We spend 364 days of the year trying in vain to stop the spread of fake news. But today, April Fools' Day, we celebrate it. You can check out some of our favorite pranks in the history of the holiday, such as the London’s Capital Radio 1979 announcement that April 5 had been cancelled, the BBC's video report of a Spaghetti harvest in 1957, or Burger King's infamous "left-handed" whopper of 1996, in this article. Or read more about the holiday's history here.
But for now, let's take a look at some of the April Fools' Day jokes passed around in 2019:
A 450-Pound Dog?
Sometimes man's best friend is also man's biggest friend. The Dodo's Twitter account shared an interesting video that supposedly showed a man and his 450-pound dog:
This video features Instagram user (and photoshop enthusiast) Christopher Cline and his not-quite-that-big dog. Cline's Instagram page is full of doctored images of him and his pup, but he's also posted a few genuine pictures of his completely regular-sized dog:
View this post on Instagram
Juji and I haven’t posted a normal size selfie in a while. So...’Sup. This is us.
You can see more images of this fake 450-pound dog here.
Did President Trump Legalize Marijuana?
Nope. That rumor comes from an April Fools' Day joke perpetrated by LAWeekly.com. The website wrote that Trump had signed the historic legislation during an unannounced Oval Office session and that the president had donned a green tie for the occasion.
Is it just us, or does something seem a little off about this tie...?
LAWeekly ended their article with a note apologizing to readers for the ruse: "I am terribly sorry to have to say to our loyal readers: April Fools. Help me make this dream a deserved reality."
You can read the original article here.
What is SodaStreamMe?
SodaStream's latest faux product turns indigestion into carbonation. The popular drink brand teamed up with real-life astronaut Scott Kelly for the fictional release of the SodaStreamMe, a carbonated water powered by burps:
Duolingo Push?
Do you ever forget to do your Duolingo lessons? The foreign language app unveiled a new feature today, Duolingo Push, to make sure that you stay focused on learning a new language:
Height Verification on Tinder?
Say goodbye to height fraud. Thanks to Tinder's new (and fake) "height verification" feature, users will no longer have to worry about people short people impersonating tall people, or vice versa:
Say goodbye to height fishing... It’s come to our attention that most of you 5’10ers out there are actually 5’6. The charade must stop. This type of dishonestly doesn’t just hurt your matches — it hurts us, too. Did it ever occur to you that we’re 5’6 and actually love our medium height? Did it ever occur to you that honesty is what separates humans from sinister monsters? Of course not.
Tinder didn't label this feature an April Fools' Day joke, but the alleged mechanics behind the "height verification" feature are a bit suspect. According to Tinder's announcement, the app would calculate a user's height by analyzing a photograph of the user standing next to a commercial building:
Simply input your true, accurate height with a screenshot of you standing next to any commercial building. We’ll do some state-of-the-art verifying and you’ll receive your badge directly on your profile.
You can read more about the "height verification" tool here.
The Smell of Space?
Have you ever wondered what space smells like? We may never get a chance to actually take a whiff of the air surrounding a faraway planet, but for the moment we're content with this description from Lockheed Martin's fictional perform Vector: "This out-of-this-world scent blends metallic notes to create a clean scent with a sterile feel, balanced by subtle, fiery undertones that burn off like vapor in the atmosphere."
Tom Brady Retiring?
New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady used his first post on Twitter to give football fans a bit of a fright. On 1 April 2019, the six-time Super Bowl winner posted "I'm retiring. In my spare time, I'll be tweeting #LFG."
Brady let his retirement announcement sit for about an hour before he posted a second tweet asking if it was a bad joke:
You can Brady's original posts here.
A Moving Stationary Bike?
The biggest drawbacks of stationary bikes are, well, that they're stationary. Thankfully, Planet Fitness has the solution.
Kanye West Buys Dollywood?
A tourism website for Pigeon Forge, Tennesee, published an article that claimed musician Kanye West had purchased Dollywood from singer Dolly Parton and that he was planning on renaming the famous Tennessee amusement park "Yeezywood."
