Note that this is one big rant, so if you don't like whining and bitching, don't bother reading or replying.
April Fool's Day is easily my least favorite holiday now (it used to be #2 after Valentine's Day). Every year I dread this day coming, and every year there's always some BS that I have to deal with, and it's not just the stale sarcastic jokes that were never funny to begin with, either. This year it was a clever, but very assholish troll who lured me into a long-winded debate over the solidarity and accuracy of human concepts (which if you've ever debated it you'll know it's a self-corroding argument as time goes on). He basically said that we can never be sure of anything, which basically boiled down to him playing devil's advocate about everything I threw at him, no matter what it was. The argument ended by my conclusion that everything he said was meaningless by his logic (and he knew it, too...that's why he started it) and he was thus willingly wasting my time as a prank. It may not sound like a big deal when I say it now, but believe me it was infuriating at the time.
Anyone who thinks practical jokes are funny is a childish moron who probably spent his grade school days bullying others. Fuck April Fool's Day, seriously.
Oh, and before someone tells me to lighten up, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I'm sciencing as fast as I can !
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<adelikat> once more balls enter the picture, everything gets a lot more entertraining
<adelikat> mmmmm yummy penises
My running principle of the April Fools day is that whatever prank you do, it has to be good-hearted, and not lead to feelings of frustration or anger once the joke is out.
April Fools day is not a good excuse to make enemies.
Do you take people slipping a whoopee cushion under your chair very seriously?
If you answered yes, you should go sign up to be the director of PR relations at some conglomo.
I am 100% with you. (Well maybe the childish part is a little harsh) I refer to April 1st as "The worst day of the year". I quite literally try to keep contact with the outside world down to an absolute minimum for the the area (and I say area because of time zones, and people like to start up early) of the day.
It seems to be a holiday you either love or hate, and all it takes is for one person to love it to ruin it for everyone else.
Also, it gets even worse because you often need to do 'damage control' during other parts of the year because of something that someone has said or done April 1st.
Ugh.
Do you take people slipping a whoopee cushion under your chair very seriously?
If only it was a simple whoopee cushion, everything would be fine. But usually I end up being permanently backstabbed by my "friends" on April Fool's Day.
But... if you knew that, why'd you need more than five minutes to tell the guy his argument was insubstantial?
I didn't know he would take the debate so far that his philosophy would nullify his own statements, and in the previous times that I've debated this subject, it didn't go nearly this far. This wasn't 5 minutes, this was upwards of 3 hours. The reason I didn't catch on is because he seemed geniuinely serious and not trollish about the argument until the end.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
"Your argument, by your own standards, holds no water."
"How can you be so sure? I could be making the best argument in the world, and you may not even know it! But then again, you could be right. Who knows? Who can know?"
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Ah. Fair enough. I only ask because that kind of asshattery has been problematic for me as well. To my logical mind, using rhetoric in response to rhetoric is as unacceptable as walking away from the debate. Developing decisive counter-arguments on such an uneven playing field poses an interesting challenge.
An epistemologist, that's who!
LOL.
It's been awhile since someone tried something like that on me. I'd counter, my argument would rely on a context that doesn't exist.
I am indifferent to April fools. Never any jokes are played on me, and the only great thing is the ability to make substandard tases AND put them up on the workbench... not that I did anything like that or anything.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I'm astounded that people actually get into long philosophical arguments as an April fools joke. I must run in the wrong circles.
And for me, the worst part of the day was the last 3 hours, with the shitstorm of horrible crap that landed in the submission queue. If you're going to try and do something funny, put some thought and work into it. Just being stupid isn't funny. It just reconfirms the rest of the world's assumption that you really are stupid.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
What? In the US April Fool's is a holiday????
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Key word: probably. By that statement I was referring more to the people who play the mean-spirited practical jokes and use April Fool's as an excuse to be an asshole.
Hey, it is the most activity this web forum has gotten in ages. There are a whole 8-10 submissions in Gruefood for April Fools, and maybe like 4 in the workbench, the majority of which were a) made by one idiot, or b) very obviously april fools jokes.
A whole 14 submissions isn't really a shit storm. It's too bad that they weren't all funny, but at least we got a new meme out of it :
*Does not color a dinosaur
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I wrote something much meaner earlier... but I deleted it out of good faith in the rules. However, you've got issues if you are letting internet trolls get to you, legitimate or not.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Like I said, if there had been 14 well thought out submissions that at least tried to be humorous, it would have been great. Having 5 or 6 decent efforts and 10 "Imma go see how fast I can die or not do anything and call a game over screen winning LULZ!" runs was annoying.
And I colored I dinosaur while writing this:)
However, you've got issues if you are letting internet trolls get to you, legitimate or not.
Yeah, I know. This point has been brought to my attention countless times on countless forums. It's because I have no social life at all (sad, I know) and I'm hopelessly addicted to computers, ok? I'm sure you'll find that hilarious, but I don't really care.
I don't find it funny at all. I feel bad for you. Hopefully it isn't as hopeless as you think.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.