zlacker

>>golden+(OP)
Hot take: workplace and social media April Fools jokes aren't funny and are often inappropriate and disrespectful to people's time.

It's cool to do these to your friends in High school, but I once wasted a good amount of time at work because of an April's fool joke. I already didn't want to do the work so I got really upset to have wasted time doing something boring and useless.

Additionally, the scale of social media can create situations where it wastes everybody's time several times per day... Including on HN.

Feel free to prank your friends, but don't bring it to work or the Internet, please.

>>glimsh+cx
HP LaserJet 4s squarely date TFA’s prank in the early-mid 90s. I can agree with you that lame corporate April Fool’s Day jokes on the Internet are overdone; but 1990s-era campus sysadmin’ing ruled. Sysadmins kept a close eye on things to ensure no one (especially the servers) got hurt, but computer geeks were far from mainstream and a spirit of playful tolerance and taking-care-of-our-own prevailed. Well do I remember telneting to sendmail on port 25 and sending spoofed email to classmates…

The university-wide email was probably too much but displaying INSERT 5 CENTS on an HP LaserJet 4 for a day is great.