The article included a fake tweet from Kanye (above) and a fictional statement from Parton. In the final paragraph, however, they admitted it was just a ruse:
This entire story has been an April Fools’ Day joke! You can breathe a big sigh of relief; Dolly Parton has no plans to sell Dollywood to Kanye West (or any other celebrities).
You can find this prank here.
An Online Pregnancy Test?
As a general rule, you should never put urine on your computer screen.
The website ovulation-calculators.com played a urine-themed prank on their readers when they unveiled a new "online pregnancy test." After asking a few simple questions, such as age and gender, the website asked readers to place a few drops of urine on their screen to test if they were pregnant.
But no matter how much urine was placed on the screen (again, do not urinate on your computer), the results from this pregnancy test were unreliable because this was just an April Fools' Day prank.
Ovulation-calculators.com eventually revealed that this tool was a joke in a disclaimer at the bottom, but they also encouraged readers to share the test with friends sans disclaimer:
The aim of this online pregnancy test is to take advantage of the latest technological innovations to make pregnancy testing and gender detection more convenient for millions of women and couples around the world. Launched on the 30th of March 2019, this tool was actually built as a fun prank for the 1st of April 2019, and we hope you'll treat it alike. To share this tool without this disclaimer, use this special URL.
You can find this prank here.
Lego's Find My Brick
Is there anything more painful than stepping on a Lego? Is there anything more frustrating than losing an important piece? Lego attempted to jokingly solve those problems today with the release of the new "Find My Brick" app.
While a number of people chimed in on Lego's Facebook page to say that they'd really love a "Find My Brick" app, this was just another April Fools joke.
You can check out the "Find My Brick" app on Lego's Facebook page.
McDonald's Glow in the Dark Burger?
If you're a fan of both McDonald's food and nuclear waste, this April Fools' Day prank may be the one for you:
This juicy jape was originally posted on McDonald's India's Facebook page. The message claimed that this Glow in the Dark burger was coming soon, but then added the hashtag #maybe.
Check out the original post here.
McDonald's McPickle Buger?
The McDonald's India Facebook page wasn't the only international McDonald's branch to get in on the April Fools' Day fun. McDonald's Australia shared their own fake burger, a fast food item consisting of almost nothing but pickles, on social media:
McDonald's fans in Australia were actually excited to taste the McPickle Burger and were a little disappointed when they realized it wasn't real.
You can see the original post here.
Google Buys Burning Man?
Mixmag.net published an article on 1 April 2019 that claimed Google had acquired a majority share of the Burning Man Festival.
While the website didn't explicitly label this article as an April Fools' Day joke, they did provide one on-the-nose hint that this was just a prank. The Google spokesperson quoted in the article was named Marcus Fooly:
Marcus Fooly, Google’s Chief of Fun and Games division, who told us some of the things that the business has planned for the festival.
“We don’t want to change too much about the event, we just want to compliment the essence of the Burn. We’ll be adding our trademark Google Os as eyes for the Burning Man effigy and also renaming Robot Heart to Roobot Heart, but as you can tell, it’s only minor changes to the aesthetic.”
When asked what they’d be actually "offering and giving" to the festival, something that forms the backbone of Burning Man, Fooly said that there would be “An on-site search engine where people can request amenities like food, water and glitter.”
We double-checked just to be sure, and, no, Google does not employ a man named Fooly as their "Chief of Fun and Games."
You can read MixMag's Google Burning Man story here.
Kingfisher Offers Instant Beer?
Kingfisher may have just solved beer's biggest problem: packaging. According to the Indian beer brand's latest viral video, fans of Kingfisher will no longer have to lug bottles home from the store. Instead, they can just mix a package of "instant beer" into a glass of water:
You can read more about Kingfisher's Instant Beer here.
Leopard Print Koalas?
What's cuter than a baby koala? How about a baby koala in leopard print fur?
This fake photograph was originally shared by Tourism Australia's official Twitter account. While they didn't explicitly say April Fools, they did provide a little nod and wink by naming this fictional koala joey "April."
You can see the original tweet here.
WestJet Fyre Fest
Will the internet ever get tired of mocking Fyre Fest? WestJet took their turn at poking fun of the failed luxury music festival with a viral video that includes models, models, a pig, and more models:
WestJet also posted an article about their fake Fyre Fest here.