Mass Media Pranks, Past and Present

In terms of mass media pranks played on the unknowing public, Orson Welles was certainly a pioneer. He certainly does not belong in a category all his own, however, as things like a twenty-four hour news cycle, as well as the internet, provide fertile soil for any budding journalist’s mediocre pranks. Such things are usually revealed around the first of April every year, on what is commonly known as April Fools Day. Massive sites in all facets of entertainment and news make use of this formerly-innocent holiday in order to create anticipation (or sometimes panic), only then to immediately disappoint when the reader realizes that the article was published on the inaugural day of April. This is most common in the entertainment sphere, and sites like IGN or Kotaku are notorious for their once-legendary public goofs. I say once-legendary because now the public has come to expect a news cycle chock-full of nonsense on April 1st. That being said, sites like those previously mentioned have produced some awfully convincing material on the holiday.
For example, last year IGN published a story that stated a television series based on the popular Grand Theft Auto games had been ordered by AMC, with one of the series’ protagonists, Steven Ogg, set to reprise his role as Trevor from the most recent entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto V. Seeing as AMC were the party responsible for bringing us the immaculate Breaking Bad, this seemed like a legitimate possibility. Of course, though, the twist was that such a concept was too good to be true, as the public soon caught on to the fact that this exciting news had been fabricated. Now, much of April Fools Day is committed to coming up with the most ridiculous story possible, and many corporations use this occasion to do something that may even serve as a legitimate piece of entertainment to their customers. Google is perhaps the kings of this specific genre of “prank,” as they regularly release something on this day to entertain their millions of users. Last year, they conjured up a version of Ms. Pac-Man that was compatible with Google Maps, and it was a legitimately entertaining time-waster. While pranking the public was once considered a legitimate enterprise, now I feel as if the general public is simply too savvy to be fooled, even if fabricated news does not come out on April 1st.