It’s April, the month most associated with the arrival of spring, and I’m happy to announce that as part of my own personal spring celebration, anyone who e-mails this column to five friends will receive a unique, personalized telepathic thank you from me.
I’ve been working on telepathy for many years now, and having recently mastered the technique, I am offering you, dear readers, the chance to experience it in action. Please note, however, that due to the delicate nature of the process and the potential obstacles to successful transmission—such as the signal receiver’s wearing of clothing, recent (within 24 hours) consumption of food or water, and the absence of a colander or similar metal-conducting device on the receiver’s head—no guarantees can be made regarding the clear reception of this telepathic thank you.
Thank you for your understanding. If you met the criteria listed above, I just thanked you telepathically, as well.
I’m hoping I don’t need to explain that opening as the lead-in to a column on April Fool’s Day, but in case I do, that’s just what it is. Feel free to wander your home hungry, thirsty, and naked but for a colander cap if that appeals to you, though.
I thought I knew the origin of April Fool’s Day, it having something to do with people who refused to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian and its Jan. 1 start date.
It turns out that’s just one of several theories, but there are definitive historical records of the holiday going back to the 1500s. Still, I don’t think anyone would deny that April Fool’s Day really hit its stride in the 20th century.
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A great April Fool’s joke, in my mind, is more about a gradual, growing awareness in the victim than a sudden-impact realization. As with hand buzzers and squirting flowers on lapels, there’s a lack of subtlety in “prank” TV shows like Punk’d (“You just accidentally set your friend’s house on fire! Ha ha, not really!”). I do enjoy TruTV’s Impractical Jokers, maybe because it avoids some of the mean-spiritedness by harassing and embarrassing the hosts instead of bystanders, or maybe just because it shares my Staten Island-bred sense of humor.
A joke can be too subtle, however—or just too esoteric. A prime example is Institute for Advanced Study astrophysicist Don Schneider’s announcement of the discovery of a quasar with a redshift of 4.1, back when the largest quasar redshift known was 3.7 (this event was recounted in the book Who Got Einstein’s Office? by Ed Regis). Schneider’s hoax was the source of great amusement to those present and the talk of the local scientific community for a time, but it’s not the kind of humor that easily translates to the public at large—or, I now realize, to a monthly newspaper column.
A more famous (or infamous) hoax was George Plimpton’s April 1, 1985 Sports Illustrated article on the unknown phenom Sidd Finch, an aspiring monk and potential New York Mets prospect who played the French horn in the bathtub, spoke several languages, had never played baseball before, and could throw a pitch 168 miles an hour, with accuracy.
A successful hoax requires a certain level of gullibility in the intended audience; as a 12-year-old Mets fan, I was so thrilled that Sidd Finch might be joining the team that I blazed through the 14 page article, youthfully and intellectually oblivious to the story’s impossibility.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one, because “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch” stands as a landmark in April Fool’s history, along with Taco Bell’s 1996 announcement that it had purchased the Liberty Bell, and a Swedish newspaper’s 2004 report that had people vigorously shaking their phones in order to access the new 3G network.
Staten Island is home to my favorite active hoaxer: Joe Reginella, a sculptor who created a beautiful bronze memorial for the victims of the Staten Island Ferry Disaster, a 1963 incident involving a giant octopus that dragged a ship and 400 passengers down into the sea. It never actually happened, and Reginella has since made a name for himself as the creator of fake monuments (and documentaries, and brochures) commemorating the “1977 UFO Tugboat Abduction,” the “1929 Brooklyn Bridge Elephant Stampede,” and more.
My favorite is a monument showing wolves attacking a camera-toting tourist, with a dedication “to the many tourists that go missing each year in New York City” and a reminder “as to why the parks close at dusk.” I asked Joe what makes a good hoax, and he answered, “absurdity and plausibility, all at once.”
A hoax trades on trust and precedent, which is why newspapers, venerable sports magazines, and official-looking monuments are able to fool people, if only for a short time; they’re using their own reputations against you. My own brother got me once, when we were exploring lodging options in Newport, Rhode Island, and he convinced me he’d arranged for us to stay at the National Museum of American Illustration because his friend’s parents ran the place. Thirty-plus years of benefiting from his strange-but-true connections with the rich and semi-famous had left me primed for the setup.
Is it even possible to get a widespread hoax going in 2024? Fewer people read newspapers, and the May issue of Sports Illustrated will be its final print edition. Although social media offers undeniable evidence of people’s willingness to forward “news” without verifying it, we’ve all become pretty skeptical—sometimes to the extreme, rejecting even facts that have been clearly proven. According to the Pew Research Center, public trust in government fell to near-historic lows in 2023, and an Axios poll showed similar lows for Americans’ trust in mass media. Without some degree of trust, any hoax attempt is a non-starter.
A good hoax also depends on someone admitting at some point that it’s false; it’s the difference between Uri Geller and Penn and Teller, and it seems to be what’s missing from much of the hoaxing going on these days. Whether it’s QAnon, Covid vaccination warnings, Russian disinformation, or any of the other top contenders, there’s never any admission of being mistaken or intentionally misleading, merely a doubling down on the vitriol.
But amid the AI and deepfakes and targeted news, I’ve become more appreciative of satisfying hoaxes that have their fun, don’t hurt anyone, and reveal themselves promptly, especially if they fool me along the way. They serve a greater purpose than simple entertainment, reminding us to ask questions and seek proof rather than blindly believing whatever we’re told. So happy April Fool’s Day… and don’t forget to wear that colander.
A New York City urban legend captured in sculpture by Joe Reginella.,
