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In Defense of April Fool's Day

Long ago, when people were afraid of demons and ghosts, they started celebrating All Hallow's Eve by dressing up as those things that they feared most. Before that, they'd make sacrifices to appease the gods or devils. We see this motif time and time again - Japanese oni masks worn by priests, the running of the bulls, hell even Greek Tragedy are all attempts by humans to conquer and bind the sublime terror of their times.

When your culture is uneasy about something, you face that fear by celebrating it and binding it in ritual.

To me, April Fool's Day is not merely some day when people lie on the internet; it's in fact a day when we celebrate the greatest fear we all have on the internet, broken information.

By setting aside a day to make shit up and try to convince people of it, we're participating in a human tradition that goes back as far as civilization itself. We're laughing at the devil, owning our weakness and building a bulwark against the void.

The more our technology changes us the more connected we turn out to be to our roots.