Hello everyone!
For those who have been here at least a year, you probably have caught onto what is going on by now. For our newer users, while here in /r/AskHistorians we take things seriously 364 days a year, we take April Fools just as seriously too, and use it as an opportunity to let our hair down and get rid of all those jokes that we've been holding back the rest of the year!
This year, once the clock hit 0000, 1 April at /r/AskHistorians HQ in Kiribati, we returned to our 'Greatest Hits', and /r/AskFakeHistorians 2.0 has been in full swing for several hours now! The flairs have the privilege of a heads up to get in on the fun too, but everyone is welcome to partake, of course, and for the next day or so, Answers may be written as long, elaborate jokes that are not real history. We invite you to partake (or not) in the fun, but ensure that you follow the rules and guidelines laid out below, as the moderators aren't going to be taking the day off.
The number one rule of /r/AskFakeHistorians is your answer must be obviously fake. The rules for the event are designed to help keep that from happening, but in general, keep that spirit of things in mind. We want this to be a fun and entertaining experience for everyone, which includes the readers, not just you laughing at people believing your BS. So as you write and post, keep these in mind:
If you are still a bit unsure of things, and want a few examples, I linked a few of my own as examples above, but we also have a complete archive on the Wiki which you can peruse for inspiration. Not all are going to reflect the revised guidelines as there are changes from 1.0 however, so these ones in particular we would highlight as what we are really looking for:
I don't really like this year's "prank" - I can't easily tell which answers are real or not, so it makes me not want to read any after being rickrolled into reading that huge long one about battleship. I liked the year funny questions were asked, like the one about Mufasa, as I could join in and post silly stuff, instead of being the butt of the joke/pranked into wasting my time.
More people need to know about the secret Dwarven Resistance of WWII!
The link spam at the end of the post doesn't work on mobile.
Maybe I'm a poor sport, but I don't like this. I can see a few problems with it.
Firstly, as is stated in the post, there are going to be people who will read the posts and not realize it's made-up. Regardless of whether it's simple gullibility, young age, or even mental impairment, it's going to have a negative effect. I don't think the pleasure from the joke is worth the intentional spread of misinformation.
Secondly, many people (like myself) are subscribed to the subreddit and go to posts that are on our general Reddit front page. To give my anecdote, I saw a cool question on my front page from this subreddit, I clicked it, read the answer (by a moderator no less), understood it was fake, and then got slightly confused. I had to go directly to this subreddit and look for this post to figure out what was going on because I didn't think this place would promote such a thing.
In fact, it seems entirely antithetical to this subreddit's rigorous moderation and quality-driven content.
Is the objective to have a different kind of April Fool's special every year? My favorites have always been the themes from 2015 and '16 and I don't think any of the others have worked nearly so well. Personally I've always hoped you would pick one of those two themes and make them permanent.
Also, I agree that this year's theme isn't really working out well at all, and that the edict to "keep answers obviously fake" isn't effectively controlling against joke answers being taken seriously.
If it was tomorrow where I am, I would’ve expected this. But it is still today so I was confused.
If you do this again, is there any way you could ask people to tag their posts as well as threads explicitly as April Fools' Jokes before the day is over? The time differences around the world means there's almost 2 days where I have to triple-guess everything I read, and this kind of thing is very hard for people like me who have trouble reading tone in text sometimes. Some of these joke answers are obvious, but most of them just make me feel extremely stupid and confused. I don't mind just avoiding the sub for a couple days out of the year though, I just wanted to leave feedback. Thanks for the hard work you all do for free.
Early Roman Christians & Philip K. Dick, or: How I Learned to Love the Blinding Rays of Pink Light From Outer Space: an audiovisual essay
(Adding it here since only few caught it :)
There may have been eight HMS Cockatrices, even a few HMS Cockchafers, but there was only one HMS Cockapoo.
I think the better April fools format was the one from years ago where there were obviously fake high-level responses to pop-culture; like the Sozin Regime (Avatar the Last Airbender) or the People's Front of Judea.
I do have to confess I wrote this in advance, as I mostly won't be around today so needed to prep in advance. I my defense it was a reworked Q I found from awhile back
The fact that I begin to think that legitimate answers are actually jokes shows how weird real history can be. Or maybe they ARE fake and there were no Nazi toilet ships.
It would be nice if these posts can be tagged as pranks/jokes (so that users who search for a particular topic in the future don't land on these answers)