Link to original post: [drupal=1390]April Fool's Day '09: A Retrospective[/drupal]
I think all of us who logged onto SmashBoards on the first of April found a surprise waiting. I had heard about April Fool's from last year...I didn't entirely remember what I'd heard, but I remembered it was some basic, semi-subtle pranks. I expected the same sort of thing this year.
I had had a sort of tiring day on March 31st, so I was ready to go to bed a little after 11 EST. As I was getting into bed, I remembered one last thing so I pulled out my iPod Touch, opened up Safari, and went to check it. I entered the most recently posted in blog, "This is just too trippy" and...wait, GREEN? What names are green? It was then that I realized that the name colors had been changed. I had been thinking of April Fool's so I almost immediately realized what it was. I started looking at some of the blogs and such and was trying to really look at everything, until I got fed up with trying to do everything on my Touch and pulled out my laptop again. Getting to bed at eleven? That ship had sailed, by far.
I began to post in the thread and flip through the replies to see reactions and such, and we noticed that Debaters and Directors lacked a color change. Shortly after we noted this, of course, the unknown force changing everything changed the colors so that combined, they looked like this; Debaters brown, regular members green, BRoomers red, Smash BRoomers gray, Mods yellow, SMods blue, Admins pink, Directors white, Smash Researchers with a blue-gray color, and Writers with the default orange.
We were all fairly surprised with this, but while looking at the collection of online users, we noticed...wait, a whole line of "Mic_"s? Apparently, most of the mods had changed their names to "Mic_#", in this manner. Of course, this mindgamed just about everyone, although we figured out a few. We also noticed that they had made a thread, further mindgaming us. Now, it looks perfectly normal; but imagine it with every moderator having their name as "Mic_#."
That section of confusion was short-lived, though; soon Straked linked to someone's profile, which looked like this:
Of course, all of the User Blogs regulars knew of Maxfire and his...good grammars (if you don't, refer to "The Don'ts of Blogging" and look at the links under the "Maxfire" portion.) Sure enough, he was back as an Admin; surely an April Fool's joke, but epic nonetheless. Kinzer summed it up QUITE well: "OMG, Maxfire is an admin now, he doesn't NEED to report you to the staffs now!"
At this point us User Blogs regulars all put that picture (or one similar) as our signatures.
Also at this point, the Smash Directors' title had been changed to "WHAT NOW, BLUE NAMES?!" Somewhere also around this time, Smash Researchers got the title of "lol i wanted a cyan name".
Another discovery occurred at this point; the posting of five pictures, showing a post of Maxfire's from a place currently not viewable to the regular members. Later, it was re-posted in the Pool Room and we were told by Cashed that it was from the Forum Disputes. The thread is here.
I discovered a post myself in the Mic thread; another Maxfire-ism.
At this time, the Debaters' title had been changed to Internet Arguer, and shortly after Spadefox noticed a rather funny title change for the Smash BRoomers; in particular, for Mew2King.
Of course, as much fun as I was having in this pure excitement I had to call it a night eventually, and revelations were beginning to slow down so I felt secure to get some sleep at the moment. The evening is easily summed up by this collaboration of screenshots, courtesy finalark. To see them all broken up, go here. Seriously, major props to finalark, it sums it up perfectly.
The next day I checked SmashBoards and noticed everything pretty much the same. Azua posted a few times and had apparently made some...modifications,
. (Screenshot courtesy Spadefox.)
Some people at this point were sure it was over; after all, look at how much had happened the night before! Others were still convinced the best(/worst, depending on how you look at it) was still to come. I was in the middle; I expected more, but not too much more.
I was wrong.
In the afternoon, I checked back to see...wait, Pliskin II?! I had to do some searching around to figure out who it was; turns out it was Teran.
At the same time, I noticed the colors had changed again (screenshot courtesy Spadefox), so I was left to decipher them yet again. Regular members crimson, Directors yellow, Smash Researchers a green-brown color, Debaters cyan, Smash BRoomers pink, Mods gray, and Admins a cold blue color.
I like blue so I took note that I liked my new cyan aloud. At the same time, in my natural habit, I looked on the pessimistic side and made a joke about how now the names were probably going to be swapped.
They were.
Because of this, I assume, the Debaters' titles were split up; some of them were still Internet Arguers, others had the title of:
Blames Firus.
And the Directors had their title changed somewhere around here to "Blame Barge".
Mith_ in particular had his title changed to...well;
.
(Screenshot courtesy Spadefox.)
Mine was changed to
.
(Again, courtesy Spadefox.)
A few Admins also got their names changed to having "MLG_" in front of their name, which spawned quite a few jokes, such as; "YOU HAVE MLG_ IN YOUR NAME WHY ARE YOU POSTING
", from Mith_.
