Everyday is April Fools Day
One spring morning when I was kid, my dad got us up in a rush and said he’d accidentally let us oversleep. My brother and I checked our clock and it was only a few minutes until school started. We hurriedly got dressed, ate breakfast and collected our school stuff. Though we usually walked, my dad said he’d give us a ride to save a few minutes. When we got in the car my dad turned it on and pointed at the clock and shouted April Fools!
It was a full hour before school started. My dad had gone around the house and changed all the clocks to trick us into thinking we were running really late. Lack of sleep aside, it was a good joke. And we fell hard for it.
After that one it sort of became a family tradition that we’d try to pull a prank on each other for April Fools Day. Which of course led us all to being very skeptical when the big day would come each year.
Our senses were heightened when we were trying to determine whether what each of us was doing or saying was the truth.
The thing I realize this April Fools Day is we now live in a time where we constantly have to be skeptical. Every day we’re bombarded with claims of Fake News, actual Fake News, full websites and businesses that completely cater to telling lies and untruths. But unlike the April Fools pranks my family used to play on each other, these are not fun or jovial little jokes we can all laugh about, they’re distortions of reality.
It’s sort of scary to think about, but I imagine people had similar feelings when printing presses were catching on and it became easier for dubious claims to spread.
Ever since we’ve been able to read about things we didn’t witness ourselves, accuracy of information has been a serious concern. So in some ways this isn’t a new issue, just the avenue of exposure to the misinformation and the speed at which it happens has changed.
At the end of the day it falls to each of us to determine what is true, which sources are trustworthy and to make our decisions and judgements on sound information and good logic.
