April Fools

Obviously I have nothing against April Fools Day as that was the day that I started Blazing Games. I thought that starting a game website right after the dot com bubble burst was a foolish thing to do so what better day to do it. The site has been running fine ever since, at least as long as I don't pay myself. Legal, Accounting, Hosting and a few other fees are covered by the advertising. But while I enjoy making games and running the site, the anniversary holds a deep darkness. You see, April also happens to be the day when the internet stops working for around 48 hours. Technically this annual internet flaw starts March 31st in North America, but the root cause of the glitch is the changing of the date in countries a day ahead of North America to April 1st. Even in North America, some computer systems use the GMT time for their date. This glitch which I am talking about is all the fake "news" articles and posts and gags that start to appear which means that most of my news feeds are not reliable for the next couple of days. This would be tolerable if the article writers made it clear somewhere in the article that it was an April Fools joke, after all the point of April Fools is to let the person know they have been fooled. Why is this a big deal? Largely because most people don't remove their April Fools content after the day is over, which means I may stumble upon it months later when doing research or worse yet have to explain to somebody else that the article was a joke. Of course, going into a 48 hour news withdrawal is also an annoyance.