Some Mods, SMods, and Admins also had fun with their official title, like this. (Screenshot from Spadefox.)
The
ness around this time made me think of using my Pokemon spriting skills to contribute, so I made a line of
sprites. (If you want to see them, scour the threads or you can see them all collected as one near the top of my sprites in The Custom Pokemon Shop.)
Yet another color change.
Throughout the day, the color themes continued to change. Eventually, they weaned off into monotone themes, until eventually...the colors were removed, bit by bit, and returned to normal. Of course, at the end we all figured out that it was basically Azua single-handedly taking care of the entire thing.
This year, though, the only April Fool's action was really the changing of titles and colors. Not really a big deal, in all actuality, which is why it's not entirely sensible that it was such an amazing day. But thinking about it today, my mind quickly jumped to the reason why it was so great.
It was all of you.
The User Blogs regulars. If I had just seen colors and watched everything change on my own on the front page, it wouldn't have been anything. Heck, without Straked's help who knows how long it would've taken us to notice that Maxfire was brought back? Without Spadefox's help I would likely have missed that the Smash BRoomers were re-titled "Smash Scrubs". We needed each other to notice everything, for one.
Beyond that, without being able to just laugh about everything together, it wouldn't have been the same at all.
As such, I want to thank everyone.
Thanks Mith_, Straked, Kinzer, Skrah, timssu, godsmith, finalark, Spadefox, Teran, SuSa(/Havokk), Jimnymebob, The Dinkoman, and anyone I forgot who stuck with the "This is just too trippy" thread and made it really enjoyable. Thank you, those of you who popped in there a few times.
Thanks for the mods for having a great sense of humor. Thanks to Jam in particular to going easy on infractions throughout the day due to the occasion.
Thanks to Maxfire for his great grammars. Keep on reporting things to the staffs, buddy.
Especially, thanks to Azua for making this day. It was really a great prank, and it made the enjoyability possible. Without all of these people it wouldn't have been possible, but without her there would've been nothing to make of the day even with some really awesome people.
I can confidently say that this was the best April Fool's I've ever had.
To archive all of the color changes:
Initial Change
Second Change (Courtesy Spadefox.)
Third Change
Fourth Change
Fifth Change
Sixth Change
Seventh Change
Eighth Change
Ninth Change
Tenth Change (My personal favorite)
Eleventh Change
Twelfth Change
Thirteenth Change
Fourteenth Change
Starting to Revert
Continuing to Revert
It was a hell of a day, guys. Thanks again, everyone.
I think all of us who logged onto SmashBoards on the first of April found a surprise waiting. I had heard about April Fool's from last year...I didn't entirely remember what I'd heard, but I remembered it was some basic, semi-subtle pranks. I expected the same sort of thing this year.
I had had a sort of tiring day on March 31st, so I was ready to go to bed a little after 11 EST. As I was getting into bed, I remembered one last thing so I pulled out my iPod Touch, opened up Safari, and went to check it. I entered the most recently posted in blog, "This is just too trippy" and...wait, GREEN? What names are green? It was then that I realized that the name colors had been changed. I had been thinking of April Fool's so I almost immediately realized what it was. I started looking at some of the blogs and such and was trying to really look at everything, until I got fed up with trying to do everything on my Touch and pulled out my laptop again. Getting to bed at eleven? That ship had sailed, by far.
I began to post in the thread and flip through the replies to see reactions and such, and we noticed that Debaters and Directors lacked a color change. Shortly after we noted this, of course, the unknown force changing everything changed the colors so that combined, they looked like this; Debaters brown, regular members green, BRoomers red, Smash BRoomers gray, Mods yellow, SMods blue, Admins pink, Directors white, Smash Researchers with a blue-gray color, and Writers with the default orange.
We were all fairly surprised with this, but while looking at the collection of online users, we noticed...wait, a whole line of "Mic_"s? Apparently, most of the mods had changed their names to "Mic_#", in this manner. Of course, this mindgamed just about everyone, although we figured out a few. We also noticed that they had made a thread, further mindgaming us. Now, it looks perfectly normal; but imagine it with every moderator having their name as "Mic_#."
That section of confusion was short-lived, though; soon Straked linked to someone's profile, which looked like this:
Of course, all of the User Blogs regulars knew of Maxfire and his...good grammars (if you don't, refer to "The Don'ts of Blogging" and look at the links under the "Maxfire" portion.) Sure enough, he was back as an Admin; surely an April Fool's joke, but epic nonetheless. Kinzer summed it up QUITE well: "OMG, Maxfire is an admin now, he doesn't NEED to report you to the staffs now!"
At this point us User Blogs regulars all put that picture (or one similar) as our signatures.
Also at this point, the Smash Directors' title had been changed to "WHAT NOW, BLUE NAMES?!" Somewhere also around this time, Smash Researchers got the title of "lol i wanted a cyan name".
