The New Web Menace

While we have all been focused on MySpace and the serious risk it poses to the very moral fiber of our great American society, a new web menace has quietly snuck past our vigilance. This new threat is far more dangerous than any we have faced on the web before (except perhaps for the temptation to open the Anna.Kournakova virus even though we knew what would happen…). Beyond corrupting the corruptible youth, this corruption is corrupting the very basis of librarianship. I apologize for the late warning on this, my dedication to my coursework prevented me from bringing word to the net in time, still, forewarning is for the forearmed and I only have two with which I can type.

The menace I speak of here are these damnable “April Fool’s” posts that seem to crop up on the internet every year around this time. Do the authors of these posts not realize what they are doing to the blogosphere? Do they not realize the power that every single character wields in this new communication medium? If, for instance, I were to type the character “}” it could send the stock market crashing! What’s worse are librarians that get involved in this nonsense. Do they not realize that everything is being cataloged into Google’s massive databases? Every “fake” posting is introducing erroneous information into our global information network.

The problem, you see, is that in the old days when you pulled an April Fool’s joke, your audience was right in front of you. They could see your poorly concealed mirth and they felt the gentle sting of your jab to the arm as you both gleefully shouted “April Fools!” Today, however, we are living in an age of the Digitally Re-Shifted April Fool’s Joke. This April Fool’s Joke 2.0 separates the joker from the jokee and introduces the possibility of a misunderstanding. Did we as a profession learn nothing from the original broadcast of The War of the Worlds (other than a sense of dread about the movie we knew would eventually come)? We librarians are the stewards of the information space, and as such we must rise up and condemn these Digitally Re-Shifted April Fool’s Jokes. Here’s why:

1. The Digitally Re-Shifted April Fool’s Joke (DRSAFJ) as a Foundation: Too many people on Slashdot and BoingBoing and other blogs are using this as a platform to try and show people they are “hip” to internet humor. Look, if you want to be hip, make sure you don’t miss “Talk Like a Pirate Day” next year, okay?
2. Degrading Collective Intelligence: Friends don’t let friends post bad information to Wikipedia – this is not just a PSA message, this also applies to the DRSAFJ!
3. The DRSAFJ is the Next Intel Inside: People post these horrible DRSAFJ, and then the next day they have to introduce further information clutter by going back and posting notes about how it was just a DRSAFJ and that it wasn’t real and then you end up with these posts stuck all over blogs like the Intel Inside stickers that are stuck all over my laptop.
4. End of the DRASFJ Release Cycle: Look, how about we spread out the release of the bad information throughout the year? Then it is easier for us to do the research and discredit these false posts. I mean what is the allure of today anyway? Why not a July Fool’s joke? This is Digitally Re-Shifted, after all. We can write them today but delay the posting until later! See how silly that sounds? Once the April Fool’s joke was Digitally Re-Shifted, it lost the very essence of being an April Fool’s Joke.
5. Lightweight DRASFJ Models: If we must involve ourselves, we need to think bigger! What’s one little blog post, after all… How about next year we break out of the lightweight DRASFJ model and we pull an April Fool’s joke on the speed of light or the laws of thermodynamics? Hah, can’t be done you say? Then how about we just stop this altogether?
6. DRASFJ Above the Level of a Single Blog: The other problem with the Digital Re-Shift of these jokes is that blogs link to each other. I have been speaking with ICANN about a possible solution to this menace. Next year, they are going to drop all of the primary router tables on this date so that nobody can get to any websites and thus cannot link to these pathetic DRASFJs.
7. Rich April Fool’s Joke Experience: In the end, this is what it is about! We need to make sure that both the joker and the jokee have a rich experience. The shared moment of physical closeness during an analog April Fool’s joke is lost with the DRSAFJ. How does the joker know the jokee is reading the joke? The jokee can just unplug his or her computer and go outside to walk aimlessly through the streets calling out “Fool me once, fool me twice, I am a fool looking to be fooled!”

As you can clearly see, this new web menace must be eliminated with all possible speed. Again, I apologize for the delay in posting this, but please spread this to as many of your friends and colleagues as you can! We must work together as librarians, teachers and people with two arms to be forearmed against the threat of the Digitally Re-Shifted April Fool’s Joke! (Sorry, no offense meant to anyone with less than two arms! (or with more than two arms, tough break genetically, eh?)).

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