Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

There’s a tradition in the media of publishing “April Fool’s” articles — false articles which are meant to fool or surprise a reader. Unfortunately–and maybe I’m in the minority–blog sites and new media sites have also gotten into the game, and posting legitimate articles which are actually April Fool’s jokes. I know it’s “all in good fun” but given the yet-fully-proven legitimacy of online media outlets, I think it’s only detrimental to bloggers to post fake news and articles.

For one thing, April Fool’s — which is a very western thing — is not observed or understood fully in the international audience which is the web. What — to someone in the US — is an obvious April Fool’s day joke may not appear so to someone in many other countries where April Fool’s isn’t a tradition.

For another, the lifetime of articles on the Internet means that often, something posted on April Fools shows up as what may appear to be a legitimate article later–often with a difficult to see or obscured date–which makes it very tough for someone to realize that an article was false. Unlike a traditional newspaper, which was printed and thrown away April 1st, that blog/news post now stays forever floating around the Internet.

Anyway, my own humble opinion.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.