RE: Objections to the April Fools Day prank.
April 3, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Okay here's my opinion.
Nothing more or less than that. I'm not asking anyone to step down and I'm not trying to stop anyone from having any fun, although people will think that anyway.
Let me make one thing clear. As april fools go, it was a fucking epic april fools. On April 1st itself I told Tib that I genuinely love this place, I had the most fun on that night that I ever have had on these forums.
My 'objections' aren't due to my lack of sense of humour, they are more likely because I'm a paranoid and take things too personally. So I will say that, I only intend to bring this whole thing up so I can say my piece, hear the response from people who I want to hear from and move on from it.
So as for the prank. Firstly I think this was extremely elaborate, and I understand the necessity for it to have been started this way before april fools. To make it more believable. I just never expected the lengths that staff members would go to.
My main contention with this is it seems to me a very backhanded way of fooling people, because forum members would never expect their own moderators to break the rules in such a way. I understand the whole meaning of a prank, but for me it's just too far a length to go in order to have a bit of a laugh on april fools day. There could of been other ways to fool us.
This is obviously something people will have differing opinions on, but I've never been one to even take april fools as a meaningful day anyway. Can't say I've ever paid much attention to it.
The sock puppets themselves are what struck me the most about it though. Most of them were a good bloody laugh. Niqabi, One King, Bueller and ofcourse the star trek gang were fucking hilarious! I didn't mind one bit when I found out that these were fake. The star trek ones in particular, because they didn't provoke a negative response or tug on people's emotions. There were a couple however which I think were a bit sly. AtheistAnarchist, is for me, obviously there to take the piss out of ReverendJ and to get a rise out of him in particular. The sock itself is a parody of most of his views. I've had my own disagreements with RevJ myself, it's just I think that when he believed that such a sock was a real person, and the kind of thing that it was portraying, it seemed as though it was a deliberate con to take the piss out of him. I'm not a fan of taking the piss out of people in such a way. The forum staff said they had some great laughs out of the responses they got. This in itself kinda makes me feel as though it's ok to take the piss behind people's back when they aren't in the loop.
Then there is the whole scenario with LMA. I don't know what the whole beef was with Alei and Shell but it seems to me that whilst Alei didn't know LMA wasn't a real person, the fact that Shell was having a good laugh about it all behind Alei's back is again, not what I'd call very funny.
The puppets were there to get a response. I understand that the whole purpose of a prank is just for that. But when it get's so personal to the extent that I think people may have been taking the piss behind others backs I think a prank has gone too far.
People probably wonder why I've taken objection to it all, why I seem to have taken it personally. Well maybe I've let my imagination go too far. I know that I can do that sometimes. But when other people are genuinely upset by the goings on in this forum it makes me wonder (perhaps wrongly) that people obviously have problems with each other.
The fact that this prank has simply highlighted that when it didn't need to is what's got me.
The prank certainly opened my eyes and others to people's flaws, and ofcourse my own. That people will defend duck lipped girls simply because they are duck lipped girls is one point someone else made.
I am not butthurt about the fact that you guys fooled me. It was a bloody good prank. I just think it was too far, and it looked to me as though there were some things going on beneath the guise of the prank that were not cool.
Just my thoughts on the whole thing. A lot of time was spent in chat and myself and other people were throwing ideas back and forth. Certain things just seemed to come to light after this prank for me.
Oh but you didn't fool me with the whole marriage thing, I sniffed that one out right away
I am NOT little.