Another discovery occurred at this point; the posting of five pictures, showing a post of Maxfire's from a place currently not viewable to the regular members. Later, it was re-posted in the Pool Room and we were told by Cashed that it was from the Forum Disputes. The thread is here.
I discovered a post myself in the Mic thread; another Maxfire-ism.
At this time, the Debaters' title had been changed to Internet Arguer, and shortly after Spadefox noticed a rather funny title change for the Smash BRoomers; in particular, for Mew2King.
Of course, as much fun as I was having in this pure excitement I had to call it a night eventually, and revelations were beginning to slow down so I felt secure to get some sleep at the moment. The evening is easily summed up by this collaboration of screenshots, courtesy finalark. To see them all broken up, go here. Seriously, major props to finalark, it sums it up perfectly.
The next day I checked SmashBoards and noticed everything pretty much the same. Azua posted a few times and had apparently made some...modifications,
Some people at this point were sure it was over; after all, look at how much had happened the night before! Others were still convinced the best(/worst, depending on how you look at it) was still to come. I was in the middle; I expected more, but not too much more.
I was wrong.
In the afternoon, I checked back to see...wait, Pliskin II?! I had to do some searching around to figure out who it was; turns out it was Teran.
At the same time, I noticed the colors had changed again (screenshot courtesy Spadefox), so I was left to decipher them yet again. Regular members crimson, Directors yellow, Smash Researchers a green-brown color, Debaters cyan, Smash BRoomers pink, Mods gray, and Admins a cold blue color.
I like blue so I took note that I liked my new cyan aloud. At the same time, in my natural habit, I looked on the pessimistic side and made a joke about how now the names were probably going to be swapped.
They were.
Because of this, I assume, the Debaters' titles were split up; some of them were still Internet Arguers, others had the title of:
Blames Firus.
And the Directors had their title changed somewhere around here to "Blame Barge".
Mith_ in particular had his title changed to...well;
(Screenshot courtesy Spadefox.)
Mine was changed to
(Again, courtesy Spadefox.)
A few Admins also got their names changed to having "MLG_" in front of their name, which spawned quite a few jokes, such as; "YOU HAVE MLG_ IN YOUR NAME WHY ARE YOU POSTING
Some Mods, SMods, and Admins also had fun with their official title, like this. (Screenshot from Spadefox.)
The
Yet another color change.
Throughout the day, the color themes continued to change. Eventually, they weaned off into monotone themes, until eventually...the colors were removed, bit by bit, and returned to normal. Of course, at the end we all figured out that it was basically Azua single-handedly taking care of the entire thing.
Honestly, it doesn't seem completely logical, but this was the best April Fool's Day I've ever had. Most years there's some big news prank, some sort of phony thing; a trick. I dislike most tricks because...well, I don't take very lightly to tricks, they usually just annoy me. Most of the time the only person that finds them funny is the other person.
This year, though, the only April Fool's action was really the changing of titles and colors. Not really a big deal, in all actuality, which is why it's not entirely sensible that it was such an amazing day. But thinking about it today, my mind quickly jumped to the reason why it was so great.
It was all of you.
The User Blogs regulars. If I had just seen colors and watched everything change on my own on the front page, it wouldn't have been anything. Heck, without Straked's help who knows how long it would've taken us to notice that Maxfire was brought back? Without Spadefox's help I would likely have missed that the Smash BRoomers were re-titled "Smash Scrubs". We needed each other to notice everything, for one.
Beyond that, without being able to just laugh about everything together, it wouldn't have been the same at all.
As such, I want to thank everyone.
Thanks Mith_, Straked, Kinzer, Skrah, timssu, godsmith, finalark, Spadefox, Teran, SuSa(/Havokk), Jimnymebob, The Dinkoman, and anyone I forgot who stuck with the "This is just too trippy" thread and made it really enjoyable. Thank you, those of you who popped in there a few times.
Thanks for the mods for having a great sense of humor. Thanks to Jam in particular to going easy on infractions throughout the day due to the occasion.
Thanks to Maxfire for his great grammars. Keep on reporting things to the staffs, buddy.
Especially, thanks to Azua for making this day. It was really a great prank, and it made the enjoyability possible. Without all of these people it wouldn't have been possible, but without her there would've been nothing to make of the day even with some really awesome people.
I can confidently say that this was the best April Fool's I've ever had.
To archive all of the color changes:
Initial Change
Second Change (Courtesy Spadefox.)
Third Change
Fourth Change
Fifth Change
Sixth Change
Seventh Change
Eighth Change
Ninth Change
Tenth Change (My personal favorite)
Eleventh Change
Twelfth Change
Thirteenth Change
Fourteenth Change
Starting to Revert
Continuing to Revert
It was a hell of a day, guys. Thanks again, everyone.
