Don’t feel bad if you got caught by my April Fools’ Day post yesterday; they nearly always catch most of my readers. I guess it’s because I’m so serious the rest of the time, but even so I always try to leave some hints in plain sight even if the content isn’t a giveaway. Yesterday’s started right from the title; my “In the News” columns are all numbered in the 500s this year, so “401” was clearly out of place, and was a reminder of the date (4/01). The low number of items should have struck y’all as odd, and the fact that the links all went to blogs rather than news sites might have given you a hint if you’re the sort of reader who clicks on those. Unfortunately, as more than one reader pointed out, the ludicrosity of the stories was not really a giveaway because real “sex trafficking” stories degenerated into absurdity a long time ago. I’d like to thank Korhomme (“Finding What Isn’t There”), Mike Siegel (“The Widening Gyre”), Marijke Vonk (“Checklist”), Kaytlin Bailey (“Scapegoats”), and Brooke Magnanti (the “Page 3” parodies) for helping me with this prank, and now all I have to do is figure out how to top it next year.
Look Again
April 2, 2015 by Maggie McNeill
Congratulations, Maggie—you really got me! You should not blame yourself that thanks to Poe’s Law, even the most absurd fake claim by antis sounds like it actually could have been made by them!
[…] [This post was part of an April Fools joke at Maggie McNeill’s blog.] […]
You got us but good. Also in Canada we had a major bust of an asian smuggling ring announced on that day and I almost wondered if that too was an April’s fool.
the bigger April fools day chicanery up here was Wynne announcing that C-36 was not clearly unconstitutional