strawberry_dolly wrote:hey, whilst i understand the disappointment, some of this feels mean-spirited? like, this attitude of 'cs is deteriorating' just because an event that has always been small has been downsized this year?
[snip]
100% this. Plenty of users have been respectful about their disappointment, and I totally get that it can be a disappointment to not have as much for April Fool's Day this year as we've had in past years. Heck, as someone who's been here for nearly all April Fool's Days, I instinctively went "aww" when I saw there were only pets and the hilarious items for this year.
But not all users have been giving respectful vibes, and it really, really pains me.
The typical April Fool's Day celebrations around the world are
normalized, socially acceptable bullying. Think about it. Typical April Fool's Day stuff involves people having fun
specifically at the expense of other people. (No, it doesn't make it any better if the latter also has fun--and that's not happening that much in the first place, and even when it does happen, it's only genuine half the time, because the other half of the time it's just masking discomfort in order to not draw ire.) And sometimes this expense is very, very great and has tangible negative physical effects on those who suffer--as many of us have explained on the forums for many years every time there's a prank on CS.
I'm sure all of us who have sent in both public and private feedback in previous years know that the staff never mean to hurt us--because April Fool's Day pranks hurting us has been completely, utterly normalized in the world we live in. And we greatly appreciate that the staff has done their best to try to figure out funny pranks that wouldn't hurt anyone. But even the seemingly harmless Squiddy Smoothie, grayscale, and upside-down years, of which the upside-down one
was specifically trialed by one of us on staff, turned out to wreak havoc on many of us (in the case of the upside-down year, the staffie who trialed it was one of the lucky ones who happened to be unaffected by it, hence why they didn't realize how bad it would be).
Between disappointment that seriously hurts no one and letting an abled majority have fun at the serious expense of non-abled people, I think it's clear which option is better.
The only pranks that wouldn't hurt anyone involve funny art (e.g. furniture year, googly eyes year) and thus more of our artists' time and brainpower.
Also sweet baby jesus I feel old 'cause in my day we weren't concerned with user activity we just accepted that chicken smoothie is a smol, niche site
(search my posts for "april" if you'd like to see some of the public April Fool's Day feedback in 2021 and 2017)