all of them — April Fools’ Day is my least favourite.

It’s not even a holiday, really, more of an annoying custom. What was once a day for some light practical trickery has turned into a day for online content creators to “really have fun” duping their followers. Brands and news media also occasionally get in on April 1 shenanigans with fake products and articles in an attempt to… actually, I have no idea. Erode the trust of your supporters? Lol?

While April Fools’ “jokes” can certainly be harmful (I don’t love deception- or embarrassment-based humour) and insensitive (let’s maybe cool it on the fake pregnancy announcements, yeah?), a lot of this kind of content is benign, occasionally charming, and almost never funny.

I smiled exactly once at April Fools’ Day content, and that was at Tourism Winnipeg’s Winnipeg Wirdle bit, which was actually pretty cute and should also be a real thing. But mostly, the day just feels like a big sighing “Ugh, to what end?”

You’d think the internet would have rendered us a post-April Fools’ Day society, considering every day feels like April Fools’ Day when bots and bad actors are trying to sway elections and bilk your grandma out of her pension. But just as America’s Funniest Home Videos is somehow still on in the age of YouTube and TikTok, April 1 gags have also found a way.

With that in mind, April Fools’ Day emerges as an interesting social experiment when viewed through the lens of media literacy. It’s like a giant, mass-delivered quiz that, despite falling on the same day every year, many people routinely fail.

Including, I regret to report, me.

On Instagram on Friday, there was a little micro trend of local restaurants announcing that they were moving to new locations, or becoming a new Leopold’s Tavern location, a reference to the western Canadian pub chain that seems to be popping up everywhere. Of course, we report on such things in the newspaper. The one that got me: Sous Sol, a great little if-you-know-you-know spot in Osborne Village, posted that it was moving to the old Earls location on Main Street. Thankfully, I took a few seconds to investigate further before sending it to one of my food-writer colleagues as a news tip (which I was excited about, actually!).

I’m not mad about it; the exercise was an important reminder to turn on my critical thinking brain.

Another one to make an April Fool out of a few people was the City of Selkirk’s Twitter post that rapper (and former Selkirk resident) Goody Grace was suing Selkirk for $1.2 million. A simple click-through would have immediately revealed that it was a fake, but a lot of people retweeted it as though it were real. Which means they never read the accompanying article.

This, to be clear, is incredibly easy to do — and not just on April Fools’ Day. We see this rush-to-retweet often when something big happens. Take the Slap Discourse from this year’s Academy Awards; people were already sending their hot takes about what happened between Will Smith and Chris Rock to Twitter within minutes of it happening — when we weren’t sure what, exactly, had even happened.

When we’re scrolling too quickly and consuming media too passively, we’re not asking critical questions, such as: Who is saying this? Where is this information coming from? Does it seem plausible? Or, in the case of April Fools’, what day is it?

If we’re so quick to share April Fools’ gags as real information, what’s happening on the other 364 days in the year?

We’re living in an era of rampantly spreading misinformation and disinformation, of influencers existing on the same platform as reporters, of brands who tweet like people and people who tweet like brands. It’s hard to imagine what place April Fools’ Day has in that world.

But if there’s a point to be found in a truly pointless day, perhaps its this: when navigating the true firehose of news, content, analysis and criticism, it’s good to slow down and ask questions — regardless of what the calendar says.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @JenZoratti