It's cruel. It is a day on which:
- The people that you normally trust, implicitly, have free license to lie to you.
- When your friends construct a believable lie, and you believe them (because you trust them, right?), they laugh at you.
- When you are humiliated by their laughter, you're told that "it's just a joke" and made to feel even worse. It's a classic case of blaming the victim.
I'm doing my usual work-avoiding web-surfing right now ... and it's annoying. Sure, the obvious ridiculous parodies from well known sources (like Google or CarTalk) are funny. But then I see an "unusual" news story from a reputable source (like the Detroit Lions assigning parking spaces to their players), and I have to sit there and try and figure out whether it's just a bizarre new story or an April Fool's joke. (Because when your football team is 0-16, there's no story that's not believable.)
Why do we encourage people to be cruel to one another?