Some holidays, like Christmas, I spend months in advance planning for and counting down to. Including a daily “countdown” that my sister and I started doing when she lived across the country and flew home for the holidays.
Some holidays, like April Fools, I think of once or twice late in March with the vague revelation that it’s coming up soon and then totally forget about again until someone dyes my milk green or something.
And sometimes, the prank is a lot bigger than that.
It all started Sunday morning.
Shane and I have a habit of staying up late on weekends, and this weekend was no different. I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little extra groggy, because we had an Easter brunch to go to but I secretly just wanted to sleep for a few more hours.
I logged into Final Fantasy XIV, which I do most mornings now because I’ve got three garden plots between two houses going with different gardening crosses to try to grow jute seeds.
That’s when I saw it.
Right there at the top, in the “News” section on the game launcher, was a story talking about a new app for FFXIV.
Curious, I clicked on it, and quickly learned about this wondrous new thing that would:
- Notify me when unspoiled gathering nodes popped, which is a huge issue for me because I’m forgetful, and
- Let me go outside to harvest things à la Pokémon GO
My pre-coffee brain was very excited about this idea, so I immediately went to Google Play to try to download it. I found nothing, so I went to the official site to try to find the launch date.
All it said was “Coming Soon,” so in the meantime, I decided to watch the trailer video for it.
Everything in the video looked so exciting and stunning, and I was starting to mentally sketch out walking routes I could take around the neighbourhood that included local Wi-Fi spots because I don’t have data.
Yep.
About a minute in, the video introduces Futoshi Ito, who created this selfie-stick-esque attachment to make harvesting more effective. Again, my hazy brain thought that was a neat idea. In hindsight, I should have noticed these flags:
- He works for a company called Fufucha Design. Fufucha is the master of the Botanists’ Guild in the game.
- Apparently, to use the harvesting stick, you actually have to hit your phone on things.
Ultimate red flag that actually made me realize it was a hoax: to fish with the app, you have to throw your phone into the water.
That’s right, it took my gullible self about 10 minutes, including getting to 1:50 in the video, to figure out that it might not be real.
And then I remembered what day it was.
Ah, well. Maybe next year I’ll remember!
3 thoughts on “Why I can’t go on the internet on April Fools”
My boyfriend likes to usually research things before he tells me about stuff but he saw the trailer for this before I did. I saw a post on Instagram and someone linked me the trailer but I fell asleep and totally forgot about it until later that day when I was posting about Easter.
WHO’S IDEA WAS IT TO MAKE EASTER ON APRIL FOOLS DAY ANYWAY.
But my boyfriend was really frustrated at that point and had quit the internet for the day. It’s sometimes hard to tell when things are a joke but sometimes… most of the time… they’re not even really funny or even believable anymore.
This made me laugh so hard! I’m gullible too, don’t worry.
Bless you Erin! I think I might just have followed the same path as you up to the ‘hitting your phone on things’ part!