{"id":2921,"date":"2012-03-29T09:22:46","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T16:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=2921"},"modified":"2012-03-30T09:27:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T16:27:02","slug":"everyday-fool%e2%80%99s-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/03\/29\/everyday-fool%e2%80%99s-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Everyday fool\u2019s day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that we\u2019re all media-savvy consumers, we expect that on April Fool\u2019s Day we\u2019re going to be confronted by lame attempts to blindside us with some sort of joke or prank. You\u2019d have to be a fool or a five-year-old to fall for any plot revealed on April 1.<\/p>\n

But it hasn\u2019t always been that way. Back in the early days of television, a 1957 BBC news broadcast of spagetti harvesting in Switzerland had Brits across the land calling to find out where they could get their hands on one of these exotic trees.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The infamous spaghetti harvest (photo courtesy BBC).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And five years later, a 1962 report that cutting up a nylon stocking and taping it over the TV screen could give consumers instant colour on their black and white television sets had grown men raiding their wives\u2019 lingerie drawers to try it out.<\/p>\n

These days, our media maturity blights our gullibility to such widespread broadcasts, although the tradition of April Fool\u2019s continues.<\/p>\n

But, still, we are fooled every day: by Photoshopped images and other marketing devices that we readily buy into. Our thirst for quick fixes and cure-alls make us perfect targets.<\/p>\n

Perhaps April Fool\u2019s Day should be set aside to celebrate mass hypnotism.<\/p>\n

Or just give in to the cheap laughs and stick a silly note to someone\u2019s back: that one still guarantees humiliation and a laugh!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that we\u2019re all media-savvy consumers, we expect that on April Fool\u2019s Day we\u2019re going to be confronted by lame attempts to blindside us with some sort of joke or prank. You\u2019d have to be a fool or a five-year-old to fall for any plot revealed on April 1. But it hasn\u2019t always been that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2921"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2926,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2921\/revisions\/2926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}